LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, plans to offer a video advertising product that enables marketers to target LinkedIn users when they are using video streaming services. The Microsoft Corp.-owned company started testing the solution last week and expects to share more in the coming months.
“While the new ad format isn’t tailored specifically for recruiters and staffing buyers, our plans do help buyers of all types connect faster,” LinkedIn stated in an email to SIA.
SIA research ranks LinkedIn as the largest job advertising firm globally. The company generates revenue from ad sales and subscriptions for recruiters, job seekers and sales professionals.
“Video streaming represents a new channel for LinkedIn to meaningfully leverage its vast network of 930 million users,” says SIA Research Director Brian Wallins. “It also highlights the rapid pace of innovation within online job advertising. The $36 billion market is no longer dominated by the traditional job board model, which has recently been surpassed in market size by social media job sites like LinkedIn and job aggregators like Indeed (Recruit Holdings).”
The new product will enable marketers to target LinkedIn users when they’re watching content such as movies and TV shows on streaming services, people familiar with the matter told The Information, which first reported the project. LinkedIn ad executives have been in conversations with streaming services and relevant ad technology companies in this market, including its sibling firm Xandr, Netflix’s ad tech partner.
The move comes after LinkedIn also added AI-powered features such as writing suggestions for member profiles and job descriptions as well as collaborative articles. Microsoft in January announced a multibillion-dollar investment in San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research firm OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT.
