LinkedIn Joins the Bandwagon; Offers Carousel Ads For Sponsored Content

After Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn Lets Brands to Customize Ad Content Through Carousel Ads

It’s a little late to the party, but LindkedIn has managed to improve its ad offerings with the addition of carousel ads for Sponsored Content. This adds to LinkedIn’s ad suite, which includes sponsored video ads and lead gen ads offering.

Using as many as 10 cards (only images, no video offerings yet), brands can tell their story and interact with their target audience. Carousel ads allow brands to add texture to their stories by featuring multiple visuals that audience can horizontally swipe through on the LinkedIn feed.

In his blog post announcing the Carousel Ads, Rohan Rajiv, Product Manager at LinkedIn informs, “Native carousel ads are the next step in the continued evolution of LinkedIn Sponsored Content to help you humanize your B2B marketing efforts and foster a deeper connection with your audience.”

Also Read: LinkedIn Launches Beta Program with Video for Sponsored Content

With LinkedIn Carousel Ads, brands can:

1. Tell a complete brand story:
   In a single carousel ad, you can feature a swipeable series of up to 10 cards, and you can customize each card. With this additional space, you have the flexibility to share more of your content and create higher-quality interactions with your audience. With carousel ads, you can tell a deeper story, showcase multiple offerings at once, feature a single offering in depth, and share industry insights.
2. Command the attention of a professional audience:
   Because carousel ads are interactive and have eye-catching visuals, they stand out in the newsfeed. Your stories become tangible and encourage your audience to engage with your brand on both desktop and mobile. Behind every decision-maker is a real person – and carousel ads let you show off your brand’s personality, which draws your audience in and helps them connect with you.
3. Drive results for all your business goals:
   Carousel ads make every stage of the buyer’s journey count by adapting to your marketing objectives and allowing you to raise brand awareness and consideration, send traffic to multiple landing pages, or seamlessly generate quality leads with Lead Gen Forms.

Also Read: Sponsored Data Can Evolve to Take Mobile Marketing Beyond Facebook & Google, Says Strategy Analytics

Rohan adds that since the beta launch, over 300 advertisers, like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, RBC, and Volvo Canada, have used carousel ads “to create fun and informative campaigns to tell stories about their company, products and services, industry, and more.” The blog post also claims that 75% of beta advertisers said they will use carousel ads in their next Sponsored Content campaign, largely due to seeing increased engagement and click-through rates.

“LinkedIn is an ideal platform to reach our target audience, and the carousel ad unit allows us to showcase multiple chapters of our story and offer a richer user experience,” says Pamela Marchant, VP Brand & Creative, RBC Global Asset Management.

Also Read: Oracle’s Moat Is Now a LinkedIn Partner for Video Viewability and Analytics

Conor Henry, Digital Marketing Executive, TitanHQ adds, “We decided to test LinkedIn carousel ads to drive conversions on our site; what resulted was a high CTR and the opportunity to visually showcase more of our content…we will definitely be implementing Carousel Ads to a broader audience in the near future.”

Rohan continues, “Marketers understand that success depends on the ability to prove ROI. In addition to the standard metrics, like click-through rates and number of leads, you can measure for an ad unit; you can also see clicks and impressions by individual card. We currently offer downloadable reports, and we’ll be adding reporting directly in the Campaign Manager tool in the coming months.”

Carousel for Sponsored Content is now available to all businesses.

Recommended Read: The Rise of Video: LinkedIn B2B Video Now Available for Native Ad Campaigns