LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million users worldwide. As a social media platform focused on career networking and job seeking, LinkedIn collects vast amounts of data on its users’ professional profiles, interests, skills, education history, and more.
With access to such a wealthy database of professional information, it’s no surprise that LinkedIn eventually expanded into advertising. LinkedIn launched its self-serve ad platform in 2011 as a way for businesses and organizations to promote content and jobs to LinkedIn users. Since then, LinkedIn’s advertising capabilities have grown tremendously.
But does LinkedIn have a full-fledged ad network? Let’s take a deeper look at how LinkedIn approaches advertising and see if it qualifies as an ad network.
What is an Ad Network?
An online ad network is a company that connects advertisers to website publishers wanting to host ads. The ad network provides the technology to serve ads, track performance, and handle payments.
Here are some key things to know about ad networks:
– Ad networks aggregate ad inventory from many sites and apps. This gives advertisers a large potential reach for their campaigns.
– Publishers join ad networks to easily fill unsold ad space on their sites. This generates revenue from ads.
– Ad networks use data and algorithms to target ads to specific audiences across their network. This improves results for advertisers compared to untargeted ads.
– The ad network handles serving the ads, tracking clicks/conversions, and managing the financial transactions between advertisers and publishers.
– Major ad networks include Google Ads, Facebook Audience Network, Media.net, Taboola, Outbrain, and more.
So in summary, an ad network acts as an intermediary platform between publishers and advertisers. It provides the technology, targeting, and inventory at scale to run ads across many sites.
LinkedIn’s Advertising Options
LinkedIn offers advertisers several ways to reach its audience of professionals:
– **Sponsored Content:** These are LinkedIn’s equivalent of native ads. Advertisers can publish posts in the LinkedIn feed that look similar to regular posts. Sponsored posts appear in the main feed and on profile pages.
– **Sponsored InMail:** This allows sending personalized emails to specific LinkedIn members matching the advertiser’s target audience. Recipients see these as messages in their LinkedIn inbox.
– **Text Ads:** These are targeted text ads that can appear on the side or top of LinkedIn pages. They are similar to Google text ads.
– **Dynamic Ads:** These customize ad content to each viewer based on their profile data. For example, displaying the name of their company in the ad copy.
– **Programmatic Display Ads:** LinkedIn offers programmatic advertising through private auctions. These display ads can use advanced targeting based on B2B data.
In addition, LinkedIn provides detailed targeting options for reaching specific demographics, job titles, companies, interests, skills, and more.
Does LinkedIn Offer an Ad Network?
Based on the above, it’s clear LinkedIn provides a robust advertising platform. But there’s a difference between an ad platform for one site vs. an ad network spanning many sites.
Here are reasons why LinkedIn does not qualify as a full ad network:
– **Limited Inventory:** LinkedIn only displays ads on LinkedIn owned and operated properties. There is no extended network of third-party sites.
– **Not Open Marketplace:** LinkedIn does not operate an open ad exchange where publishers can make inventory available to advertisers.
– **Single Audience:** LinkedIn ads can only target LinkedIn users, not audiences across the web.
– **Self-Service Only:** LinkedIn does not offer managed ad services or custom campaigns across external sites/apps.
– **No Publisher Network:** LinkedIn has no network of publishers who can join and make ad inventory available.
Instead, LinkedIn is more accurately described as a closed self-service advertising platform. The inventory is limited to its own walled garden rather than a vast network.
LinkedIn’s Focus: Native Advertising
LinkedIn’s ad offerings focus heavily on native advertising formats like sponsored content and InMail. This contrasts with traditional display ads like banners.
The goal is to make ads feel less intrusive and blend seamlessly into the normal user experience. LinkedIn wants to maintain the professional nature of its platform.
In fact, over 75% of LinkedIn’s ads revenue comes from native ads rather than display ads. And sponsored content makes up over 40% of total revenue.
This native ad focus stems from LinkedIn’s roots as a social network platform rather than an ad company. User experience is still a bigger priority than maximizing ads.
Partnerships with External Ad Networks
Although LinkedIn does not operate its own ad network, it has partnerships with third-party ad networks to increase advertiser reach.
For example, LinkedIn is integrated with the Google Ads and Microsoft Ads networks. Advertisers using these networks can target their ads to appear on LinkedIn.com also.
But again, this is different than LinkedIn having its own external network. These partnerships simply widen the potential audience for existing LinkedIn ad inventory.
LinkedIn also offers its ad targeting capabilities to some demand-side platforms (DSPs) for programmatic ad buying. But the ads themselves still run within LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content Ad Unit
LinkedIn’s sponsored content is a prime example of its native advertising focus. Here are some key facts about this ad unit:
– Appears in the main LinkedIn feed mixed with regular posts
– Looks visually similar to non-ad posts
– Labelled as “Sponsored”
– Advertiser’s name, logo, and slogan can appear
– 150 characters of headline text
– Image/video can be included
– Full description text below image
– Link to advertiser’s site
– Advertiser pays for each impression
Sponsored content allows advertisers to organically insert promotional posts into the LinkedIn feed. The seamless design aims to capture user attention while scrolling without feeling overly promotional.
Benefits of Sponsored Content
Here are some benefits this native ad format provides:
– Native design blends with normal content
– Feels less intrusive than banner ads
– Leads to higher click-through rates
– Content appears in-feed for timely visibility
– Detailed targeting by job title, industry, etc.
– Pay per impression pricing model
– Ad copy/landing page can be dynamically customized
– Reporting provides impression and engagement metrics
Overall, sponsored content represents LinkedIn’s focus on native advertising that feels relevant to users. The seamless in-feed design and custom targeting provide value for advertisers as well.
Best Practices for Sponsored Content
Here are some best practices for marketers to optimize LinkedIn sponsored content performance:
– Write compelling headlines – this is the main call-to-action
– Craft interesting descriptive ad copy
– Use images/video to draw attention
– Target ads to relevant audiences
– Drive traffic to customized landing pages
– Rotate multiple ads for testing
– Monitor performance and optimize accordingly
– Watch impression share metrics to ensure adequate reach
With the right compelling content and laser-focused targeting, LinkedIn sponsored posts can be a cost-effective driver of engagement, leads, and sales.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn provides a self-service advertising platform for reaching LinkedIn members. However, it does not offer a traditional external ad network spanning many sites and apps.
LinkedIn’s ad products focus heavily on native formats like sponsored content rather than traditional display ads. The platform provides robust targeting capabilities based on LinkedIn user data.
While LinkedIn doesn’t have its own ad network, it partners with external networks like Google Ads to increase advertiser reach. Overall, LinkedIn’s advertising solutions aim to enhance the user experience and provide value to advertisers through native formats.