LinkedIn has finally launched their own global display network, which will take advantage of their massive user base, and the detailed information they collect. Like Facebook and Google, LinkedIn has been able to collect a lot of data about users over the years. In many ways, they have some of the most valuable data since it is about user’s work history, job titles and things of that nature.
As part of their strategy to ‘build a $1 billion business-to-business’ revenue stream, they are finally going to be putting that data to good use. They partnered with AppNexus to begin displaying ads using their data on LinkedIn as well as apps and about 2500 other business-focused websites. This was largely made possible because of the purchase of marketing platform Bizo (for $175 Million) last year.
In addition to strictly displaying ads, LinkedIn will be offering a service known as ‘LinkedIn Lead Accelerator’ that places a single pixel on a website to help identify LinkedIn users. This will then provide the website owners with extensive information about the users who visit their sites. They claim that website owners only really know about 5% of the total available data for their users, and this program will help to change that by filling in the gaps with details gathered by LinkedIn.
At this point, the service is only for large websites that have at least 20,000 visitors per month. There is not, however, a minimum ad spend in place, so as long as you have the traffic, you can sign up and see if it is a good program for you.
For the most part, however, this is not as ‘self-service’ as most other networks. LinkedIn wants to work directly with new sites to help them to get the most out of the service. In fact, they will typically send out a LinkedIn ad specialist to the offices of a site so they can help develop the strategy. While more difficult and time consuming, this will likely help to improve the overall results of any ad campaigns run on the LinkedIn ad network.
This is just the first step for LinkedIn. They are really making a strong push toward capitalizing on the already very successful social network they have. It will be important for all marketers to keep up to date on the efforts LinkedIn is making.
