LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions Team recently announced the official release of its native conversion tracking for Sponsored Content and Text Ads. The new conversion tracking is built in and will measure the number of leads, sign-ups, content downloads and purchases generated from individual campaigns and creative. Businesses and B2B marketers now have the ability to analyze conversion performance and adjust statuses, budgets and bids accordingly.
LinkedIn only requires businesses to insert one tag that applies to their full web property that can then be customized to track unique actions, similar to Google Analytics. There are seven metrics that can be tracked on LinkedIn; Conversions, Post Click Conversions, View Through Conversions, Conversion Rate, Cost Per Conversion, Total Conversion Value, and Return on Ad Spend.
What’s unique about LinkedIn’s conversion metrics is that unlike most major social networks, it breaks out View-Through and Post-Click metrics into separate percentage columns instead of combining them all into one calculation labeled Total Conversions. This provides businesses and advertisers with unique insight to help them better understand average conversion times and delayed conversions compared to direct responses.
The business-centric social network’s tool won’t only tally how many people saw or clicked on an ad and eventually did something on an advertiser’s site; it will also cross-reference those converters with its own audience data. What most differentiates LinkedIn’s conversion tracking from other Social Media sites is that it offers better insights about which ads work better for specific types of people, through the use of “audience segments.”
LinkedIn still has a way to go before catching up with things like add-on’s compared to other platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Pinterest. Still, this highly anticipated release is a big step in the right direction for businesses and advertisers to gain information about audience, understand campaign performance, and the impact of their ads on LinkedIn.
