LinkedIn Kick-Starts Process of Using First-Party Data for B-to-B Marketing

LinkedIn is testing a new targeting approach on its platform aimed at reducing reliance on and use of third-party data and mining its rich trove of first-party data. Senior director of product management Abhishek Shrivastava said in a blog post Thursday that the professional network will begin a test of Group Identity for B2B with a limited number of customers. He explained, “Our members trust how we use their information to help you more accurately reach your intended audiences and measure their engagement with the advertising campaigns you create with us. We have always worked hard to earn this trust, especially by limiting our reliance on and use of third-party data for advertising—never profiling members on the basis of what they do off of LinkedIn. Continuing in the same spirit of trust, we are introducing new approaches that help provide online consistency across channels and devices, all while limiting or even eliminating the use of third-party personal data on our servers.” Group Identity for B2B leverages LinkedIn’s first-party data to group members based on shared professional identity attributes such as industry and seniority, enabling business-to-business marketers to reach their intended audience across channels on the platform, such as mobile ad network LinkedIn Audience Network, without individual-level tracking across sites. The professional network is investing in technologies to help b-to-b marketers measure the success of their campaigns and understand buyers’ path to purchase. LinkedIn began testing the use of machine learning models to estimate and report campaign conversations across channels by tapping data from across its platform. This test is ongoing with a limited group of campaigns. The professional network intends to begin supporting attribution of offline or offsite conversion events to LinkedIn campaigns in the months ahead. Its Insight Tag was updated to collect conversions using first-party cookies. Shrivastava wrote, “Despite changes in how you reach prospective buyers, we know you need to drive results. So, we’re exploring how we can help you continue to optimize your budgets, effectively and more accurately reach your audiences and measure campaign conversions in a privacy-first way.” Along those lines, LinkedIn is testing multiple approaches to update its Matched Audiences offering and enable b-to-b marketers to reach first-party audience with their content across LinkedIn and LinkedIn Audience Network. The professional network is also exploring ways to use on-device processing, keeping data locally on users’ devices for privacy purposes. And LinkedIn is developing products that enable b-to-b marketers to automatically optimize their campaigns to collect quality conversions and generate cost-effective results across placements and throughout the funnel. Shrivastava noted that many of the solutions described above remain in the testing phase, suggesting that marketers using Insight Tag for campaign conversion tracking or targeting enable first-party settings in order to be able to continue measuring conversions as the platform evolves. He wrote, “Consumers expect more control over their data, government bodies are requiring privacy changes to account for these expectations and companies around the globe are thinking about how to still reach their audiences with relevant content. And as a result, we’re seeing an evolution in b-to-b digital advertising. Some of you may feel uncertain about how to navigate the changes—that’s normal. But, we’re here to reassure you that we’re in it with you, and we’re eager to help you continue to reach your business goals with privacy front and center. We think of this as a privacy-first approach to b-to-b digital advertising, and it builds on our members first principle that guides the development of all of our solutions.” Shrivastava concluded, “Reinventing b-to-b digital advertising is not simply about what we can do today, but rather considering how we look to the future. And we know that figuring out what is best for b-to-b marketing is a journey—a journey that we’re excited to take with all of you. We’ll continue to share more as we keep testing, discussing and iterating the future of identity for b-to-b.”