LinkedIn Ads Campaigns – AI-powered ‘Accelerate’ feature rolling out, promises to make ads campaigns faster and more efficient for marketers.
Microsoft and Google are in an ongoing battle for AI dominance. We’ve already seen the rivalry of Bing vs Bard, Copilot vs Duet, and significant funding going into AI development, such as Microsoft’s US$10 billion investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Google’s $300 million investment in AI firm Anthropic. As the clash continues, Microsoft is extending AI into its business network advertising platform, LinkedIn Ads.
LinkedIn has already rolled out AI-powered writing suggestions to help users create social posts. Recruiters on the platform have also noticed several tests for AI-created job descriptions and other features throughout the year. Now, LinkedIn is addressing marketing campaigns with its Accelerate AI-powered ads creation tool.
Why Is LinkedIn Focused on AI?
In 2016, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for US$26.2 billion. The business networking platform has continued growing since then, boasting 950M+ members globally (as of October 2023).
We’ve already seen Microsoft betting big on AI, already integrating it into Office365 products, its Windows operating system, and the Bing search engine.
The company’s social media platform is now the next product under the Microsoft umbrella to get the AI treatment.
On 04 October 2023, LinkedIn announced it was releasing its new “automated B2B marketing campaign creation experience powered by AI”, called Accelerate. The company aims to help marketers create advertising campaigns on LinkedIn faster and more effectively by using AI and data-driven insights to deploy and optimise targeted campaigns.
Why is LinkedIn focusing on ad campaigns? Vice President of Product at LinkedIn, Abhishek Shrivastava, explains, “We know that 84% of marketers believe artificial intelligence (AI) will support them with their work, and saving time in the campaign creation process is a great place to start.”
How Will the Accelerate Option Work?
LinkedIn released Accelerate to a limited number of users in North America starting on 04 October 2023 and says it is rolling the functionality out to users in Australia, North America, and India in the coming weeks.
Once Accelerate is available in your account, you will see a new option when creating your campaigns. Within LinkedIn Campaign Manager:
- When selecting your campaign objective, you will see an option asking if you want to use Accelerate or LinkedIn’s classic experience to build your campaign (if Accelerate is available).
- You’ll be asked to provide the URL for the product or service you’re advertising.
- LinkedIn will use AI analysis of the URL, your company page, and prior LinkedIn Ads to recommend a campaign.
- The LinkedIn advertising platform will build the audience and creatives for you, letting you tweak images, copy, and targeting.
The company also plans to make Accelerate available globally in 2024.
Why Marketers Should Use the Accelerate AI Tools
The speed of campaign setup is an attractive drawcard, especially for marketers managing LinkedIn Ads Campaigns in-house. LinkedIn says it’s aiming to save marketers time with Accelerate features.
Faster Campaign Setup – LinkedIn says the creation and targeting of campaigns and creatives will be faster and more efficient with the new AI tools.
Ad Placement Automation – the platform aims to provide the most effective ad placements throughout the LinkedIn network to help get your content seen.
Platform-Driven Optimisation – LinkedIn will analyse the best way to deliver ads to the right audiences and optimise delivery for you.
Automated Performance Summary Reports – LinkedIn aims to help you understand campaign success and think more strategically about future campaigns. The company says that Accelerate’s Automated Performance Summary will “show you performance metrics, including spend, cost per key result, impressions, and clicks, and campaign trends, like the top audiences engaging with your campaign based on industry, job title, company and location.”
Shrivastava notes, “AI is changing how we do our jobs, and our work doesn’t stop here. We’re excited to continue putting AI tools in the hands of marketers to help improve productivity and campaign performance.”
Aussie marketers should keep an eye out for the new Accelerate options under their LinkedIn Ads Campaigns account in the coming weeks.
