An evergreen challenge B2B marketers face is how to influence prospects’ purchase decisions. With so much of the buyer's journey happening online, it should not be surprising that 49% of B2B buyers noticed vendor display ads during their research process and said these ads had a positive impact on their purchasing decision*.
At LinkedIn, we’ve proven that native ads generate the most engagement with professional audiences. The LinkedIn Audience Network combines the best of both native and display worlds — marrying advertisers’ native messaging with the extended reach of display and interstitial ad placements across brand safe, third-party apps and sites.
When would a marketer want to use the LinkedIn Audience Network? Let’s break it down.
When to activate ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network
Marketers with a multi-touch strategy find the most value by extending their LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaigns on the LinkedIn Audience Network to reach millions more professionals. These advertisers are focused on a few areas:
- Increasing the reach and frequency of their message
In order to have a positive impact on the purchase decision, it’s imperative your message reaches your target audience with frequency. By offering up to 25% more reach and up to 9x more monthly touch points on average, the LinkedIn Audience Network helps advertisers stay top of mind with prospects.
Activating their message across multiple channels with the right brand safety controls
The consistency of your message depends on delivering it across channels where prospects are online and engaging. We make it easy to activate your message both on LinkedIn and across top-engaging publishers. We also help advertisers control their ad delivery on the LinkedIn Audience Network with IAB category-level blocking and accommodating custom block lists. In addition, we are currently testing additional prebid brand safety controls that will be available to advertisers in 2020.
Improving overall campaign return on ad spend (ROAS)
Activating your message across multiple channels helps make paid media investments more efficient. Sponsored Content campaigns enabling delivery on the LinkedIn Audience Network significantly reduce their cost-per-result, while also seeing improvements in engagement.
Keeping these scenarios in mind, B2B marketers should also know how turnkey activating ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network is.
How to activate ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network
Advertisers can enable delivery on the LinkedIn Audience Network for any Sponsored Content single image or video ad campaign. When setting up your campaign in Campaign Manager, make sure the placement box is checked (see preview below).
Next, check out the live Forecasted Results for the extended reach and performance that the LinkedIn Audience Network placement can gain. Delivery on the network is included for each campaign’s forecast so you can anticipate the performance.
To customize where your ads are delivered, check out the options under the Audience Network advanced options. This is where advertisers have the option of setting up IAB category-level blocking and including custom app and site block lists.
The ad creative setup is completely the same as creating a Sponsored Content ad. LinkedIn automatically optimizes your native ad to serve across the display and interstitial placements across top-engaging apps and sites.
Advertisers can easily view the performance impact of activating ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network in their campaign performance. For each campaign, we breakdown the incremental clicks, impressions, and cost-per-result.
Ready to test activating your ads on the LinkedIn Audience Network? Go into your Campaign Manager and make sure the placement is enabled for your Sponsored Content campaigns.
Learn more at the help center.
*Demand Gen’s 2018 Buyers Survey Report
Uncover more best practices on setting up a campaign to reach your ideal audience by taking our LinkedIn Learning Course: Marketing on LinkedIn: The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide.
