If you thought retargeting ads were already creepy, be prepared for them to get even creepier.
Recode reports that LinkedIn announced new ad products today, including one type of ad unit that can reach LinkedIn users on websites other than LinkedIn.LinkedIn Network Display, the name of the new ad product, lets users buy ads through LinkedIn to be displayed on other sites around the web.
With these ads, marketers can target specific groups of LinkedIn users on the network, and then use cookies to continue targeting those same users with ads as they leave the network to browse other sites.
If you fall into the particular group of people that an advertiser is targeting, you could theoretically have the same ads following you from LinkedIn to everywhere else you go on the web.
This sounds a lot like an ad network, but the company has taken the Facebook route of calling it an “audience network” — with the difference being advertisers are targeting specific groups of people rather than specific websites.
Where Facebook uses personal data to target ads, LinkedIn will be using professional data. Some partner sites where LinkedIn will be selling ad space so far includes CNN and Weather.com.
Another advertising tool was launched by LinkedIn today called a Lead Accelerator, which is an algorithm designed to figure out which ads to serve to which users.
First it determines where a particular LinkedIn user is in the buying process, then the Lead Accelerator will automatically serve the most relevant ad to that user in an effort to push them further towards a purchase.
