DirectAds: LinkedIn’s New Targeted Advertising

There are a lot of reasons to like LinkedIn. It has a clean interface, it’s easy to navigate, and you get the opportunity to network with various individuals to enhance your business (something that used to take thousands of dollars to attend conferences and a good number of hours burned on the golf course). Last year, LinkedIn grew by a phenomenal 319%, and by latest estimate is now valued at $1 billion. Clearly, the people behind it are doing something right.

LinkedIn’s most recent project is DirectAds, a way for members to post their own text ads on the website, and it really looks promising. See, the great thing about LinkedIn is that compared to Facebook, the average member age is older and the average income is certainly much higher. It’s an extremely targeted form of advertising to business professionals – the movers and shakers. Furthermore, the ads can be tuned to appear to a specific age range, gender, industry, and seniority. If you haven’t signed up with LinkedIn yet, you might want to take a look around.

There are a few things to note about DirectAds:

• For now, these ads can target only the members located in the US. However, there are plans to include other locations in the future.
• In the spirit of transparency and visibility, a text link to the advertiser’s profile is displayed below the ads. This is to minimize gaming and help the advertiser’s promotion efforts.
• DirectAds are based on the CPM model (cost per thousand impressions) and the minimum purchase is $25.
• The service available only to members who satisfy a few conditions like meeting a certain number of connections, completeness of profile information, and/or age of account.
• It’s a self-service ad paid thru credit card. Premium Account users get a 50% discount.

So far it all looks great on paper, except that if I was an advertiser, I’d be more comfortable if they used the CPC model (cost per click). Anyway, reviews will start to trickle in once more people start using it, and then you can decide whether it’s a worthwhile ad platform for your business. As for the site itself, it seems like it can only get better.