LinkedIn has acquired B2B ad tech company Bizo in a deal costing approximately $175 million. 
This acquisition comes after Facebook bought LiveRail and Twitter purchased TapCommerce recently. These moves by social networks are aimed at bolstering their ad reach beyond the boundaries of their websites.
Bizo enables B2B marketers to post ads to professional target audiences across the web. Bizo is integrated with marketing automation platforms and also has a database that will help marketers target by company, industry and functional area parameters. Bizo helps marketers nurture prospects at every stage of the buying funnel through targeted content and supports precise and measurable multi-channel marketing programs.
Bizo’s targeting capabilities coupled with LinkedIn’s large professional network can help B2B marketers improve performance of multi-channel campaigns.
LinkedIn’s acquisition of Bizo was closely followed by the launch of a new feature, Direct Sponsored Content (DSC), which will help marketers reach out to specific audiences with more personalized content.
DSC is an extension of LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates. DSC enables marketers to publish sponsored content to their LinkedIn homepage feed without posting it on the Company Page. DSC can be viewed by page administrators on the Company Page but it will show only for those users who fit the target criteria specified for the campaign. The launch of DSC will allow marketers to target and engage with the right members of the target audience using more personalized content.
Earlier, with Sponsored Updates, marketers had to post content to their Company Page. If they wanted to test an ad, they had to repeatedly post ads on the Company Page to measure the audience’s reaction. It was very likely that users would get irked by this. Marketers collected a mix of organic and paid results and could not measure the performance of posts accurately.
DSC now allows marketers to optimize content according to the preferences of specific consumers and conduct A/B tests across audience segments.
Will LinkedIn’s acquisition of Bizo achieve the desired results? Can Direct Sponsored Content (DSC) contribute to LinkedIn targeting and personalization capabilities?
Image Source: Bizo
