We all know that the secret to effective advertising is getting your message placed before not only a large audience, but one that is interested, and preferably one that is ready to make a move. All of the most popular online social media sites have implemented ways to help advertisers better target their desired focus audience and therefore get more effective results from their efforts. Companies like Facebook and Twitter have even gone so far as to allow geographical or interest targeting as part of their advertising interaction options. But there is one company that has taken the concept to a whole new level: LinkedIn.

INTRODUCING: EMPLOYER RELATIONSHIPS

The Microsoft-owned professional and B2B social media networking site have unveiled plans to allow the advertiser to not only target their desired focus audience more tightly with traditional tools, but they will also now offer a targeting option that other platforms just cannot match: Employer relationships.

The system will operate on a method similar to those in use by other platforms such as “Similar to Custom Audiences” on Facebook, “Tailored Audiences” on Twitter and “Customer Match” on Google plus. But unlike those targeting options this will allow LinkedIn to use its own internal database of more than 8 Million professional user pages, specifically the employer information section, to drive ads to user profiles that are part of a designated target group.

UPLOAD LISTS FOR EMPLOYER-BASED AUDIENCE MATCHING

LinkedIn will allow advertisers to upload personally curated lists of companies, up to 30,000 per list to the system and then use that list to precisely target advertising exposure efforts. While the employer-based audience matching is the first offering on LinkedIn’s system, the company plans to roll out other options in the near future. Those options will allow advertisers to further upload many other kinds of information that they can use to precisely target their efforts to particular user accounts instead of broad platform based exposure efforts.

Currently, the system will only be offered on two of the platform’s advertising models. The first is Sponsored updates. The Sponsored updates system places relevant promoted status updates into user’s content feeds. The second option which will offer targeted focus of account is the Sponsored InMail system, which places promoted messages into targeted users LinkedIn mailbox. The other major restriction to the new system is that it will only be offered to advertisers who are purchasing ads through the LinkedIn Sales Team. Eventually, the system will be rolled out to other users who purchase ads on the platform through the self-service tool offered.

CONCLUSION

With this new system, you can now target ads more precisely than ever before on LinkedIn. Only time will tell is there will be the addition of similar functionality in some form on the other major social media platforms. The big advantage LinkedIn has with this particular type of system, however, is that an inherent part of the service is that you tie it so closely with your professional life. Currently only Facebook for Work, or Facebook Business has the structure to come close to this. Google Plus for Business has the potential for this type of system eventually being put in place if Google will get more interest driven to the platform and does not abandon it like they have with so many other of their services. For now, this places LinkedIn and its parent Microsoft in a very good position to, at least for now, corner a key aspect of the social media advertising game.