LinkedIn Ad Network based on a Real High Margin Demographic
By Azam on September 15, 2008
LinkedIn is the social network for professionals. The number shows the demographic of users are lucrative segmentation of high salary 100k professionals. LinkedIn is an ingenious way to promote yourself and network online with similar professionals. The site acts as an online profile with personal resume on the web with varying levels of access that allows users to build personal network for simply keeping in touch and useful in developing opportunities. As a result, LinkedIn is highly valued by advertisers willing to pay higher rates to target users of the network. LinkedIn announced launching its own Ad network and with Collective Media, network of high end media content sites.
TechCruch reported on the higher rates LinkedIn is able to achieve trough the demographic.
LinkedIn’s rate card shows display ads starting at $30 CPMs and going up to $76.50. Text ads range from $12 to $20 CPMs. Even with the regular discounting from the rate card that many advertisers might receive, LinkedIn is still doing much better than most social networks. That is because it has a more desirable audience that advertisers want to reach.
LinkedIn claims 27 million registered users. According to comScore, 5.2 million from the U.S. visited the site in July (8.7 million worldwide). LinkedIn claims that the average household income of its members is $110,000, 64 percent are male, the average age is 41, and 49 percent are decision makers. (In contrast, the average Wall Street Journal reader, according to LinkedIn, makes $102,000 per household, is 48 years old, and only 40 percent are business decision makers).
LinkedIn is moving on an interesting direction beyond in selling ads on its own site targeted by industry, seniority, company size, geography, gender, and number of connections. Recently, LinkedIn has been partnering with various content partners such as the Businessweek, CNBC, and the New York Times. Now, LinkedIn seems to further expand partnership to other site such as through Collective Media to further monetize the LinkedIn demographic.
LinkedIn previously rumored to be valued at $1B price tag. It would be hard to determine the value, but LinkedIn as a social network is in a better position to capitalize on a better demographic than most including MySpace and/or Facebook with a larger and more diverse demographic more representative of Mtv generation demographic. LinkedIn has carved out for itself a very nice demographic that is proving to be very attractive and able to generate revenues in more certain terms. LinkedIn expects revenues will reach $100 million in revenue in 2008
LinkedIn has raised a total of $80.5M and most recent $ 53 series D was lead by Bain Capital and included Sequoia Capital, Greylock , and Bessemer Venture Partners. Previous rounds, LinkedIn raised $27M: $12.8M Bessemer, $10M Greylock, and $4.7M from Sequoia.
Tags : Ad Network, Collective Media, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Social networking