LinkedIn Privacy-Friendly Ad Targeting Options for B2B Brands 2023

LinkedIn has announced some updated ad targeting options, as it works to align with evolving privacy regulations, while still providing optimal reach options for brand partners.

First off, LinkedIn’s expanding its Group Identity audience targeting option to all ad types.

Originally launched with selected partners last year, Group Identity enables you to target your ads based on LinkedIn data points.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“With Group Identity, we’re leveraging our first- and zero-party data, such as title, seniority, industry, interests, etc., to help you reach buying committees, measure your campaign performance, and optimize towards the objectives that matter to your business.”

So you’re essentially putting more trust in LinkedIn’s system to get your ads in front of the right people, based on first-party attributes, as opposed to honing in your audience targeting through more specific, manually selected qualifiers.

And it could be effective - LinkedIn says that Group Identity based campaigns have seen a 37% higher average click-through rate on group-delivered campaigns across channels.

Again, it puts more trust in LinkedIn’s automated targeting and reach focus, but it may be worth considering once it’s available in your ad set-up options.

LinkedIn’s also testing more ways to integrate your first-party data, via an updated Conversions API, which will enable advertisers to feed their conversion data direct into LinkedIn’s system.

“We’re also continuing to invest in privacy-enhancing technologies, such as clean rooms, to enable you to gain actionable insights and advanced measurement in a secure environment.”

Finally, LinkedIn’s also launching On-Device Experimentation for its Brand Lift and A/B Test tools, which will enable ‘randomization and attribution to be processed via a virtual device’, providing another way to assess ad performance while also maintaining user privacy. 

Like all platforms, LinkedIn has been faced with various challenges on the data privacy front, from EU data provisions to Apple’s iOS tracking update, coming shifts on cookie tracking, etc.

Within this, LinkedIn’s working to evolve its tools to suit the modern market, and these new solutions will add to its expanded offerings to help maintain ad performance.

You can read more about LinkedIn’s latest targeting updates here.