Behind LinkedIn’s B2B ad strategy on NBC’s streaming ecosystem

LinkedIn will start serving ads into NBC’s connected TV ecosystem, including Peacock, as part of a broader push into streaming video advertising, the networking platform announced on Thursday. LinkedIn and NBCUniversal revealed they were working on an advertising partnership, which gives business-to-business brands a pathway to connected TV inventory with targeting that uses LinkedIn’s first-party data. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs LinkedIn will also tap into Paramount, Roku and Samsung Ads, which advertisers can buy programmatically in real-time, biddable auctions. The NBC streaming inventory is sold at a fixed cost per thousand impressions, so advertisers reserve those slots differently, according to Penry Price, VP of marketing solutions, LinkedIn, who spoke with Ad Age about the new connected TV ad tech. “You can buy the audiences that you’re targeting on LinkedIn, you can target those same audiences on these various CTV platforms,” Price said. “So IT decision-makers, CFOs across the United States, of companies of 500 people or more. The usual way that we work is very different from all the other platforms, we want to bring that capability over to CTV.” LinkedIn planned an event called B2Belive in New York City on Thursday to showcase the streaming TV ad partnerships. The deal with NBCU is part of an ad offering called LinkedIn Premiere and the marketplace with Paramount, Roku and Samsung Ads is part of an offering called LinkedIn CTV Ads. Advertisers can use LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, the self-serve ad platform, to reserve inventory on NBC’s programming at a fixed rate or bid on auctions to extend campaigns to the other partners. The LinkedIn advertisers will have access to the “entire suite of digital streaming content that exists within the NBC portfolio,” said Dominick Vangeli, senior VP and general manager of advanced advertising, NBCU. “Our partnership will start off in the scatter marketplace.” The scatter marketplace is the reservoir of ad inventory that NBCU does not sell directly during the upfronts and other long-term negotiations. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, has some digital video ad products already, but has not had a way to reach connected TV yet. On connected TV, ad space is often more valuable than digital and social channels, and LinkedIn’s data is finely tuned to reach professional audiences. Many of LinkedIn’s advertisers are in the B2B space, in market for a highly targeted group of corporate decision-makers. “We’re bringing B2B advertising on the big screen at this point in time where historically it probably wasn’t,” Vangeli said. “And if you think about it, traditional linear television, with one-to-many delivery that went across the country the B2B audience segments can tend to be naturally smaller, and it might have been cost prohibitive to run on television.” Connected TV is expected to generate more than $29 billion in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer, up 17% from 2023. Digital advertising also is in the middle of a shift as brands look for new sources of data to target and measure ads amid the changes to the ad ecosystem. Google is deprecating cookies, which were the old way of tracking consumers online, and Apple has already locked down its ecosystem from sharing granular data with marketers. That makes first-party data of the sort LinkedIn is deploying to target ads to connected TV more valuable. “[LinkedIn] is sitting there with a billion professionals globally and on our side we've got 200 million individuals domestically,” Vangeli said. “Like we know that we can drive scale when we layer those data sets and those universes against each other.” LinkedIn was already tapping into third-party NBC sites on the internet, but this is its first foray into the streaming side, LinkedIn’s Price said. LinkedIn will use iSpot and Kantar as measurement partners, Price said. “We’re going to be able to truly understand brand lift, things like that, as well as true measurement in the traditional way of looking at video measurements and CTV measurement,” Price said. As for NBCU, it owns Peacock, its premiere streaming property that is partly ad-supported. Advertisers are increasingly buying into connected TV using programmatic technology, Vangeli said. “Our programmatic business has been up 50% year over year,” Vangeli said. “And we design programmatic to fit into a high-quality user experience ecosystem, which is not what people think of when they think programmatic, right, they think remnant inventory, poor ads, and we've done actually the opposite.” Now that inventory will be open to LinkedIn’s B2B ad base, and the partnership also comes amid upfront season and the digital NewFronts. The upfront sales pitches, between networks and buyers, started last month, and digital ad group IAB will host NewFronts on April 29 to May 2. Upfronts and NewFronts blog Tracking the latest TV and digital ad pitches Read more here

Behind LinkedIn’s B2B ad strategy on NBC’s streaming ecosystem

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