LinkedIn Corp. is out to make ad-buying easier and faster for advertisers trying to reach its 433 million users worldwide.
The social media company, recognizing that ad buyers want faster and more efficient ways to purchase online ads, last week began letting advertisers use automated “programmatic” software systems to buy and manage display ads on LinkedIn.
“It is our mission to help you fulfill your goals by making it easier than ever to reach the professional audiences that matter to you,” Russell Glass, head of products, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, said in a June 28 LinkedIn blog, adding: “You can now work with your preferred buying platform to buy highly visible ads that help you reach and engage the right buyers and build your brand in the premium context of LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn is offering advertisers multiple options for purchasing and managing its Display Ads, which appear on the right side of LinkedIn pages.
Under the new programmatic buying method, advertisers can purchase Display Ads either through an open auction available to all advertisers and website publishers, using such ad exchange operators as Google, Yahoo, OpenX, AppNexus and The Rubicon Project; or through a LinkedIn Private Auction, which is limited to ads only available on LinkedIn.
Both the open auctions and the LinkedIn private auctions let advertisers set up automated bids for display ads. As a LinkedIn visitor calls up LinkedIn web pages, for example, ads will appear from the advertisers who placed the highest bid. Advertisers can choose to have their ads appear for particular types of visitors, such as according to job title or business category, or for particular individuals, such as those who have previously clicked an advertiser’s ad.
The LinkedIn Private Auctions include such advantages as the abilities to run targeted ads on the LinkedIn home page and to targeted groups of LinkedIn users according to LinkedIn’s prepared audience segments.
Advertisers also can continue to purchase and manage display ads through what LinkedIn calls its “managed buying” system, through which advertisers purchase ads directly from a LinkedIn sales representative. This option caters to advertisers who prefer to set up contracts based on a guaranteed number of ad impressions and fixed pricing based on CPM, or cost per thousand impressions.
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