LinkedIn Launches Accelerate Innovations and The Wire Program

LinkedIn today introduced the Wire program, offering in-stream video sponsorships in the LinkedIn Feed and a slate of new objectives for LinkedIn Accelerate, its automated B2B campaign creation experience.

The Accelerate innovations include the following:

• An integration with Microsoft Designer to help users build and customize creatives and campaigns. To get started, users describe what they’d like to see or upload their own images. From there, Designer lets them choose from multiple options with varied imagery and text overlays.
• New ways to bring data into Accelerate to enhance targeting and refine and influence the audience their campaign reaches with AI. With Accelerate, users can bring together data, like customer lists or conversions, with LinkedIn's platform data to find people who are more likely to take action with the ad campaign. To further refine campaign targeting, users can also layer in targeting exclusions, like company and third-party lists.
• Conversational assistance through the AI marketing assistant that allows users to ask questions, like "How do I build better ad creatives" to gain insights on how to improve campaigns. The assistant can also provide recommendations, like adding a data source to help inform targeting, and perform tasks like adjusting budgets.

LinkedIn's new Wire program, which is being piloted with a number of leading publishers, offers in-stream video sponsorships in the LinkedIn Feed.

"With 75 percent of U.S. adults spending up to two hours a day watching short-form video content, and video uploads on LinkedIn increasing 45 percent year-over-year, we're testing a new initiative that allows you to promote in-stream video ads alongside trusted publisher content," Lindsey Edwards, vice president of product management at LinkedIn, wrote in a blog post. "Knowing that U.S. viewers will spend 55 minutes more each day with digital video than with traditional TV, aligning your brand's message to publisher content in a format that resonates with buyers will support memory recall when it's time to buy. Once you identify and align with one of our participating publishers, you can log into Campaign Manager to run self-serve in-stream video ads on LinkedIn. Your ad will run ahead of the publisher's video content on our feed, which is measuring 99 percent brand-safe."