Audience integrations: LinkedIn

Export Piano Audience segments to LinkedIn as Matched Audiences for ad targeting and retargeting on the LinkedIn advertising platform.

Overview

With the LinkedIn Matched Audiences integration, you can share a Piano Audience segment with your LinkedIn advertising account. Piano exports the users belonging to a segment — matched using hashed email addresses — to LinkedIn, where they become a targetable Matched Audience in Campaign Manager. You can then use that audience for retargeting and campaign targeting on LinkedIn.

Server-side integration

This is a server-side connection. Piano Audience sends segment memberships (user identifiers) directly to LinkedIn's DMP Segment API — it does not rely on a client-side tag, and LinkedIn does not support passing third-party segment IDs through the LinkedIn Insight Tag or any browser pixel. All matching happens server-side.

How it works

1. You create and manage your audience segments in Piano Audience.

2. Piano exports the users in a selected segment, sending the user identifiers to LinkedIn's DMP Segment API.

3. LinkedIn matches those identifiers against LinkedIn member profiles.

4. Matched members become a Matched Audience available in your LinkedIn Campaign Manager account.

5. You use the audience for targeting or retargeting in your LinkedIn ad campaigns.

Prerequisites

• An active LinkedIn advertising account (Ad Account) in LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

• A completed Piano Audience setup with at least one available siteGroupId.

• OAuth application credentials for LinkedIn (Client ID, Client secret) and valid tokens (Refresh token, Access token) with the required advertising permissions.

• Segments in Piano Audience whose users can be matched by LinkedIn (see Supported identifiers). Email is the primary identifier — segments made up solely of anonymous users cannot be matched.

Supported identifiers

The connector matches the users you export against LinkedIn member profiles using the following identifiers:

Ingesting the hashed email into Piano Audience

For the connector to export a hashed email for a user, that identifier must first exist on the user's profile in Piano Audience. There are two ways to ingest the required hashed email identifier. Choose whichever fits your data setup — you do not need to use both.

Option 1 — User profile data import (recommended)

Use the User profile data import to attach the hashed email to existing user profiles in bulk, without any additional client-side code.

The import maps an identifier you already store against Piano's user ID and adds the hashed email as an additional identifier on the profile. In practice you provide:

• Row 1 — a mapping key: your existing cookie ID or the external ID under your configured prefix, so Piano can locate the correct user profile.

• Row 2 — the hashed email (SHA256): the additional identifier to be stored on that profile and later exported to LinkedIn.

This approach is ideal when you already hold the mapping between your user identifiers and the (hashed) email in your own systems, because it avoids the need for another client-side ID sync.

Option 2 — Client-side external user identifiers

Alternatively, you can supply the hashed email at collection time using External user identifiers in the event data collected on your site. This attaches the additional identifier to the user's profile client-side as events are collected.

Configuring Piano Audience

Create a configuration

Select your site group. Go to Connectivity → Configurations → Direct Connections, hover over the LinkedIn logo, and click Configure to open the New Connection panel.

Configure the connection

In the Configure connection panel, provide the data required to establish the connection:

Once the fields are completed, click Test connection. A request is sent to LinkedIn and, if the credentials and account are authorized correctly, you'll receive a confirmation and the Create button (top right) will activate. Click it. Create then becomes Save, which you can use at any time during further configuration.

If the test connection fails, verify your Client ID, Client secret, and tokens are valid and not expired, and that the Ad account ID is correct and authorized. If the issue persists, contact your Piano Account Manager.

Configure segments

A successful test connection enables the Configure segments form, where you can choose:

• All full usage segments — all active (Full usage) segments are sent to LinkedIn; any newly created Full usage segment is added automatically.

• All segments — includes both Full usage and Reporting only segments.

• Specific segments — select individual segments. Newly created segments are not added automatically. You can select:

  • Separate segments — search and pick segments one by one.

  • By labels — select one or more labels (key-value pairs); Audience finds and exports matching segments.

  • By segment groups — select one or more segment groups; Audience exports the segments within them.

Export segments

Click Export now in the Configure segments section to push the selected segments immediately, without waiting for the next scheduled transfer. Alternatively, configure a scheduled transfer in the Activate section below — turn the connection on for a daily transfer, or leave it off to save the configuration without activating it yet.

When ready, click Create (or Save, if editing) in the top right corner of the page.

When will my audience appear in LinkedIn?

After the first export, LinkedIn needs time to match your users against member profiles.

A segment moves through the following states in LinkedIn: BUILDING → READY. Once READY, the audience can be used in campaigns. Refreshing a segment moves it to UPDATING and back to READY.

Segment lifecycle in LinkedIn

• Archival: a segment not used in a draft or active campaign for 30 days is archived.

• Expiry: a segment inactive for 90 days is expired, and its data is purged in line with GDPR requirements.

• To reactivate an expired segment, run a new export to it.

Monitoring and updates

Configured connections can be viewed and edited in the Connections tab, and are also available under Match rate reporting. Data is normally exported once a day. The Export now button lets you push segment updates immediately.

Related articles

• List of Audience Connections

• Audience Integrations: Google Ads

• Audience Integrations: Facebook

• LinkedIn Matched Audiences (official documentation)

LinkedIn user IDs linking

The LinkedIn integration enables linking of LinkedIn user IDs with Piano user IDs and can later be used for audience segments, reporting and targeting.

1. For you to get the LinkedIn user ID of the current user, that user must log in to LinkedIn from the current page. This only needs to happen once (more info).

2. Create a prefix to link the LinkedIn ID to it, e.g. 'lnk' (more info).

3. Create a persisted query for /profile/user/external/link/update where you lock down the "type" to be your prefix and make "id" and "cxid" mutable (more info).

4. (Optionally) The LinkedIn ID can be one-way hashed to remove the possibility of later getting a LinkedIn user from a Piano user ID.

5. Add the below tag anywhere on the page (preferably earlier in the file to make sure that it is loaded before the user navigates somewhere else):

<!-- Piano LinkedIn user linking script begin -->
<script type="text/javascript">
    window.cX = window.cX || {}; cX.callQueue = cX.callQueue || [];
    cX.callQueue.push(['invoke', function() {
        var intervalId = setInterval(function() {
            if (window.IN && IN.User && typeof IN.User.isAuthorized === 'function' && IN.User.isAuthorized()) {
                clearInterval(intervalId);
 
                // Read the LinkedIn user ID
                var linkedInUserId = IN.User.getMemberId();
 
                // Map the LinkedIn user ID to the Cxense user ID
                var persistedQueryId = '<PERSISTED-QUERY-ID>'; // <-- TODO: Insert persisted query id here
                var apiUrl = 'https://api.cxense.com/profile/user/external/link/update?callback={{callback}}'
                    + '&persisted=' + encodeURIComponent(persistedQueryId)
                    + '&json=' + encodeURIComponent(cX.JSON.stringify({ id: linkedInUserId, cxid: cX.getUserId() }));
                cX.jsonpRequest(apiUrl, function (data) { /* If wanted, verify success here*/ });
            }
        }, 1000);
    }]);
    // Async load cx.js
    (function(d,s,e,t){e=d.createElement(s);e.type='text/java'+s;e.async='async';
        e.src='http'+('https:'===location.protocol?'s://s':'://')+'cdn.cxense.com/cx.js';
        t=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];t.parentNode.insertBefore(e,t);})(document,'script');
</script>
<!-- Piano LinkedIn user linking script end -->

Last updated: July 21, 2026