PPC

LinkedIn DirectAds Advertising

Here’s the scenario. You have a business and you may or may not have a Google Adwords campaign. You’re now thinking about investing in LinkedIn ads and questioning whether or not you should run a LinkedIn DirectAds campaign to promote your business. Here are some things to consider.

Target Audience

Does your target audience include business professionals?

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. Its website highlights that there are 90 million LinkedIn members World wide with 32 million members from the United States.

Advertising Budget

How much capital have you budgeted for online advertising?

LinkedIn campaigns can be created and disabled at any time.
However, there is a minimum $10.00 daily budget and a minimum bid amount ($2.00 for the cost per click payment model and $3.00 for the cost per thousand impressions payment model).

Depending on your ROI on LinkedIn compared to your other advertising programs, LinkedIn may or may not be cost effective for you.

Audience Targeting Options

LinkedIn allows advertisers to target LinkedIn members with the following categories:

• Company size
• Job Function
• Industry
• Seniority
• Gender
• Age
• Geography

Use these settings to ensure you are speaking only to people who may be interested in your business.

A final point to be aware of. LinkedIn ads are display ads which appear to members based on the ad targeting options selected. Display ads typically have a lower click through rate than search ads. Search ads, for example on Google, are displayed to users who search for a specific topic. Display ads may be good for increasing awareness for a business in general, but may have a lower conversion rate than search ads because people who are searching for a topic already have an intention to find information.

LinkedIn may be a good advertising solution for your business. It all depends on your overall online strategy and how this piece of the puzzle fits into the overall plan.

Victor

Photo Credit: Coletivo Mambembe

Tags: advertising, budget, LinkedIn, PPC, Social Media, target audience

Behaviourally Targeted Online Ads…On the Rise!

Check out the eMarketer’s forecast as summarized by the fabulous daily, CynopsisDigital. Based on our team’s experience and success using behaviourally targeted online ads, this trend makes perfect sense. Still, the numbers are staggering.

“Assuming that privacy concerns are adequately addressed, behavioral targeting will generate more than $1 billion in ad sales in the U.S this year, according to a forecast from eMarketer, with that number more than doubling to $2.6 billion by 2014. Behaviorally targeted ad dollars will rise as a proportion of online display spending from 14.2% in 2010 to nearly 20% by 2014, when ads targeted based on interests or intentions will account for 7.6% of total US online ad spending.

U.S. Behavioral Targeting Online Advertising Spending 2008-2014 (millions)
Year Spending % Change
2008 $775 47.6%
2009 $925 19.4%
2010 $1,125 21.6%
2011 $1,350 20.0%
2012 $1,700 25.9%
2013 $2,100 23.5%
2014 $2,600 23.8%
Source: eMarketer”

- Moyra

Tags: ad spending, behavioural advertising, online advertising, online marketing, PPC, SEM