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LinkedIn Website Demographics: What Replaced It and What It Can't Do

LinkedIn retired the report in 2023. Here is what Audience Insights shows, and where per-visit identification fits.

Scout team, 6 min read

LinkedIn Website Demographics was retired from Campaign Manager on 30 November 2023. Its successor, Audience Insights, shows the job titles and companies of LinkedIn members in a website audience, in aggregate, once 300 members match. It cannot tell you which company visited on a given day; that needs per-visit identification.

In short

  • LinkedIn retired the Website Demographics page on 30 November 2023 and points advertisers to Audience Insights instead.
  • Audience insights for a website audience only appear once it reaches 300 matched LinkedIn members.
  • LinkedIn's data is aggregate and members-only, so it never lists individual visits or dates.
  • The ICO says storage and access for online advertising requires consent, so the Insight Tag normally sits behind your cookie banner.
  • Use LinkedIn for audience shape and targeting, and visitor identification for which companies to follow up.
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Photo: Yan Krukau on Pexels

LinkedIn Website Demographics was, for years, the best-known free way to see what kinds of professionals were visiting your site. The standalone report was retired from Campaign Manager on 30 November 2023, and its job now sits in LinkedIn's Audience Insights. This guide explains what you can still get from the LinkedIn Insight Tag, what it has never been able to tell you, and how it compares with per-visit company identification.

What was LinkedIn Website Demographics?

LinkedIn launched Website Demographics in July 2017 as a free report inside Campaign Manager, its ad-buying platform.1 Once you installed the LinkedIn Insight Tag and built a website audience, it broke your visitors down by eight categories: job title, industry, seniority, job function, company, company size, location and country.1

Privacy was built in from the start. At launch, MarTech reported that at least 300 LinkedIn users had to visit a page or group of pages before LinkedIn would report anything, and that the report showed percentages rather than raw numbers.1

In late 2023 LinkedIn changed its help page to say: "As of November 30th, our current Website Demographics page in Campaign Manager is no longer available. We recommend exploring your Audience Insights and your Demographics information for your ad accounts, campaign groups, campaigns, and ads."2 A LinkedIn ads specialist writing on 4 December 2023 confirmed the date as 30 November 2023 and walked through the replacement.3

What replaced Website Demographics?

Audience Insights. In Campaign Manager you go to Plan, then Audiences, choose a Matched Audience (including a website audience built from your Insight Tag) and open its insights.4 LinkedIn's help describes sections for:

  • Summary: an overview of content, location, members and company insights.
  • Content: topics the audience has recently engaged with on LinkedIn.
  • Location: general areas where the audience is located.
  • Members: job-related attributes such as skills and job titles.
  • Companies: where the audience works, "such as company name and size".4

The 300 threshold still applies. LinkedIn says your website audience "must build up to 300 people before a website retargeting ad set can start to deliver or audience insight data will be available", and recommends waiting 90 days to build a strong pool.5 The 2023 walkthrough also noted what was lost: you can no longer choose a custom date range or compare two audiences side by side the way the old report allowed.3

Can LinkedIn tell you which company visited your website yesterday?

No, and it never could. Both the old report and Audience Insights describe an audience in aggregate. LinkedIn's own documentation on data handling explains why: for website retargeting, the Insight Tag sets a cookie, the cookie data is matched to LinkedIn member accounts, direct identifiers are removed within seven days, and "an anonymous segment of matched LinkedIn member accounts" becomes available once it reaches at least 300 member accounts.6

That design has consequences:

  • No per-visit data. You see the shape of an audience, not a list of visits with dates and pages.
  • LinkedIn members only. Visitors are matched against LinkedIn member accounts, so people without one cannot appear.
  • Consent reduces coverage. LinkedIn notes that Matched Audiences may be smaller within the EEA and Switzerland, where it only matches members who opt in.7
  • Small sites may see nothing. Below 300 matched members, there is no insight to show.

So "why is my Website Demographics empty?" usually has one of three answers in 2026: the old report no longer exists, the audience has not reached 300 members, or the Insight Tag is not firing on the pages you selected.

What does LinkedIn's audience data do well?

It is genuinely useful for the job it was designed for. LinkedIn matches on attributes members submit in their own profiles,5 so job titles and seniority are often richer than anything you could infer from web analytics. It costs nothing beyond having a Campaign Manager account and the tag. And it plugs straight into LinkedIn ad targeting: you can create an ad set directly from an audience insights page.4

If you are asking "are we attracting heads of procurement or junior engineers?", LinkedIn's audience insights answer that better than most tools. If you are asking "which companies should sales call this week?", they do not answer it at all.

In most cases, yes. This is general information, not legal advice.

LinkedIn describes the Insight Tag as JavaScript that tracks visits including "the URL, buttons clicked, referrer, IP address, device and browser characteristics (User Agent), and timestamp", and says it powers conversion tracking, retargeting and audience insights.8 Its data documentation says the tag "drops a cookie on your visitors' web browsers".6

The ICO's guidance on storage and access technologies, which sets out how PECR applies, is direct about advertising: "The use of storage and access technologies for the purposes of online advertising is not strictly necessary to provide a service to the user", and "the use of storage and access technologies for online advertising purposes requires consent."9 The ICO adds that this covers measuring the effectiveness of ad campaigns.9

In practice, the Insight Tag belongs in the advertising or marketing category of your cookie banner and should only fire after the visitor accepts. That also means your LinkedIn audience only includes visitors who consented, which is another reason the numbers can be smaller than you expect.

LinkedIn audience insights vs visitor identification vs Scout

The third column is Scout, our product, so you can see how the two approaches come together in one tool.

LinkedIn Audience Insights Typical visitor identification Scout
Granularity Aggregate audience Company per visit Company per visit, with pages and visit history
Timing Once 300 members match Per visit, as it happens Per visit, with Slack and email alerts
Coverage Signed-in LinkedIn members Visits from identifiable company networks The same, with ISP, mobile, VPN and data-centre traffic flagged in the low band
Consent (PECR) Advertising cookie, normally consent Depends on what the tool stores or reads Set out in Scout's privacy notice
Output Job titles, skills, companies Company, pages, visits Company, pages, search queries, a 1 to 99 confidence score and a 0 to 100 lead score
Getting it into your tools Matched Audiences inside LinkedIn Varies by vendor CSV export, HubSpot, and an open API on selected plans

Two rows need a note. Visitor identification works from the network a visit comes from, so it cannot identify people on home broadband, mobile networks or VPNs; Scout flags that traffic and holds it in the low band of its confidence score rather than guessing. And on consent, the answer depends on how the tool is built, so check the provider's documentation. Scout's approach is set out in its privacy notice, and our guide to visitor identification and UK GDPR covers the wider picture.

How to use LinkedIn and visitor identification together

The two tools answer different questions, so the strongest setup uses both.

  1. Keep the Insight Tag, behind consent. Use Audience Insights to understand the professional make-up of your visitors and to shape ad targeting and content.
  2. Add per-visit company identification. Use it to see which organisations visited, what they read and how often they came back, so sales can prioritise.
  3. Feed identified companies back into LinkedIn. LinkedIn lets you upload a company list as a Matched Audience. The list needs at least 300 rows to upload, can hold up to 300,000 companies, and must match at least 300 member accounts before an ad set can use it; LinkedIn recommends 1,000 or more companies.10 Export your highest-scoring identified companies (Scout supports CSV export), add their websites for better matching, and upload.
  4. Run account-based ads at the companies already researching you. The people seeing your ads work at organisations that have shown interest, which usually beats cold targeting.

Company lists expire if they are not used in an active or draft ad set within 90 days, so refresh them on a schedule.10

For the free and paid options in one place, see how to see which companies visit your website.

Keep the Insight Tag, add per-visit identification

LinkedIn tells you what kind of people visit. Scout tells you which companies visited, which pages they read and how confident the match is, with a score from 1 to 99 and a one-line reason. Plans are measured in identified visits per month; see pricing. Start a 14-day free trial with no card and see the companies behind your traffic.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my LinkedIn Website Demographics report empty?

The standalone Website Demographics page was retired on 30 November 2023, so there is no report to fill. For the Audience Insights replacement, your website audience must reach 300 matched members, and the Insight Tag must be firing on the pages you selected, which usually means after cookie consent.

Is LinkedIn's data more accurate than IP matching?

They measure different things. LinkedIn uses attributes members give in their own profiles, so job titles can be rich, but only for consenting, matched members and only in aggregate. IP-based identification names the company per visit but cannot identify home, mobile or VPN traffic, which a good tool flags rather than guesses.

Can I export the companies from LinkedIn's audience insights?

LinkedIn's help describes viewing insights and creating ad sets from them, not exporting a list of visiting companies. The data is presented as an anonymous, aggregate segment. The reverse direction works: you can upload a company list to LinkedIn as a Matched Audience.

How big must a LinkedIn company list be?

LinkedIn's help says the list needs at least 300 rows to upload and can hold up to 300,000 companies. It must match at least 300 member accounts before an ad set can use it, and LinkedIn recommends 1,000 or more companies.

Sources

  1. MarTech: LinkedIn's Website Demographics lets brands analyze site visitors using LinkedIn data martech.org
  2. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: LinkedIn Website Demographics (archived April 2024) web.archive.org
  3. B2Linked: The Repurposing of LinkedIn Ads' Website Demographics Feature b2linked.com
  4. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: Access insights about your audiences in Campaign Manager linkedin.com
  5. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: Check the status of your website audience in Campaign Manager linkedin.com
  6. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: Data collection and storage for LinkedIn Matched Audiences linkedin.com
  7. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: Retargeting with Matched Audiences linkedin.com
  8. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Insight Tag business.linkedin.com
  9. ICO: How do the rules apply to online advertising? ico.org.uk
  10. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help: Company list targeting in Campaign Manager linkedin.com