LinkedIn is announcing some new features for advertisers — retargeting capabilities tied on video ads and lead generation forms, as well as new brand safety integrations for the LinkedIn Audience Network.
Abhishek Shrivastava, the senior director of product for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, told me that his team has been shifting its product plans in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes introducing new features focused on virtual engagement — such as live video events — as the pandemic has “accelerated that need of the market.”
Shrivastava suggested that today’s announcements are similar, because “these things matter in terms of driving your [marketing] investment further.”
On the retargeting side, that means advertisers can now create and target ads specifically to users who watched 25, 50, 75 or 100% of their video ads. They can also target ads at users who opened or submitted a Lead Gen Form.
Image Credits: LinkedIn
Shrivastava noted that LinkedIn advertisers are generally focused on business-to-business marketing, which means that there’s usually a longer process of turning prospects into sales, so these capabilities make it easier for marketers to create a tailored “journey to carry your target audiences through.”
LinkedIn has already been testing these capabilities with a few advertisers, including TOPdesk, which says it’s increased conversions by 20% while lowering the cost per conversion by 24%.
The video retargeting capabilities also extend to the LinkedIn Audience Network, which the company launched in 2017 as a way for marketers to extend their LinkedIn ad campaigns beyond LinkedIn itself.
LinkedIn says the network now includes publishers like Flipboard, Microsoft News and MSN.com (Microsoft owns LinkedIn), and that it can now extend the reach of a Sponsored Content campaign by 25%, while adding 9x more monthly touchpoints with some LinkedIn members.
To help ensure the safety and quality of those impressions, LinkedIn says it’s integrating with Integral Ad Science as “an additional layer of brand protection and contextual brand safety for all ads,” and with Pixalate to “score and filter all publishers based on invalid traffic.”