LinkedIn has become an extremely popular platform for companies to advertise their products and services. With over 700 million members globally, LinkedIn offers advertisers access to a massive professional audience. But who are the biggest spenders when it comes to LinkedIn ads? Let’s take a look at some of the top LinkedIn advertisers and their strategies.
Why Do Companies Advertise on LinkedIn?
There are several key reasons why companies allocate advertising budget to LinkedIn:
- Targeted audience – LinkedIn members include working professionals in every industry and career level. Advertisers can target ads by job title, industry, skills, company size and more.
- Lead generation – LinkedIn ads allow advertisers to drive traffic to landing pages to capture leads. The high-intent audience makes it a prime platform for customer acquisition.
- Brand awareness – Sponsored content and display ads build brand visibility and thought leadership. Companies can organically amplify their content.
- Recruitment – LinkedIn’s massive professional network makes it ideal for attracting talent. Companies use ads to promote open positions.
With these strategic objectives in mind, LinkedIn advertising spend continues to rise year over year as more companies dedicate budget to the platform.
Top 10 LinkedIn Advertisers
Based on LinkedIn’s public list of top advertisers, here are the 10 companies spending the most on LinkedIn ads globally (in alphabetical order):
- Amazon
- EY
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Oracle
- PwC
- Salesforce
- SAP
- Workday
This list comprises major technology companies, management consulting firms, and enterprise software providers. Their common focus areas on LinkedIn include recruitment marketing, thought leadership, and promoting business solutions.
Key LinkedIn Advertising Strategies
While objectives vary, we can look at trends in how the top LinkedIn advertisers approach their campaigns:
Targeting by Industry and Seniority
Most top advertisers target their ads by industry and seniority rather than geographic location. For example, Google may target VPs and directors in the information technology industry to promote Google Cloud. This reflects the global nature of LinkedIn’s audience.
Content Marketing
Nearly all top advertisers leverage LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content ads to amplify long-form posts. This allows them to organically build thought leadership and links back to their website content.
Retargeting
Retargeting helps advertisers reconnect with prospects who previously visited but did not convert on their websites. Tools like LinkedIn’s Website Demographics allow retargeting by industry and seniority variables.
100% Share of Voice
The largest advertisers will often secure 100% share of voice for sponsored content campaigns. This means their post is the only sponsored content shown to the target audience for a set duration of the campaign.
AB Testing
Sophisticated advertisers continually A/B test elements like ad creative, calls-to-action, and audience targeting. LinkedIn provides robust analytics on ad performance to optimize campaigns.
Conversion Tracking
Detailed conversion tracking is key to measuring LinkedIn ad ROI. Top advertisers integrate LinkedIn’s Insight Tag with their websites and CRMs to unlock robust attribution reporting.
LinkedIn Ad Examples from Top Spenders
Now let’s look at real examples of top LinkedIn advertiser’s ads and sponsored content:
Microsoft
As LinkedIn’s parent company, Microsoft has vested interest in promoting ad products on the platform. This ad drives clicks to a lead generation form to request a demo of Microsoft Dynamics 365:
Amazon
Amazon frequently runs LinkedIn ads promoting open positions at the company. This targets software engineers with an urgent call-to-action to apply:
EY
Management consulting firms like EY focus heavily on thought leadership content. This sponsored post discusses EY research on workforce strategies:
Measuring LinkedIn Advertising Success
From lead generation to recruitment, LinkedIn enables advertisers to track the performance of their campaigns in several ways:
Metric | Definition |
---|---|
Impressions | Number of times the ad is shown |
Clicks | Number of clicks on the ad |
Clickthrough rate | Clicks divided by impressions |
Cost per click | How much advertisers pay per click |
Conversions | Count of desired actions (lead, sale, application etc.) |
Conversion rate | Conversions divided by clicks |
Cost per conversion | Campaign spend divided by conversions |
Analyzing performance by audience segment and ad creative is key to continual optimization.
Conclusion
LinkedIn advertising provides outstanding reach and results for top spending advertisers like Microsoft, Amazon, EY, and more. While their objectives vary, common themes include targeting by industry/seniority, content marketing, retargeting, and robust conversion tracking. As the importance of professional branding and thought leadership grows, we can expect more companies to allocate significant portions of their ad budget to LinkedIn.