LinkedIn’s adding some new ad formats to help marketers connect with its 930 million members, as well as its expanded Audience Network in new ways.
First off, LinkedIn’s adding pre and mid-roll video ads in Audience Network videos, providing more ways to maximize your exposure across its display surfaces.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“To support a full-funnel experience, marketers can tap into In-Stream Video ads to scale their campaign reach and connect with professional audiences across our network of publishers. These ads, which will appear on mobile or desktop apps and sites, will play at the beginning (pre-roll) and middle (mid-roll) of long-form video content on trusted publisher sites across the LinkedIn Audience Network.”
LinkedIn has offered in-feed video ads for some time, but now, it will also give you more ways to expand your video content reach via longer content as it plays on partner sites. Using LinkedIn’s Audience Network targeting, that could provide another way to boost brand exposure to relevant audiences as they browse online.
LinkedIn’s also making its Conversation Ads and Thought Leader Ads more widely available (from July).
As you can see in this example, LinkedIn’s Conversation Ads prompt users to start a chat with you direct from an ad.
That’ll be further enhanced with the addition of company page messaging, which LinkedIn also announced today, enabling brands to guide interested users into a DM chat direct from a Promoted post.
Thought Leader Ads, meanwhile, enable businesses to promote content from verified employees of their organization in the app, which can help to showcase industry expertise, while also adding another angle to your promotions via more direct human connection.
LinkedIn’s also adding Audience Insights to its API, which will enable third party agencies to use LinkedIn insights to provide more insights into campaign performance and reach.
In combination, the new tools will provide a range of new ways to reach LinkedIn’s expanded audience, and maximize your promotions, in alignment with usage trends.
Conversation Ads, in particular, could have a lot more value with page messaging, but each will have relative appeal based on your approach.