Buzzword Chasers

Linkedin who boasts having a community of well over 27 million users and growing, launched a beta version of their text ad serving platform called Direct Ads. Similar in nature to Facebooks SocialAds program they are now offering targets based on age, gender, industry and senority of ad viewers.

Displaying these advertisements above the fold in plain site they are offering a very unique media buying opportunity as opposed to other networks which suppress or bury ads beneath layers of content below the fold.

The minimum ad buy currently sits at $25 and they are sold based on a CPM model (cost per thousand impressions).

While there has been no test of the advertisements running on this system versus Facebook’s SocialAds, this system has been positioned as a direct competitor. We are not so sure that the CPM model will wok in the long run though.

A self serving (like facebook), targeted cpm machine that has a built in pricing module that increases or decreases the cost per thousand impressions based on what criteria you choose.

Example - Add 3.00 per CPM to target your text ads by company size or $6.00 to target by seniority.

You can choose to advertise to the all of Linkedin members in the United States or you can target specific members with up to 2 categories such as Company Size, Job Function, Industry, Seniority, Gender, Age, and Geography.   It would awesome if you could do more then two categories but it would likely cost $150 per CPM.

You start by creating your ad as seen below.

Next you Schedule your ad and choose your budget.  It can be anywhere from $25 - $2000.  That’s right $25!  Give a/b split testing a whirl on that budget.

After scheduling and selecting your budget and ad volume you then get to setup your advertisment in real time.

An easy to use editor lets you see exactly what your ad will look like to the viewers as seen in the right hand column.

After creating your advertisement you are then taken to an easy to checkout billing page.

As easy as a few steps anyone can setup and deploy an ad.

their intuitive user centric dashboard lets you manage and report on your active and past ads served.

With Linkedin current audience of 27M+ professionals with an average household income of $109,000.  Larger advertisers on Linkedin have been reporting $45 cpm’s while most social networks are barely getting $1.

Linkedin has the right model in mind which will allow them to offer a very targetted advertisment and allow a higher revenue curve which is justifible by the media buyer.  Choosing to deploy their own advertising network rather then jumping on the bandwagon and joining someone elses looks like it will proove to be very fruitful in the long run. Linkedin is also allowing Publishers to join their network which allows them to increase their inventory of impressions.