LinkedIn is putting together a smarter way to monetize itself with the launch of LinkedIn DirectAds (currently under limited testing), which lets advertisers target ads by several demographic metrics such as age, gender, region, education or major, career industry and position.
LinkedIn DirectAds is a grownup and more professional version of Facebook Ads, with a CPM (cost per impression) model instead of the cost per click. Given LinkedIn’s dominance of being a career related social network, and the amount of recruiters who already use LinkedIn to build relationships of aggressively headhunt, expect ads to be very direct and targeted, and recruitment or team building firms to take full advantage.
The cost for the ads is dependent on the targeting, as the more pinpoint the ad and the higher the salary of the target market, the rate of the ad will rise. LinkedIn is currently dependent upon a lot of third party display advertising and Google AdWords (AdSense), so like Facebook, the company may soon break free of this dependence, which will lead to higher profits and higher valuation of the company.
With LinkedIn members able to upload ads directly from their account and a minimum spend of $25 to get started, it will be interesting to see how well these ads work on a hyperlocal level.
