Understanding match rates & audience size
In this article
In this article group
- How enrichment works
- Recommended audience sizes by platform
- Enrichment & data FAQ
- Reading your audience: data strength and field coverage
- Contact and company profiles
- Setting your ICP and reading wasted spend
- Getting started with LinkedIn Ad Analytics
- The LinkedIn Companies report
- Campaigns and Creatives reports
- Pipeline analysis: LinkedIn's influence on your deals
- Records: every contact and company in your account
A match rate tells you how many people from your audience an ad platform could find in its own user base. The number that matters most is the matched audience size, not the percentage.
Company count is not a match rate
On the Audiences page, the Records column shows how many contacts an audience holds and how many unique companies they work at. A small company number doesn't mean few people matched. It's how many different companies your contacts belong to.
A match rate only exists after you sync the audience to an ad platform. Until then, it shows Not available.
Where to see match estimates in ContactLevel
Open the audience and click Syncs (top right). The Destinations tab shows an Est. match rate for each platform, for example "0% · 0 estimated matches", or "Not available" before the first sync.
Match estimates update after the ad platform processes your audience. Right after a sync, it's normal to see 0% for a while.
Why records sent is higher than your contact count
The Run history tab in the Syncs window shows how many records each sync sent. That number is often higher than the number of contacts in the audience.
That's on purpose. We send one row per identifier for each person: their emails, phones and device IDs. Each extra row is another chance for the platform to find them. A 35-contact audience can send 70 records or more.
Why the platform's percentage can look low
Many ad platforms calculate match rate as matched rows divided by rows sent. Because we send several rows per person, the percentage can look modest even when nearly everyone was found.
So compare two numbers instead:
The number of contacts in your ContactLevel audience.
The matched audience size the ad platform reports.
Why the platform audience can be bigger than yours
Sometimes the ad platform reports more people than your audience holds. For example, 500 contacts in ContactLevel can show as 1,500 on LinkedIn. This is expected.
Several identifiers per person: the platform may match the same person more than once through different emails, phones or device IDs.
Several accounts per person on LinkedIn: some people have more than one LinkedIn account, or several current positions on their profile.
Several surfaces on Meta: one person can have separate Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts, and each counts in the audience size.
To see true unique reach, check the Reach metric in your ad platform's campaign reporting.
Data strength and match rates
Each contact's data strength (0 to 5 bars) shows how much advertising data we found. More bars means more identifiers to send, which means a better chance of a match. An audience where most contacts have 3 bars or more is in good shape.
Typical match rates by platform
| Platform | Native CSV upload | With ContactLevel |
|---|---|---|
| ~50% | 80–99% | |
| Meta (Facebook/Instagram) | ~20% | 60–80% |
| Google Ads | ~2% | 60–70% |
| ~2% | 50–70% | |
| X | ~10% | 50–70% |
Uploading work emails straight to a platform gives it one to three data points per person. Most people don't use their work email on social platforms, so few are found. Enrichment adds the personal identifiers people actually sign up with.
If your matches are low
Wait for processing. Platforms can take 24 to 72 hours to finish matching.
Check the platform minimum. LinkedIn needs at least 300 matched members before an audience serves, Meta 100 and Google 1,000. Below the minimum you'll see 0% or 0 estimated matches.
Look at data strength. If many contacts have few bars, re-import them with a Full Contact Import.
Run the sync again. Open Syncs and click Run next to the platform to push the latest data. Re-syncing doesn't cost credits.