LinkedIn has announced the launch of its new ‘LinkedIn Audience Network’ feature, which allows marketers to place sponsored ad content on third-party publishing sites.
The professional social network listed MSN.com and Outlook.com as two examples of websites that will be included in the initiative, but added it will regularly vet partner publishers, giving marketers full control over which website their ads will appear on.
In addition to this, advertisers will also have the ability to block IAB categories and upload their own custom block lists, making for even greater levels of personalised advertising.
The beta version of the feature – which was rolled out to 6000 LinkedIn advertisers – yielded some impressive results, including a 3-13% increase in unique impressions for testers, and up to an 80% increase in unique clicks.
Advertising reach will now extend beyond LinkedIn
Tom Pepper, director – head of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions UK, commented: “Accessing the audiences that matter most is always a tough challenge for marketers. With the LinkedIn Audience Network, marketers can now reach professionals at an even greater scale wherever they spend time, on premium publishers across mobile and desktop.
“This will extend the reach of their campaigns beyond LinkedIn to help deliver on budgets more easily and ultimately help more businesses thrive.”
LinkedIn has released a number of new updates to its platform recently, most notably introducing the capability for users to upload native video to their social newsfeed via LinkedIn’s mobile app.
Earlier this year it also launched lead generation forms for sponsored posts, a feature that automatically populates an in-app form with a user’s LinkedIn profile information when they interact with a sponsored ad.
According to a recent study from Hootsuite, LinkedIn has 106 million active global monthly users, some way behind rivals Twitter (328 million), Instagram (700 million), and Facebook (2.7 billion).
