LinkedIn to launch their own Ad Network

LinkedIn already sells ads against this audience on its own site, targeted by industry, seniority, company size, geography, gender, and number of connections. Now, it will expand that targeting to other partner sites. Publishers will have to apply to become part of the ad network, but LinkedIn will probably try to sign up some of its existing content partners such as the Businessweek, CNBC, and the New York Times... and why not business to business publishers like Wolters Kluwer.

LinkedIn knows it has a valuable audience (see the demographic presentation here), and now wants to sell access to that audience to others. Although LinkedIn will always make more money off the ads it shows on its own site (since it doesn’t have to split those ads three ways with Collective Media and the partner sites). Perhaps LinkedIn realizes that it will never become a big enough site on its own to justify its recent $1 billion valuation. (Although employees can only sell shares at a $500 million valuation). This will create incremental revenues for LinkedIn. And for publishing site partners it offers a potentially more lucrative set of remnant inventory that it can throw ads up against.

Source : Techcrunch France