Matched Audiences Ad Targeting on LinkedIn

ad targeting on social mediaLinkedIn advertisers are now able to use Matched Audiences targeting. At the end of April, LinkedIn officially rolled out the advanced targeting to all advertisers on the platform.  The new feature makes it possible for all advertisers to target ads based on user’s web browsing, employers and email addresses.  This improved targeting is available to everyone who advertises on LinkedIn including those that use the self-serve ad-buying platform.

Matched Audiences is very similar to other types of ad-targeting options that are already offered by Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google. The targeting allows marketers to target the ads they release to specific types of users on the social network. It uses data that’s collected via the network such as the websites that are visited by the users and their email addresses.

LinkedIn Matched Audiences does have some differences to consider.  The main one is that the ads will be shown directly where people are present to do business. LinkedIn is a business-centric network, so you’re very unlikely to see ads appear between personal updates.  Therefore, LinkedIn ads are particularly suited for business to business advertisers.

Three Types of Ad-Targeting

Matched Audiences has three types of ad-targeting that can be used, which are as follows:

  1. Website retargeting – when people who have visited the businesses website are retargeted
  2. Contact targeting – Targeting people based on email addresses
  3. Account targeting – Targeting people based on who they work for. This option has been available for those buying directly from the sales team at LinkedIn for over a year. It’s now available to everyone using the self-serve platform too.

The new ad-targeting options have been in beta mode for six months. They were tested in more than 2,000 campaigns and by at least 370 advertisers. It was a hugely popular pilot and many advertisers will already be making use of these options.  Marketers are using the targeting feature for the sponsored content that show up in feeds and in InMail messages and IAB standardised text. The targeting options are not available for dynamic ads via the self-serve ad buying platform as yet.  If you want them for your dynamic ads you will have to buy your ads directly from the sales team at LinkedIn.

Need help with ad targeting and PPC campaigns? Give us a call on 01905 27002 or leave us a message and we’ll be in touch.