LinkedIn ‘Matched Audiences’ allows advertisers to use their own first-party data to target users on the professional social network.

LinkedIn has launched a new set of targeting capabilities called ‘Matched Audiences’, designed to give advertisers the ability to combine LinkedIn’s data with their first-party data.

Matched Audiences is designed to help advertisers engage key accounts, prospects, and audiences and bundles together three new capabilities:

• Website Retargeting: advertisers can create target audiences from their website visitors to nurture them with campaigns.
• Account Targeting: allows marketing to influencers and decision makers at an advertiser’s target accounts. Advertisers can upload a CSV list of company names and match it against the nearly 12 million company pages on LinkedIn. This supports an advertiser’s account-based marketing programs by reaching decision makers at the target companies.
• Contact Targeting: by uploading a CSV list of email addresses those users can be targeted on the platform if the email address they use on LinkedIn is the same. This feature also shows the beginning of LinkedIn’s integration efforts, in that it can currently connect directly to Marketo, Oracle Eloqua or LiveRamp to import lists of contacts, with other integrations being explored.

LinkedIn says it has conducted an “extensive pilot program” that delivered high ROI and lowered costs. 370 participating advertisers and 2000 active campaigns delivered above-average performance compared to product benchmarks.

Matched Audiences is available for all LinkedIn advertising products, including LinkedIn Sponsored Content, LinkedIn Sponsored InMail, and other ad formats.

The new offerings, particularly ‘Contact Targeting’, is similar to Facebook Custom Audiences in that it allows the uploading of spreadsheets of an advertiser’s first-party data in order to target those or lookalike segments.