LinkedIn announced today the availability of programmatic buying for its display ads, giving data-driven marketers advanced opportunities to target more precisely and with more efficiency.

“This means you can now work with your preferred buying platform to buy highly visible ads that help you reach and engage the right buyers and build your brand in the premium context of LinkedIn,” commented the Head of Products for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Russell Glass. “Our goal with programmatic buying is to give our customers more flexibility in how they work with us, and expand the ways we can partner to meet their marketing goals.”

LinkedIn says that you can purchase programmatically through either an Open Auction or via LinkedIn Private Auctions. They also note that “If you’re already buying programmatically, Open Auction is the fastest way to buy LinkedIn Display Ads programmatically.” The Private Auction provides marketers more targeting options.

When using your own first or third party data like website visitors and CRM contacts, our Private Auction offers the ability to explicitly target LinkedIn.com as a placement. As another option, the Private Auction can leverage our proprietary member persona targeting features (e.g., target “IT decision makers”) if you don’t want to use your own first or third party data.

We support majority of the demand-side platforms (DSP’s) and agency trading desks (ATD’s). We currently have more than 4,000 premium brands enabled to run across our site to ensure customers can buy through the one that is best suited for their business.

“Accessing LinkedIn programmatically has given Essence access to quality inventory, at scale, while allowing us to monitor performance in-house, in real time. Not only can we efficiently reach our desired target audiences–such as SMBs; we’re able to leverage our own tools, leading to high viewability and performance across LinkedIn,” stated Agatha Isabel, Programmatic Media Planner, Essence.

LinkedIn has two targeting options for programmatic buyers:

Learn more about LinkedIn programmatic ads here.