Why Doesn't the Company Follower Count in My Report Match the LinkedIn Company Page?

Overview

You may occasionally notice that the audience size returned in a Digital Intelligence for LinkedIn report does not exactly match the follower count displayed on a company's LinkedIn Page. For example, a LinkedIn Company Page may display 5,000 followers, while the report returns an audience size of 3,300 followers.

Although this may appear to be a discrepancy, this behavior is expected and is a result of how LinkedIn's Advertising APIs calculate audience size.

Why Do the Numbers Differ?

Digital Intelligence for LinkedIn uses LinkedIn's Advertising APIs to retrieve audience information when building reports. These APIs are designed to estimate the size of an advertising audience rather than provide an exact count of Company Page followers.

According to LinkedIn's documentation, the audience count returned by the Advertising API is intended to estimate targeting reach and is provided as a rounded approximation. The amount of rounding varies depending on the size of the audience segment being queried. Because of this, the audience size returned through the API may not exactly match the public follower count displayed on a LinkedIn Company Page.

This means it is completely normal to see differences between the follower count shown on LinkedIn and the audience size used to generate your report.

Example:

Suppose you create a report using the following audience definition:

Location: Global

Audience: Followers of a LinkedIn Company Page

If the LinkedIn Company Page displays 5,000 followers, Digital Intelligence for LinkedIn may return an estimated audience of 3,300 followers. While these numbers are different, both values are expected because they represent different measurements.

The LinkedIn Company Page displays the page's public follower count, whereas the Advertising API returns an estimated targetable audience for advertising and audience analysis.

How Does LinkedIn Calculate Audience Counts?

LinkedIn's Advertising APIs are designed to support audience targeting for advertising campaigns.

For privacy and performance reasons, LinkedIn returns an estimated audience size instead of an exact member count.

LinkedIn's documentation states that:

• Audience counts are intended to estimate advertising reach.
• Counts are returned as rounded approximations.
• The degree of approximation depends on the size of the audience segment.

This means that differences between the reported audience size and the public follower count are expected.

Does This Affect My Report?

No. The audience size returned by LinkedIn is still the official value provided through their Advertising API and is intended to support audience targeting and analysis.

Although the reported audience size is an estimate, it does not indicate a problem with your report. The insights generated by Digital Intelligence for LinkedIn are based on the audience returned by LinkedIn and remain valid for analysis and comparison.

Additional Information

Because LinkedIn controls how audience sizes are calculated within its Advertising API, Audiense cannot modify or override the values that are returned. If LinkedIn updates how audience estimates are calculated in the future, those changes will automatically be reflected in Digital Intelligence for LinkedIn.

For more information about how LinkedIn calculates audience counts, refer to the official LinkedIn Marketing API documentation on Audience Counts.