The Power of LinkedIn -

LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, this past Thursday made it first big foray into advertizing technology through the launch of a global display advertising network. LinkedIn, with its 347 million registered users in 200 countries posseses a great deal of information on its members and is looking to capitalize on the that vast treasure-trove of data.

LinkedIn has decided to partner with AppNexus to deliver ads based on LinkedIn data not only on LinkedIn's site and apps, but also has plans to leverage its network of 2,500 of other business-focused websites. The potential here is quite impressive and should be viewed as a great opportunity for LinkedIn. The lead product behind this initative is LinkedIn Lead Accelerator:

"[it] allows brands to place a pixel on their websites, which uses cookies to identify LinkedIn users so advertisers can get a better understanding as to the types of people visiting. LinkedIn says that currently, most website owners only actually know about 5% of their visitors, and that LinkedIn Lead Accelerator fills in that gap. Advertisers can then retarget those visitors with ads (with different messaging, depending on the different parts of the website they visited) on other websites and outside of LinkedIn across the new LinkedIn Network Display, which is powered by AppNexus."

According to LinkedIn, they view this as a B2B advertizing as a $50B and I believe this entry is in-line with their core competencies and as long as the user informaiton remains annoynmous, it should hopefully be acceptable to its current users. LinkedIn has ambitious goal in the B2B space (an internal memo indicates they plan to make this a $1b business by 2017), and with a clear stataegy, they are well on their way.