LinkedIn Begins Testing Paid Events

LinkedIn confirmed reports that it is testing paid Events with a small group of users, adding that a decision has not yet been reached on rolling it out officially. A spokesperson for the professional network said, “Amid the changing world of work and transition to a nearly all remote workforce, LinkedIn Events has seen a surge in growth, with 21 million people attending an Event on LinkedIn in 2020. We continue to learn from member and customer feedback and test new ways to improve the experience. As part of this, we are exploring options for payment in the Events product based on feedback from event organizers.” LinkedIn is still refining aspects of the potential offering, including whether it will collect a percentage of proceeds from Event hosts and how much. Code shared with Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch appeared to indicate that tickets would be sold via LinkedIn, and hosts would have access to a dashboard with information on ticket sales and revenue. LinkedIn is also exploring other enhancements to Events aside from paid Events. LinkedIn Events rolled out globally in October 2019, with the professional network saying at the time that members would be able to create and join Events, invite connections, manage Events, communicate with other attendees and stay in touch after the Event wraps up. In response to the pandemic, the platform introduced Virtual Events in May 2020, a combination of LinkedIn Events and LinkedIn Live. An Events tab was added to pages in September 2020, allowing organizations to share past, current and upcoming Events in one place. Last October, the professional network beefed up its Virtual Events offering with features enabling organic discovery and lead generation, as well as the ability to run sponsored content ads to promote Events and retargeting options. Event Ads—which permitted marketers to promote Virtual Events by highlighting key details such as date, time and how to join to completely new audiences, while at the same time letting members see if mutual connections have expressed interest in attending—and an Event Analytics tool were rolled out in May. And earlier this month, the platform introduced LinkedIn Live Events, which enable hosts to: sponsor streams in advance to a targeted audience; auto-notify Event registrants and a subset of page followers when the Event goes live; amass views on public Live Event posts from anyone on LinkedIn, whether they’ve hit “Attend” or not, during and after the event; and easily share the replay of Live Event content for maximum distribution and value.

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LinkedIn Begins Testing Paid Events

The professional network combined LinkedIn Events, LinkedIn Live in May 2020 as Virtual Events

David Cohen

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