Tag Archive for: LinkedIn advertising

LinkedIn to Test Targeted Ads During Streaming Content

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Would you like to be able to run video ads on streaming services that specifically target LinkedIn users? The social network is testing a new ad product that allows advertisers to reach LinkedIn’s 930 million users as they watch TV or movies at home. 

In a statement to Reuters, the Vice President of Marketing Solutions for LinkedIn, Penry Price, said: “In-stream video ads can change the way brands and buyers reach and engage their audiences.”

The new ad format comes following reports that the company’s ad platform is already up in sales by 8% year-on-year and is looking to further grow its advertising profits.

The new format could also be a boon for advertisers looking to increase their ROI by reaching their audiences with ads while they are most receptive. 

LinkedIn’s ad growth has been a bit of a surprise because it comes at a time when other ad platforms are being hit by falling ad budgets and an overall uncertain economy. Meanwhile, the social network’s ad platform continues to drive revenue from ad sales and subscriptions for recruiters, professionals, and B2B salespeople. 

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New LinkedIn Ads Study Finds What Makes The Most Effective Ads

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If you’ve ever wanted to know the secret to get the best response on LinkedIn Ads, Vidmob’s recently released report on global advertising trends on the platform may be exactly what you’re looking for. 

The report breaks down every element of LinkedIn ads to show which visual elements, text, and creative strategies performed the best on the platform for driving B2B engagement. 

The findings come from over 800 million ad impressions tracked by brands paying for video ad campaigns on LinkedIn within North America and the EMEA region (Africa, Europe, and the Middle East). 

What Elements are Most Effective?

The report says video ads containing the following elements performed better than those that did not:

  • Videos that display messaging in the first quarter of the video saw a 149% boost in views through the first 25% of the ad.
  • Ads that are 7-15 seconds long received a 54% lift in engagement rates.
  • Videos with high text contrast saw a 102% lift in views through the first 25%.
  • Videos featuring a person within the first quarter received a 175% increase to views through the opening 25%
  • Ads that include the phrase “Get a Quote” received 33% higher click-through rates.
  • When ads show a brand logo within the first 2 seconds, they see a 17% increase to click-through rates.

Key Takeaways

From all the data and findings, Vidmob has made 5 key points advertisers should be aware of:

Video: “While short and sweet is the usual go-to for video length, for awareness plays in the tech industry, audiences are engaged with mid-length content too.”

Color: “Don’t shy away from bright hues in upper funnel assets.”

Terminology: “Make use of Tech industry jargon and relevant imagery in creative assets, such as ‘Data,’ ‘Leader,’ ‘Expert,’ and ‘Demand.’”

Functional Benefits: “Focus on functional benefits and how the products or solutions can add efficiencies for the audience.”

Branding: “Make sure some reference to the brand appears upfront in the first 3 sec of the creative.”

For more interesting findings about the best elements to use at each stage of the customer awareness journey, download the full report from Vidmob here.

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LinkedIn Previews 2023’s Upcoming Features and Updates

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To kick off 2023, Linkedin is giving a preview of the upcoming features it is working on. Along with updates to the platform’s job search systems, the company revealed it is prioritizing making content more accessible, new ways to find B2B products and services, better analytics, and more. 

Let’s explore all 7 of the new features LinkedIn revealed:

1. Improving Accessibility for Video Content

To help content creators make their videos more accessible, LinkedIn will start automatically generating captions for all videos on the platform. Currently only available for English users, creators can edit these captions or upload manually generated captions when uploading videos. 

Additionally, LinkedIn is adding a high contract mode on the LinkedIn app to make videos and other content easier to see for those with difficulty seeing. 

2. Standardized Accessibility Job Titles

LinkedIn is making it easier for those working in accessibility to find job opportunities and connections by providing a set of standardized job titles for use across the platform. 

3. Alt Text In Campaign Manager

Another feature intended to make visual content more accessible, LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager has added the ability for advertisers to add alt-text descriptions to images in ads. 

4. Personalized Job Collections 

According to LinkedIn’s research, more people are casually looking for job opportunities than ever – particularly with the goal of finding a position that better aligns with their values and interests. 

With this in mind, LinkedIn is creating personalized job collections to help users find opportunities without conducting specific searches. 

5. Improvements to B2B Product Search

To make it easier to search and filter through the nearly 90,000 B2B available across LinkedIn, the platform is adding new category filters and ways to share information with prospects 

Along with updates to the B2B product search engine, the company is improving Product Pages to better showcase the benefits and unique features of B2B products.

6. Post Scheduling

After years of pleas from users, LinkedIn is finally letting creators schedule posts ahead of time. 

Users will begin seeing a “schedule” button directly next to the “Post” button when preparing a post. If selected, the icon will let you select exactly when you want your content to go live. 

7. Improvements to Analytics

Lastly, LinkedIn is updating its analytics dashboard for creators to include more relevant data like audience insights and top-performing content. 

The company says highlighting these specific types of data will help brands understand their overall growth and performance at a glance.

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LinkedIn Launches New Event Ads and “Boosted” Organic Posts

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LinkedIn is expanding its advertising options for brands and entrepreneurs on the platform with new Event Ads and the ability to “Boost” organic posts from your brand’s page.

As the company said in this week’s announcement:

“We’re announcing new features to make your marketing life a little easier — helping you seamlessly reach more of your target audience and grow your brand community all while measuring impact each step of the way.”

LinkedIn Event Ads

Now that social distancing is coming to an end, many are eager to finally put on a big event for their brand. 

To help make your next in-person (or digital) event a smash hit, LinkedIn is introducing a new ad format which can appear in users’ feeds. Event ads include all the important details potential attendees may want to know, including the date, time, how to register, and if any mutual connections are also planning to attend. 

Along with this new ad format, the company is rolling out an Event Analytics tool that offers info on attendee/visitor engagement with your Event posts, your total number of attendees, unique event visits, the top jobs of attendees, and the peak number of viewers on livestreams. 

“Boost” Your LinkedIn Posts

Have you ever had a post that went over so well you wish you could re-run it to an even wider audience? 

Now you can, with the ability to “Boost” your post as an ad. Directly from your LinkedIn page, you can quickly turn an existing organic post into an ad for your brand which will run to a larger audience.

Simply click the Boost button underneath the post you want to promote, and select the objective for the post from this list:

  • Website visits
  • Post awareness
  • Event awareness
  • Post engagement
  • Video views

From there, you’ll be asked to choose how LinkedIn targets your ad based on either your profile, specific interests, or a LinkedIn audience template, along with some other basic targeting information. 

Lastly, you’ll be able to set your budget for the ad and how long you run, before you publish your Boosted post. 

Currently, the feature does have some significant limitations. Only events or posts with a single image can be boosted for now, and posts can only be boosted once. Other post formats, such as polls, documents, job listings, or Pulse articles are not eligible for boosting. 

The Takeaway

Though basic, these new features make it easy for small brands to test the waters with promoting their events and contents across the business-focused platform. Additionally, LinkedIn suggests this approach could help save money on advertising events, as 40% of beta customers saw their cost per registration decrease when testing the new ad format.

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LinkedIn begins showing all your ads from the last 6 months in one place

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LinkedIn will begin showing all the sponsored content an advertiser has run within the past six months in an “Ads” tab on the associated LinkedIn pages.

The company announced the change this week as part of an effort to bring more transparency to advertising across the platform:

“At LinkedIn, we are committed to providing a safe, trusted, and professional environment where members can connect with each other, engage with relevant content, and grow their careers. Increased transparency to both our customers and members is critical to creating this trusted environment.”

When viewing an advertiser’s page, users will be able to click the “Ads” tab to view every ad that company has run in the past six months.

Users can also click on the ads as they typically would, but the advertiser will not be charged, nor will it impact campaign reporting.

Obviously, the tab won’t include any of the information behind the ads, like who they targeted or the budget for that campaign.

In my eyes, this seems like a reason to ensure your LinkedIn advertising is consistently high-quality, with the upside that high-performing ads have a chance to lead to sales without having to pay for those ad clicks.

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LinkedIn’s new ad targeting options allow you to target your ideal customer

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LinkedIn is expanding its ad targeting options to allow advertisers the ability to better target their ideal audience.

The professional social platform has launched lookalike audience targeting which allows you to create an ad audience similar to your dream customer.

As the company says in their announcement:

“LinkedIn’s lookalike audiences combine the traits of your ideal customer with our rich member and company data to help you market to new professional audiences similar to your existing customers, website visitors and target accounts.”

Specifically, the company highlights a few ways lookalike audience targeting can help businesses improve their advertising:

  • Reach high-converting audiences: Discover audiences similar to those who are already interested in your business.
  • Get results at scale: Extend the reach of your campaigns to more qualified prospects.
  • Engage new target accounts: Target your ads to additional companies you may not have previously considered. These companies match a similar company profile to your ideal customer.

In testing, LinkedIn says lookalike audience targeting led to a 5-10x increase in campaign reach without sacrificing ad performance.

At the same time it announced the launch of these new targeting options, LinkedIn also revealed a few other improvements to their ad platform:

Interest Targeting

While interest targeting has been available on LinkedIn since January, the company says it is now increasing the targeting capabilities of the feature.

Through a partnership with Microsoft, LinkedIn will now allow advertisers to target users based on not only their LinkedIn profile information but through the professional topics and content they engage with on Bing.

Audience Templates

LinkedIn has also created some new features specifically aimed at new advertisers. Audience templates provide advertisers with a selection of more than 20 premade B2B audiences. This way, you can start targeting your ideal audience without having extensive knowledge of ad targeting.

The templates cover a range of characteristics, from users skills, job titles, groups, and more.

In the announcement, LinkedIn says the new features will all be rolling out over the next two weeks.

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LinkedIn introduces new interest targeting options for advertisers

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LinkedIn is working to make itself a worthwhile advertising platform for brands, and that includes launching new targeting options for advertisers.

Starting over the next week, advertisers will be able to target ads on LinkedIn based on users’ professional interests and behavior.

As the company says in their announcement:

“We’re excited to announce interest targeting in Campaign Manager. Interest targeting lets you reach members with relevant ads that match their professional interests — based on the content they share and engage with on LinkedIn. With these added options, you can more easily achieve your campaign objectives and grow your business.”

You can target your ads based on over 200 categories such as artificial intelligence, global economy, and customer experience.

Specifically, LinkedIn says brands can benefit from Interest Targeting in a few ways:

  • Serve relevant ads and content that match a member’s professional interests. Interest targeting can help you shape brand perception with different professional audiences by associating your brand with the topics that they care about. For example, if you sell Cloud Computing services, you can target members interested in “cloud computing” and create a campaign with Sponsored Content ads that show how your solution is helping business do more with their data.
  • Deepen your influence with the buyer committee within your target accounts. Today, many of our customers use LinkedIn’s powerful account targeting to inform their Account-Based Marketing campaigns. Now you can kick it up a notch by using account targeting along with interest targeting to reach an audience of potential buyers who have already expressed, or are likely to express, an interest in the content that’s relevant to your business.
  • Reach those interested in pursuing a certificate program. You can also use a combination of degrees and interests to reach the audiences who would be a naturally fit for higher education programs.

Interest Targeting is currently rolling out on LinkedIn and is expected to be available to all advertisers within the next week.

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