Why Use LinkedIn Conversation Ads?
With the start of the new quarter around the corner, advertisers are looking for new ways to get their audiences to engage with their brand. While LinkedIn has always been a hot spot for B2B marketers to showcase their brands, the release of the new Conversation Ads Beta gives LinkedIn marketers a brand-new set of tools to engage their audience even further on the platform!
Conversation Ads act like a chatbot within LinkedIn’s sponsored ads giving advertisers the opportunity to set up to 5 call-to-action buttons within a message to allow their audience to engage with multiple offers in one ad unit. Using multiple pieces of content and offers in one message allows the user to engage with the content they want, whether it be a whitepaper download, an event registration, or anything in between. While this is great from a user experience, this also gives the advertiser valuable information on where customers are in their journey and can guide the next steps in how to keep them engaged as they continue down the funnel.
Since Conversation Ads utilize multiple responses based on what CTA buttons the user clicks, advertisers can quickly move leads down the pipeline by asking qualifying questions and collect lead data through associated lead gen forms. Along with collecting lead data, conversation ads also help marketers gain a deeper insight into their target audience through click reporting allowing them to see which specific offers and pieces of content their audience enjoys and give insight into how engaged the users are with the conversation.
How Do Conversation Ads Compare to Other LinkedIn Ads?
When talking about conversation ads it’s important to understand how this new ad unit compares to other LinkedIn units, more specifically how it compares to Sponsored Content Ads and Sponsored InMail.
Comparing Conversation Ads to Sponsored Content Ads is a little difficult since the two use different cost structures and have different benchmark performances. While Sponsored Content Ads use a straight CPC cost structure, Conversation Ads have an additional Cost Per Send (CPS) to send the message to your audience. While this additional cost makes the new ad unit more expensive than sponsored content ads when calculating your cost per lead, the trade-off is a higher CTR and a lower CPC. Since implementing Conversation Ads in May for one of our clients, we have seen CTRs for conversation ads as high as 16% and CPCs as low as $1.82. When compared to sponsored content ads which saw an average CTR of .48% and CPCs that were on average $10.23.
Because Conversation Ads and Sponsored InMail ads use the same cost structure of cost per send and CPC benefits of conversation ads become even more apparent. For the same client, we compared the results of their previous InMail campaign to the conversation ads we started in May, and conversation ads outperform in almost every metric outside of open rates which stayed consistent. When testing conversation ads against InMail messages we have seen click to open rates increase from .67% for InMail messages to 16.12% for conversation ads along with a 98% lower CPC.
Conclusion
Conversation Ads have not been around very long, and the product is by no means perfect regarding reporting. But, the ability to provide multiple offers in a “choose-your-own-adventure” style chatbot is just the tool marketers need to stand out in the ever-growing digital landscape. Overdrive is excited to see how this product evolves as new features and reporting metrics are added in the future.
