Digital Advertising on LinkedIn

In an ideal world, marketers would be able to directly reach customers who are interested in their products or services, delivering the perfect message at the precise moment when they are ready to make a purchase. In reality, the digital world is teeming with potential customers scattered across various stages of the buying cycle.

Fortunately, the digital age has provided marketers with powerful tools and strategies to navigate this complex landscape. One of the most direct tools available is digital advertising, and while it doesn’t quite give marketers an ideal world, it does enable them to target specific demographics, track user behavior, and adjust strategies in real-time based on measurable data.

In this post, we’ll cover the essentials of digital advertising, its common types and key metrics, and review a straightforward approach to launching digital ad campaigns.

Learn more about Digital Advertising:

What is Digital Advertising?
Why is Digital Advertising Important?
Types of Digital Advertising
How Does Digital Advertising Work?
6 Key Digital Advertising Metrics
Digital Advertising on LinkedIn

Digital advertising, or "online advertising", promotes products, services, or brands through paid placements on digital platforms.

Digital advertising aims to reach audiences in the online spaces where they spend much of their time.

Unlike traditional advertising such as billboards, print ads, TV, radio ads, digital advertising uses platforms like search engines, social media, email, mobile apps, and websites.

It includes methods and formats such as display ads, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine marketing (SEM), social media ads, content marketing, email marketing, etc.

Illustration of a person viewing several different types of ads on a laptop

Online platforms enable digital advertisers to target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, browsing habits, or previous brand interactions.

Brands can target precise audience segments, track and measure their digital ad campaigns in real-time, and adjust strategies as needed. This significantly differs from traditional advertising, which often involves generalized targeting and less measurable outcomes.

Before digital advertising, businesses invested heavily in few ad creatives, allocated fixed budgets, ran ads across large geographic regions, and measured success by quarterly regional revenue.

With digital advertising, businesses can swiftly run diverse ads, target specific audiences cost-effectively, measure performance within 24 hours, and improve campaigns based on real-time data.

illustration of a person studying a graph of customer data

The following six categories, while not exhaustive, cover most digital advertising methods:

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illustration of a target with an arrow in the bullseye

illustration of a person viewing an ad on LinkedIn

illustration of a designer laying out components of a digital ad

Most digital advertising platforms use an auction-based system where advertisers set a maximum bid – the amount they're willing to pay each time a user interacts with their ad. The platform's algorithms then determine where and when the ads are shown based on factors like the bid amount, ad relevance, and ad quality.

These platforms are incentivized to get great results for their users, and they tend to reward the ads that users like with decreased costs. The more a business runs and dials in a campaign on any given platform, the better that platform will tend to perform for the business.

illustration of a person selecting specific ads

Digital advertising gives brands an unprecedented ability to target specific audiences, measure ad performance, and rapidly improve ad campaigns. These characteristics, coupled with its cost-effectiveness, make digital advertising a valuable strategy for businesses of all sizes, from startups to multinational corporations.

With over 950+ million members, LinkedIn offers a unique and invaluable platform for digital advertisers to efficiently reach a variety of professionals.

Place a wide variety of native ads directly in the LinkedIn feed via sponsored content, including text, single-image ads, carousel ads, and video ads. These ads offer an excellent way to build brand awareness, drive website traffic, and generate leads.

The LinkedIn advertising platform provides in-depth analytics making it easy to monitor campaign metrics, analyze ad performance, and continuously optimize for better results

What Is Digital Advertising?

The Most Direct Path To Customers In The Internet Era

What is Digital Advertising?

Why is Digital Advertising Important?

Types of Digital Advertising

Social media advertising promotes content on social media platforms to boost user engagement, brand exposure, and generate leads or sales. These platforms provide robust targeting options, allowing advertisers to reach specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.

Video advertising includes online display advertisements with video messages to engage audiences. These ads can appear before, during, or after streaming content, on social media feeds, or in search results.

How Does Digital Advertising Work?

The process of digital advertising is designed to place a business in front of new customers. Given the challenge of predicting who will buy and how to reach them, most of the advertising process is devoted to systematic testing to find buyers at scale.

Setting Objectives

Audience Targeting

Platforms and Ad Formats

Digital Ad Creatives

Bidding and Placement

Tracking and Analysis

Campaign Optimization

6 Key Digital Advertising Metrics

Digital Advertising on LinkedIn