13.4 Account Padding

Account Padding (Experimental Feature)

Ensure your campaigns never miss delivery - even for smaller, high-intent accounts.

Overview

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Account Padding is an AI-based optional feature in Recotap that helps your campaigns meet LinkedIn’s minimum audience size requirement (300 members) by temporarily adding irrelevant/dummy AI-generated dummy accounts.

This ensures your 1:1 or 1:Many ABM campaigns always go live and deliver impressions - even if your real target accounts are small, niche, or have limited LinkedIn reach.

It’s especially helpful for 1:1 campaigns that use Ad Personalisation and Smart Pages, where each campaign runs for a single high-value account and audience limitations are more common.

Why It’s Useful

LinkedIn mandates a minimum audience size of 300 members for any campaign to deliver.

Smaller or highly specific B2B accounts, especially those with fewer employees or niche roles, often fail to meet this limit.

Instead of leaving those campaigns paused or incomplete, Account Padding provides a technical workaround to keep them live without manual list expansion.

Key Benefits

✅ Ensures campaign launch and delivery even with small audiences.

🎯 Keeps Ad Personalisation and Smart Page experiences active for all high-intent accounts.

💡 Prevents wasted budget from paused or non-delivering campaigns.

🔄 Maintains consistency across all target accounts in the campaign.

📊 Keeps reporting clean - dummy accounts don’t appear in reports as they don’t generate engagement.

How It Works

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Account Padding is optional and must be manually enabled during campaign setup. It is not auto-activated by default.

When turned on, Recotap supplements your audience with irrelevant AI-generated dummy accounts (not ICP or lookalike matches) to help your campaign reach the 300-member minimum threshold required by LinkedIn.

This feature works for both 1:1 and 1:Many ABM campaign types, though it is most commonly used in 1:1 campaigns, where each target account runs as a standalone LinkedIn campaign.

Step-by-Step Workflow

Step	Action
1. Campaign Setup	During campaign creation, you’ll see a checkbox for “Enable Account Padding.” It’s unchecked by default and can be manually enabled.
2. Audience Validation	Recotap checks if the target account(s) have at least 300 reachable members on LinkedIn — LinkedIn’s mandatory minimum for ad delivery.
3. AI Padding (If Enabled)	If the audience falls short, Recotap adds irrelevant dummy accounts purely to expand audience size — not to influence engagement or targeting.
4. Campaign Launch	Once the 300-member threshold is met, the campaign becomes eligible to launch and starts delivering impressions. Without padding, such campaigns would fail to go live.
5. Impression Distribution	80–90% of impressions are served to your real target accounts, while 10–20% may go to dummy accounts for audience eligibility.
6. Reporting Transparency	Since dummy accounts rarely meet LinkedIn’s reporting criteria (≥3 impressions or 3 clicks), they don’t appear in account-level reports and have no impact on engagement metrics.

Example: Launching 1:1 Campaign with Ad Personalisation & Smart Pages

Scenario

You’re running a 1:1 ABM campaign for a set of high-intent but small accounts - each campaign includes:

Personalised ads (with the account’s name, logo, and tailored messaging).

A Smart Page for each account, showing custom sections like “Welcome,” “Case Studies,” and “Blogs.”

After launch, several smaller accounts fail to go live because their LinkedIn audience is below 300 members.

Without Account Padding

Campaigns remain paused or fail to launch for smaller companies.

Personalised ads and Smart Pages for a few/all accounts never go live.

Budget gets stuck, and performance data remains incomplete.

With Account Padding Enabled

You check “Enable Account Padding” during campaign setup.

Recotap adds irrelevant dummy accounts to help meet LinkedIn’s 300-member threshold.

Campaigns launch successfully, allowing your personalised ads and Smart Pages to go live for all high-intent accounts.

While 10–20% of impressions serve dummy accounts, the remaining 80–90% focus on your primary accounts.

Dummy accounts don’t engage, don’t appear in reports, and don’t impact metrics.

Impact at a Glance

Area	Without Padding	With Padding
Campaign Launch	Fails for small accounts	Always successful
Ad Delivery	Limited or paused	Full, consistent delivery
Smart Page Reach	Gaps for smaller accounts	All accounts covered
Reporting Accuracy	Incomplete	Clean and accurate
Engagement	Only for large accounts	Authentic (dummy excluded)

Key Takeaways

Account Padding ensures delivery, not engagement.

It’s an optional safety net for campaigns with limited audience reach.

Works best for 1:1 campaigns with Ad Personalisation and Smart Pages.

Keeps reporting clean, budgets utilized, and personalisation active, even when LinkedIn audience rules create friction.