LinkedIn expands thought leadership advertising, targets TikTok and Instagram | Wilnesh News

Influencer marketing has become a big business on TikTok and Instagram, where popular creators can make serious money by helping brands promote their products. Now, LinkedIn wants to get in on the game.

As of last week, LinkedIn allowed advertisers to pay to amplify posts from users, including those with large followings. Its product, called Thought Leadership Advertising, launched in a limited capacity last year.

this MicrosoftLinkedIn’s revenue growth has been stuck in single digits since 2022, and the companies it owns are looking to recover. The company is turning to its membership numbers, which topped 1 billion in November, to help drive expansion.

Until now, influencer marketing has been largely a consumer app phenomenon, where tricks and gimmicks can turn web-savvy creators into celebrities with millions of followers.Nearly two-thirds of U.S. social media marketing dollars will go to Instagram parent company this year Yuan According to eMarketer estimates, the combined market share of Instagram and TikTok will increase by 2 percentage points by 2026.

LinkedIn, which launched a year earlier than Facebook, has just 4% of the market, equivalent to $4.5 billion in marketing revenue, and its share will remain unchanged over the next two years, eMarketer said.

“It’s going to take a long time for advertising and ad formats to really take hold,” Max Willens, senior analyst at eMarketer, said of LinkedIn’s latest efforts.

LinkedIn introduce Thought leadership advertising from last year but limited use. Brands can only expand the positions of their own employees. MasterCardFor example, one of the promotion posts written by some of its leaders in Singapore received more than 500 notifications on the first day. LinkedIn has used thought leadership ads in some posts from operations chief Dan Shapero, but not yet in posts from CEO Ryan Roslansky.

Through Open Thought Leadership Ads, LinkedIn lets anyone promote a post as long as the author gives permission. Social media marketer Brendan Gahan is so bullish on the format that he focuses much of his efforts on helping companies use thought leadership advertising.

“In an era where brand safety is a big issue, LinkedIn has an advantage, especially compared to Twitter,” said Gaghan, who founded an agency last year called Creator Authority, referring to the social media platform now known as X.

Last year, X lost a number of leaders committed to brand safety when hate speech surged on the Elon Musk-owned platform’s apps.

LinkedIn has long been an effective site for advertisers because members list their employment details, allowing brands to easily target ads to relevant audiences. Advertising favors business-focused products such as software and computer infrastructure, although automakers, universities and banks also use the Web to reach potential customers.

“If you want to sell a high-end B2B product, and you know the procurement team is the CFO, finance people, and HR people, we can actually put ads in front of those specific people on LinkedIn because first-party data is so powerful ,” Roslansky explain At a meeting in late 2022.

Thought leadership ads appeared after employees saw screenshots of marketing clients promoting content from other users. Since launching the service last fall, the ads have generated higher engagement than regular ads with images, said Abhishek Shrivastava, LinkedIn’s vice president of product management.

“Brand humanization is critical to B2B but is underutilized in this space,” Shrivastava said, adding that customers are very excited about it.

It may not be cheap. The cost of getting 1,000 ad impressions on LinkedIn is typically higher than on Instagram or TikTok, in part because the company charges advertisers more to reach its more affluent user base. Shrivastava said brands will not compare costs with other websites but will focus on the sales and business leads generated through advertising.

For months, project management software startup ClickUp has been paying to promote the LinkedIn posts of its top executives. Chris Cunningham, the company’s director of social marketing, said traditional ads on LinkedIn can sometimes be repetitive and generic, and he was curious to see how promoted posts performed when influencers were involved.

On other social networks, ClickUp has been more successful at promoting creator posts than using standard ads, Cunningham said. Plus, he said, “It’s very simple.”

Betsy Hindman, a marketer in Tennessee who helps businesses leverage the power of LinkedIn, says brand ambassadors with an audience can have a greater impact than typical ads.

“It’s part of a complete end-to-end strategy that includes warming people through whatever type of content they respond to,” she said.

Building a roster of creators can take time. Some influencers are represented by agencies, and LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager advertising system does not have an automated process for connecting media buyers with agencies.

“This is a direction we are exploring,” Shrivastava said.

More data will be made available to advertisers soon. Starting in a few weeks, LinkedIn members will be able to find any company’s ad collection and view its thought leadership ads, a spokesperson said. This helps advertisers find the most effective methods.

One potential upside to LinkedIn is the fate of TikTok. The app could face a ban in the United States after the House of Representatives passed legislation last month forcing ByteDance to sell the app within six months. Although Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said momentum has since slowed. urge Lawmakers will take action on the matter earlier this week.

eMarketer’s Willens said agencies are watching the issue closely, but said “no one believes there is an imminent threat.”