LinkedIn Introduces Sponsored Updates for Advertisers, Highlighting Its Focus on Content

Back in February during the company’s fourth-quarter 2012 earnings results, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner mentioned the prospect of serving sponsored content within users’ activity streams, adding that the company had been testing in-steam ads for a few months beforehand. Today LinkedIn has officially unveiled Sponsored Updates, which takes a page from Facebook’s Sponsored Stories playbook.

As its name betrays, Sponsored Updates will give companies the option to pay to insert their content in users’ home page feeds, even if they don’t follow the company. In its announcement, the company notes that this paid product is meant to give companies the chance to extend the reach and boost the engagement for the high-quality content (e.g., articles, videos, white papers, slideshows) they produce.

“With Sponsored Updates, marketers will be able to distribute this content directly to relevant professionals in a place their customers and prospects are already consuming professionally relevant content,” writes David Hahn, vice president of product management at the company. “Marketers can target Sponsored Updates to any segment of our premium audience based on professional profile data across more than 225 million members.”

He adds that Sponsored Updates will be visible on desktop, smartphone and tablet devices. Each Sponsored Update will give users the ability to follow the company, in addition to like, comment on or share the post.

Sponsored Updates are now available to companies with an account representative. LinkedIn says it will roll out the product to any company with a Company Page by the end of this month. Companies can choose CPC or CPM pricing for these units.

A recent survey conducted by The Creative Group found that 51 percent of advertising and marketing executives expect spending on LinkedIn efforts to rise in the coming 12 months. That sentiment probably grows after today’s announcement.

According to BIA/Kelsey, $1.6 billion was spent on social native ad formats (e.g., Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets) in 2012. This figure was expected to grow to $2.4 billion this year and $4.6 billion in 2017. Upticks in those forecasts are probably in order.

Sponsored Updates is a strong reminder that brands and marketers shouldn’t overlook LinkedIn as a viable social media platform for their needs, even if they’re not B2B.

Today’s unveiling follows LinkedIn’s introduction of enhanced updates at the end of May. This feature enables users to add images, documents and presentations to their updates made from the home page. As the company mentioned in that earnings call back in February, LinkedIn is clearly shifting its weight into a content-fueled future, further cementing its status as a social media platform marketers can’t afford to ignore.