LinkedIn is plugging its professional data into Google’s ad buying platform so advertisers can use job titles and company info to target streaming ads programmatically.
CTV is still a relatively new channel for LinkedIn, which first began offering CTV to its advertisers in 2024 before a wider release last year.
Now, as of Thursday, advertisers can use LinkedIn’s audience targeting to buy CTV ads directly through Google’s DV360.
The integration addresses two problems advertisers have complained about to LinkedIn, said Jae Oh, senior director of product management for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. First, it gives them more flexibility with their DSP partners, and second, it cuts down on wasted ad spend by tapping into LinkedIn’s first-party audience of professionals.
That second point is especially important in B2B, said Oh, where “not everyone can buy your product.”
“When you’re trying to reach professionals that all work at a certain company or at least fit a certain profile,” he said, “it’s hard to rely on third-party sources.”
Dress (and buy ads) for the job you want
VistaPrint, which provides custom printed promotional products and marketing materials, is one of the advertisers testing LinkedIn’s CTV offering. The two companies were first introduced by VistaPrint’s Google DV360 representative, said Erica Haydock, who leads the brand’s global programmatic and streaming media team.
Although VistaPrint offers some services for individual consumers, like wedding invitations, its core customers are small business owners with fewer than 100 employees, said Haydock.
It’s been less than a year since VistaPrint started buying CTV inventory via LinkedIn. But the partnership is a natural fit, Haydock said, given LinkedIn’s ability to target by industry, company size and, especially, job title.
Small business owners usually wear a lot of hats, which means a person’s function is often a better targeting signal than their corporate rank. With that in mind, VistaPrint focused on roles related to administrative functions, marketing, operations, media and communication for its initial test campaign with LinkedIn – basically, anyone who might order business supplies as part of their day-to-day workflow.
Although VistaPrint considers CTV to be mostly an upper-funnel strategy, LinkedIn also allows it to tailor its creative. For example, part of VistaPrint’s most recent campaign included ads for its promotional products and signage offerings, which were targeted to more specific audiences than its broader branded-focused messaging.
Although it’s still too soon to be able to measure results from its test campaign, which just ended in September, VistaPrint ran a concurrent brand lift study that yielded positive results, according to Haydock. Similarly, LinkedIn’s own data claims that its CTV ads deliver 2.6 times stronger awareness lift for B2B audiences than other providers.
Off the clock, on the couch
LinkedIn’s expansion into CTV mirrors a trend among other social media platforms making their audiences available to TV advertisers. Just look at Pinterest’s acquisition of TVScientific last year to expand its CTV audience reach or recent reports about Meta’s being in talks with SSPs about extending its audiences to streaming.
But social networks aren’t going after TV budgets so much as trying to follow their audiences across an increasingly fragmented media landscape, according to Oh. In other words, he said, it’s “a natural artifact of how consumer behavior is changing, rather than each platform trying to do this specific motion around a single channel.”
After all, CTV is a place where advertisers can reliably reach audiences that are harder to find on the open web. According to LinkedIn, 94% of its members watch some form of ad-supported CTV.
However, the B2B buying journey is long and specific, so don’t expect to see LinkedIn get too invested in engagement boosters like shoppable ads anytime soon, Oh noted.
Instead, LinkedIn’s goal is to make sure that all its different marketing channels support one another. For example, said Oh, CTV campaigns that are launched through LinkedIn tend to be more successful when they’re paired with a complementary online video campaign.
That emphasis on cross-channel coordination and audience reach works well for companies like Vistaprint, which is using CTV to build brand awareness, particularly among new customers and potential future prospects, Haydock said.
“Not everyone is a small business owner today,” she said. “But we hope that in six months to a year, when you might have an idea for a side hustle, that you’re aware of VistaPrint and what we can provide.”
