LinkedIn Introduces Ad Account Targeting

Similar to Facebook’s Custom Audiences, Twitter’s Tailored Audiences, and Google’s Customer Match, LinkedIn has joined the party of account targeting. Advertisers will be able to use their own data to target ads starting on March 2nd.

Before, the network platform was only able to offer company targeting options, which was less than ideal due to the manual process and limitations of tagging only 100 companies. With this new release, businesses can now upload their lists of up to 30,000 accounts and LinkedIn will cross-reference them with their 8 million company pages. This more refined user segment can then be layered with its existing features and limit campaigns to specific job types, geos, and demographics. Not only that but advertisers can also upload lists of accounts they don’t want to target to avoid bothering their existing client base.

The account-based targeting will be available in two ad formats – Sponsored Updates and Sponsored InMail. Currently, it’s limited to brands buying ads directly with the LinkedIn sales team, but will be rolled out to their self-serve tool in the near future.

Recently, LinkedIn has clearly not been pleasing their investors. During the close of last quarter, the social network took quite a tumble with share values plummeting almost 60-70 percent due to their strategic decision to shut down their B2B ad platform ‘Lead Accelerator’. However, this new targeting feature shows they are still making plays to improve their marketing solutions.  So, what are LinkedIn’s next steps? They plan to develop bigger and better ‘Audience Matching’ tools and who knows, things may continue to look up for them!