Now that LinkedIn has gone public and is beholden to the quarterly demands of shareholders, it is time to ramp on potential revenue streams. As such, the professional social network announced today that it will roll out personalized ads based on information from users’ network.
LinkedIn changed its privacy policy earlier this month to make it easier for users to share content. Doing so will increase the amount of data that LinkedIn has of its users Web activities. The combination of shared content with peer and brand recommendations will be what LinkedIn’s personalized ads will be based on.
As we wrote when LinkedIn went public, the value of its users is in the data it holds on them. That is especially true when it comes to one of the primary uses of the network – job recruitment. It is no coincidence that one of the examples LinkedIn used in its blog post announcing the new ad platform is a job recruitment ad. Take a look.
The second example LinkedIn uses is a self-service platform called LinkedIn Ads. From the blog post; “The ads show how public actions of your network, including product recommendations and the number of followers of that company, can help you decide whether or not you should take the time to learn more about the product or service.”
This approach to advertising brings LinkedIn closer to how Facebook utilizes its data to serve pertinent ads based on topics in status updates between friends. In terms of monetization, the prime benefits of platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook are the rich data that they have on their users and being able to bring them relevant information. Whereas Facebook will surface ads “related to this post” on brands or media (like books or movies), LinkedIn will help show relevant job listings or services that may help users with their employment.
LinkedIn’s new privacy policy is a long document. The company says that it is focused on making sure that users have as much control over their information as possible. That does not mean it will not sell ads against that data if at all possible. LinkedIn allows users to opt out of personalized ads.
