LinkedIn has expanded its interest ads targeting by adding over 120 new Product interest options and a range of new Service interest targeting categories to help marketers to hit the right audience.

LinkedIn has expanded its interest targeting

LinkedIn Ads Blog

“We’ve broadened our interest targeting offering to include 20+ new service interest attributes and 120+ new product interest attributes.”

Advertisers can now choose from over 400 professional interest categories across sectors such as financial management, cybersecurity and business technology.

LinkedIn has done that to help you engage professional audiences with campaigns that match their professional interests.

LinkedIn Ads Blog

“If you’ve created content featuring your product or service solving a problem, targeting adjacent interests means you’ll deliver your ad to the people it will appeal to the most.”

Expanded interest ads will also help advertisers who use account targeting with interest targeting to reach more potential buyers.

What is interest targeting?

For those who are unaware, it’s probably time for a quick explainer as to what it actually is. Interest targeting lets marketers turn content and engagement into advertising that reaches B2B buyers with messages that match their professional interests.

“Interest targeting can help you shape brand perception among professional audiences by aligning your brand with the topics that they care about.”

Don’t forget about account targeting

LinkedIn also offers account targeting, which is different from interest targeting. Account targeting lets advertisers target ads by professional demographics so you can reach people who make buying decisions.

Account targeting ads match your content against 13m+ LinkedIn pages and help drive more qualified leads by guiding decision-makers along their journey – says LinkedIn.

“You can use account targeting with interest targeting to reach an audience of potential buyers who have already expressed or are likely to express, an interest in the content that’s relevant to your business.”

To create an effective account targeting campaign, you need to:

1. Prepare a list of target companies.
2. Upload your list in LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
3. Integrate a LinkedIn Audience Partner.

How does LinkedIn advise using interest targeting?

But, that’s enough about account targeting. To get started with interest targeting, LinkedIn suggests that you pick the right interest for your campaigns. Start by seeing what content is doing well on your LinkedIn Page or your blog and then think about how you can transfer that into a successful campaign.

There are three ways you can use interest targeting in ads:

General Interests

General interest targeting includes a range of categories, such as arts and entertainment, health, marketing and advertising and more. Advertisers can select these categories, and then drill down to specific interests within each sector for better ad targeting precision.

Product Interests

Product interests could be very useful for marketers who know there is a group of people out there already waiting to learn more about their product.

“You can target buying committee members by the product they’re searching for and asking questions about on the LinkedIn platform.”

For example, for a software-focused advert, there are 18 categories to choose from, each with its own subcategories that hone in on specific aspects. 

Service Interests

Service interests are LinkedIn’s newest category. Services Pages have become very popular since their launch in 2021 – in fact, there has been a 120% growth in Service Page visits in two years.

“You can leverage these activities and the LinkedIn Economic Graph to create more tailored campaigns and reach members interested in the services you provide.”

Marketers have 20 pages to choose from including real estate, application software development and environmental consulting.