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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Let's be honest: when it comes to creating a successful brand, Apple is an undoubtable leader.  No matter how much criticism the brand sometimes faces for the prices of its tech innovations, Apple still knows how to create worldwide anticipation for its latest product releases, as shown with their recent #AppleEvent and announcement of the much anticipated iPhone 12.

Apple has truly become the gold standard for product marketing but what can you learn from the successful brand? How can you implement their winning formula to your own day-to-day marketing strategies? Read this post for more.

Complicated marketing strategies and campaigns with information overload can overwhelm customers and prospects; this is something you want to avoid because Apple certainly has. From early on, the Apple brand has understood that simplicity is key when communicating its products to its audience. 

In Apple's marketing strategies, you won't typically find a lot of voice-overs, special effects, long product feature lists or colourful graphics that distract from the actual product being marketed.  Rather, Apple choose to use ads and marketing copy that is simple yet straightforward, giving way for their products to do all the talking instead. If you want to incorporate this aspect into your own marketing, keep it simple - leave out the special effects that make it difficult to focus on your product, and use graphics and content that easily translate the message you are trying to bring across. 

One thing you hardly see Apple engage with is the pricing of their products. No matter how many people think they are higher than their competitors, Apple doesn't budge because they focus on selling their unique value proposition - creating high quality, innovative products that are an experience from the moment you open the box. 

Tip: Use a media intelligence platform to stay ahead of your competition.

With this in mind, Apple has also managed to focus on creating unique customer experiences that other competitors simply cannot replicate.  From features to applications and the overall Apple ecosystem that works harmoniously to create a seamless experience across all of its products, Apple knows how to make customers feel like they are getting value for money. For brands wanting to do something similar, simply focus on what makes your brand unique.

It's not just a product; it's an experience

To elaborate on the previous point of creating unique customer experiences, this is something that Apple has done really well. From their 1984 Super Bowl ad, to their annual #AppleEvent, it's not just about the products. It's also about creating experiences for the customer that are memorable and give them a reason to keep coming back. 

An important part of creating a memorable customer experience lies in using the art of storytelling to create these experiences that connect with customers and audiences through the sensors. It's the high-quality images that draw your eye when you see an Apple ad, or the feel of the products you get when you're in an iStore. This all helps immerse customers in an experience that doesn't necessarily feel like you're shopping for just a product but rather for something that excites you and will continue to excite you long after you've made the purchase. 

Knowing how to speak to your audience in a language that they understand is important for creating meaningful connections with your audience, and encouraging more sales for your business. This is where doing your research into who your audience is or having a Consumer Insights tool to help gather this information, will greatly benefit you. 

You want to avoid using terms, phrases and explanations that will confuse or overwhelm your customers. Instead, be like Apple and take the time to fully understand your audience, how they talk about your brand online and the features or products they mention in these conversations. Learn to listen to what your audience is most interested in and use the language they use to better communicate with them. 

One of the ways that Apple has managed to create such loyal customers to their brand is thanks to their ability to reach out and connect with their customers through emotions. If you think about the Apple ads and visual marketing material that you see, it shows people happy to use their products, that they are having a good time using the iPhone or Macbook. Apple highlights this in their marketing efforts more often than focusing on the battery life or screen size of their products. 

To follow Apple's lead, create visual content that primarily appeals to emotions, such as happiness or enjoyment. You want to incorporate these emotions into your content because the more you do, the more likely that your customers will share it with others to increase brand awareness. 

Use strong, visually appealing content that is emotionally charged and speaks to your audience in a language that they understand, and you will be on your way to creating a marketing strategy that is as top-class as Apple's.

5 Things to Learn from Apple's Marketing Strategy

2020 came with many changes and one thing that marketers have had to adjust to was the increase in online behaviour and social media usage among audiences. While the overall global social media consumption has increased this year, brands and marketers within the Middle East have had to take a more localised approach, given how different regions present different social networks, languages, cultural expectations and a number of other barriers that marketing teams to overcome.

For emerging markets, like the Middle East, creating a visible online presence and having a strong social media marketing strategy may seem tough for global brands because what consumers want from brands in these markets is different to what consumers want in a different region. So, what do brands need to know about social media marketing within the Middle East? Read on for a quick guide to help you.

Tip: Learn more about media in Saudi Arabia.

Understanding the culturally diverse audience

No social media marketing strategy is complete without a full understanding of one's target audience, and for brands and marketers in Dubai and the Middle East, you need to understand the cultural diversity of the region and listen carefully to the social conversations taking place in order to understand what your audience is talking about, what social media platforms they are using to talking about these topics, and the language and terminology used. This is going to be critical for you to better inform your social media marketing strategies and the way in which you choose to engage with your audience. 

Marketing professionals in the region may know that consumer preferences vary greatly within the Middle East, that online conversations and consumer behaviour differ between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and so on. However, they have very few tools to accurately measure the differences in online behaviour.

This is where having a consumer and audience insights tool will help brands and marketers with their social media marketing strategies. Once you have an understanding of the different audience groups that are talking about your brand within the Middle Eastern region, you are better equipped to use a social listening tool that can monitor the conversations they are having on social media platforms and give you insight into how to better use social media to market to them. 

Another challenge that brands and marketers may encounter is speaking and engaging with their target audience in their own language. The top two languages most frequently used in the region are English and Arabic, with almost half of social media users in the Middle East using Arabic as their communication language. However, Arabic is the fastest-growing language on Twitter, with a majority of social media users in countries like Saudi Arabia using Arabic to communicate. What should this tell you? 

That whether you're searching Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for conversations around your brand, or wanting to get a glimpse of the demographical information of your consumers talking about important conversations that you can get involved in on social media, you are going to need a monitoring tool that is capable of not just providing accurate data and insights, but can give you the story behind the numbers using Arabic Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis within the monitoring tool. This way, you can easily monitor your social media branding success.

Did you know? Meltwater's interface is now available in Arabic!

Creating content that speaks to your audience

Given how Arabic is the primary language that social media users use to communicate online, it's important to then include the Arabic language when creating content for social media. By doing this, you will show your audience that your brand cares about their preferences and that you are willing to engage with them in the language that speaks to them.

Whether that is responding to customer questions on Twitter, tackling their concerns on Facebook or acknowledging their feedback on forums, show your audience that you are willing to be different and talk to them in their language. 

Outside of language, brands should also create content that speaks to audiences in the region during traditional and spiritual holidays, such as Ramadan, where social media users spend about 2 million more hours daily on Facebook during Ramadan while on YouTube, TV dramas see a viewership increase of 151% during Ramadan. When creating content for social media in the region, make sure that you include important local nuances in your strategy to continue showing your audience how much you care about what matters to them. 

These local nuances don't necessarily have to be exclusive to festivals and holidays but can also include trending topics within the Middle East. Take Ford, for example, who celebrated the lift on the ban of Saudi Arabian women driving. The news was well received and widely celebrated from Saudi Arabian women and supporters, and Ford created a striking ad to show their solidarity with the decision. 

This is an example of a brand creating content localised to what was happening in the region. You want to tailor your content to suit the market and build a relationship that is long standing and increases customer loyalty. Even though the Middle East is still experimenting with various marketing methods, the key to unlocking the potential that content marketing has in the region is to really pay attention to your audience and have the right toolkit to help you speak to them. 

According to a survey, 94% of in-house marketers in the UAE believe that social media influencer marketing plays an large role in the success of their brands. With a massive opportunity for international expansion and business growth in terms of UAE consumer spend, the region requires brands and marketers to use distinctly different digital strategies to those implemented in North America and Europe in order to stand out. This means shifting from traditional advertising approaches towards influencer marketing.

Research from YouGov Omnibus and BPG Cohn & Wolf states that 49% of brands in the region are currently working with influencers, and for brands still looking to operate in the region, one key consideration to make is ensuring that you work with the right influencers to bring your brand message across to local audiences.

Tip: Take a look at more UAE social media statistics.

The success of influencer marketing and campaigns lies in understanding that the key to seeing positive results from using this marketing strategy on social media lies in effectively combining inspiration with the right visual content and emotions that feel familiar to local audiences and customers.

Popular Middle Eastern influencers, such as Huda Kattan  and Joelle Mardinian do well with influencer marketing because they provide their followers with a global, yet local context through the way they visually share their content and position themselves to their audiences. From sharing modest photos to showcasing the latest beauty and fashion trends, what these influencers do is come across as culturally authentic – which will resonate best with social media users in the Middle East. 

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For brands, this means ensuring that you pick the right influencers to work with your brand who have the same, or a similar, ability to provide your target audience and customers with content that is global, yet local in its context. Social media feeds have become saturated with content from a growing number of influencers yet according to Trust Insight, engagement rates for Instagram influencers declined in 2019. With consumer becoming more aware of the commercialized approach of influencer marketing, brands wanting to use this marketing method on social media need to ensure that they have the right influencers with them. 

There is great potential in the Middle East for brands who are looking to make their mark in the region. Social media provides a platform to not only learn more about your customers, but to speak to them in a way that can encourage engagement and foster customer loyalty. With the right social media strategy in place, as well as having the right monitoring tools, connecting with your audience online and seeing success with your social efforts are well within your reach.

A Quick Guide to Social Media Marketing in the Middle East

With a user base of over 700 million people in 200+ countries, LinkedIn isn’t a social media platform to be overlooked. This is a fact that B2B businesses have known for years, which is why so many companies have been investing time and effort into perfecting their LinkedIn marketing strategy. Now, B2C businesses are starting to pay more attention to the social networking platform as it begins to adopt features, like hashtags and stories, found on other platforms.

So, whether you’re a small business, working in B2C or working in B2B, LinkedIn has a place in all marketing strategies. Not only can brands reach highly targeted audiences when using LinkedIn for business but doing so also has a positive impact on recruitment, brand credibility and positioning. 

If you’re yet to create a LinkedIn marketing plan, or you’re wondering how to use LinkedIn for business, you’ve come to the right place. During this post, we’ll offer a step-by-step guide to getting an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy off the ground, plus a few tips to help with daily LinkedIn management!

Think about your LinkedIn marketing goals and objectives

Create a LinkedIn content marketing strategy

Consider the best time to post and optimum post frequency

A business profile establishes your public image on a global scale and helps your organization seem more reputable and trustworthy. The first step towards creating a LinkedIn marketing strategy is setting up a LinkedIn company page. When building a LinkedIn company page, page admins have access to a number of features including:

Having the option to list any open positions at your business 

Having the ability to create specific pages for products, services, and events known as ‘LinkedIn Showcase pages’

Being able to create a career page, which assists marketing teams with telling their company’s story and engaging with prospects, customers and talent

Having the option to run targeted LinkedIn ads that support wider sponsored content advertising campaigns from your business profile

Not sure how to go about setting up a LinkedIn company page? You can find out here. 

Once the marketing team has created the business page, next they need to optimize it by adding all the relevant company information and media. LinkedIn states that a company page with a complete profile gets 30% more weekly views, so it’s important not to overlook any fields if you want to increase the chances of getting in front of your prospects, customers and prospective employees. 

Take a look at this resource which offers tips to help you get the most out of your company page, including crafting a strong company description and how to use the right keywords to make your LinkedIn profile SEO friendly. We’ve also detailed the correct image sizes for media uploaded to the network below.

What are you setting out to achieve with your LinkedIn marketing strategy? If you, as a marketer, don’t have clear strategic goals in mind, it can be easy for you to focus on the wrong things. Typical LinkedIn marketing goals include brand awareness, website visits, job application infills, engagement and lead generation. Once you know what your strategic goals are, you can put the right objectives and tactics in place and ensure you stay on track. 

Following on from the above, your profile goals and objectives will also influence the messaging of your content marketing strategy. When the time comes to start to post on your profile, it’s important not to jump straight in without understanding the type of content that works on this specific channel. Like all social media networks, messages should be made relevant to that network’s user intent, LinkedIn’s algorithm, the platform’s image dimensions etc. With this in mind, consider the following when building your content marketing strategy and let this guide your status updates.

Unlike Instagram, LinkedIn isn’t the place for memes or sharing pictures of your freshly baked banana bread, it’s also not the place for giving a running commentary of your favorite Netflix show like most do on Twitter. Instead, user intent, regardless of whether it’s inside or outside of business hours, comes from a professional place and your messages need to reflect this. 

This channel is where most Fortune 500 decision-makers and c-level executives like to spend their spare time, which makes it a perfect channel for B2B marketing pros. It’s also where people develop (professional) social relationships, collaborate with like-minded people, represent their company, or seek new business opportunities. Taking this into consideration, content that tends to work well on the platform include:

Behind the scenes clips of a standard day in the life of your team

Original long-form content, like articles

Insights on the latest trends and predictions

Tips, tricks, how-to’s and lessons learned

Pages that post weekly see a 2x lift in engagement, but for the best results, LinkedIn advises posting daily to establish a connection with your audience.

When it comes to the best time to post, that really depends on when your audience is active, as such, the time varies from company to company. There are of course moments in the week that are hotspots for driving engagement, like lunch hours and while commuting to and from work. As HubSpot explains, even though there isn't a one-size-fits-all for the best time to post, marketers have found success on LinkedIn by posting Tuesday through Thursday, typically between the hours of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Use this as your foundation and A/B test different times throughout the week. Make sure to document your engagement so you can identify the pockets throughout your audience’s day where they’re most active.

Check out our blog about when to post on social media for more detailed insights.

You can spend months crafting a well-structured strategy, but as soon as you post an image that isn’t optimized for the network’s image sizing, you’ll look like an amateur. To help save you any embarrassment, we’ve curated key LinkedIn image dimensions to use when posting. If you’re interested in sizing for other channels, check out our Full Guide to Social Media Image Sizes for 2021 blog.

This image will appear right next to your company or brand name on your LinkedIn homepage. This image also appears in the “Companies you may want to follow” section, so the more enticing and high quality this image is, the better to attract your target audience to your company page.

Personal image types are limited to JPG, GIF or PNG

Cover photos take up the entire top space of the company page. The cover, or header image, will appear larger than the personal dimensions, which gives companies a bit more space to showcase themselves.

Cover photo image types are limited to JPG, PNG or GIF

This photo is where you can provide a more in-depth look at the day-to-day experiences of your company’s staff. The hero photo also sits as a banner at the top of your company page and is usually larger than other LinkedIn photos.

Image file types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF.

This is the company or brand image that appears when you are being searched, and because it is a smaller size, you want to make sure that the photo you use is still recognizable and eye-catching to your target audience or potential job candidates.

Image file types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF

This image resolution works for LinkedIn posts that share a photo or contain a link to a blog post or news article that has a photo.

Shared image or link phototypes are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF

These types of images are more prominent to use because they appear whenever a user visits your company page. With this image located on your homepage, it is a great way to engage with your user, who has most likely been actively searching for you. 

Usually set to a landscape layout. Image file types are limited to PNG, JPG or GIF

Tip: Remind your marketing team that creating great content is a journey and not the destination. You should constantly be striving to improve and become more relevant while increasing engagement. Looking at your LinkedIn company page analytics and adjusting content based on insights will significantly help here.

Large and cool brands tend to have the luxury of a big following, but if you’re a small business, you’ll likely need to work harder to build your follower base – here are our tips to do just that!

Like most social networks, LinkedIn has an algorithm in place that sifts through hundreds of thousands of posts shared on the network each day with the idea of serving users with content that’s more relevant to them. While you can’t ‘hack’ the algorithm as such (it updates on a regular basis, just like Google), the social media giant has nodded to actions that are favored by the algorithm. In particular, they live by the mantra “people you know talking about things you care about.”

‘People you know, talking about things you care about’
 Engaging with your connection’s content is vital for boosting your profile’s visibility via the ‘people you know’ priority. In addition to this, the more people you engage with from the same company, the better, as this signifies a genuine relationship. 

For the ‘talking about things you care about’ part, LinkedIn explains, “there’s a lot of sophistication that goes into understanding a good conversation. As a rule of thumb, better conversations are authentic and have a constructive back and forth.” Taking this on board, we’d recommend you avoid generic comments like “great idea,” “nice,” etc., and instead asking questions or sharing an opinion when you engage with your community’s post. 

Any successful marketer will tell you the more you mix it up with still images, video, links etc – the better! Videos in particular tend to stand out better in the feed, helping your brand get noticed. In fact, video content is 5 times more likely to start a conversation than any other content type, and posts with images get twice as many comments as text posts. To help ensure a healthy mix of media types, use a content calendar. Most social media management tools come with built-in content calendars, but if you’d prefer to create one from scratch, you can learn how to create a social media content calendar in 7 steps here!

It goes without saying, if someone takes the time to comment on your company page, it’s only polite that the brand replies. Obviously, this can be difficult for large brands with high engagement, and not every comment warrants a reply, but your marketing team should aim to reply to every thoughtful question, contribution, and complaint. Not only does this help drive higher feed visibility, but members are also more likely to follow a company page that actively engages its community. If you keep ignoring your audience, eventually, they’ll start ignoring you back.

The algorithm rewards engagement — especially posts that inspire conversations. And the faster your post starts raking in the interactions, the more likely LinkedIn is to include it in the feeds of others. So ask questions, tag companies/ prospects/ customers, use keywords strategically, and include relevant hashtags!

LinkedIn advertising helps businesses of any size achieve their goals. Whether your goal is lead generation, brand awareness, or event registrations, LinkedIn ads can help. 

LinkedIn advertising is extremely useful for B2B MarCom pros running account-based marketing campaigns since the network holds a vast amount of information about audience’s working lives. For example, you can target LinkedIn ads based on job title, function, industry and more to ensure you reach the people who matter most to your business. Not only this, but 4 out of 5 members drive business decisions, which makes LinkedIn ads even more attractive to those working in the B2B space compared to, say, Facebook ads that are more geared towards B2C than B2B.

Below we’ve listed some of the different types of LinkedIn ads you can run to help meet your LinkedIn marketing strategy goals more quickly. 

The platform’s sponsored content feature allows you to run native LinkedIn ads in the feed across desktop and mobile. Sponsored content ads come in different formats including single image sponsored content ads, video ads and carousel ads. Before choosing your ad type, take a look at this sponsored content best practice tip sheet. 

This particular ad format allows you to deliver direct, one-on-one-native ads to your target audience's direct message inbox. Lots of marketing pros prefer to use this format due to interactive features like lead gen forms and automated calls-to-actions. Sponsored messaging LinkedIn ads come in two different formats, conversation ads, which let you start quality conversations with your audience through a choose-your-own-path experience, and message ads, which allow you to send direct messages to your audience to spark immediate action.

Text ads take an easy, self-service, pay-per-click (PPC) ad format and take minutes to set up. Once your text ads are live, read this useful guide to optimizing text ads so you can improve your results and expand your marketing and ad campaigns to attract more of the right customers.

How to Build A Successful LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

There are few forms of online advertising today that are as ubiquitous and effective as display advertising.

If you’re looking for a way to reach new customers with your online marketing efforts or want to improve your existing display marketing efforts, you’ve come to the right place. 

We’re breaking down what online display advertising is, the benefits (and potential challenges) of display ads, ad examples, measuring advertising success, and much more.  

Benefits & Challenges of Display Advertising

Types of Display Advertising (and Display Ad Examples)

Online display advertising is a form of online keyword advertising that promotes a brand message visually using text, logos, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Digital advertising displays target specific user demographics to increase the ads’ effectiveness and overall campaign success. 

Display ads can help you promote your business when people are browsing Facebook, watching YouTube videos, checking Gmail, or using mobile devices and apps.

According to Google, the Google Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide, across millions of websites, news pages, blogs, and Google sites like Gmail and YouTube.

The success with display ads all comes down to targeting the right user at the right time with the right message. When done right, your brand can build brand awareness, drive clicks and traffic to your website, increase conversions and sales, and encourage repeat buyers.

There are several benefits of display advertising, but here are a few of the most compelling benefits:

Measurable results: Advertisers can track important metrics (impressions, frequency, CTR, etc.) from start to finish. This allows you to continually improve your ads as you go.

Advanced Segmentation: Advertisers can hyper-segment their campaigns with a wide range of audience demographics and options.

Precise Remarketing: Advertisers know that remarketing can be one of the most powerful tools in the conversion toolkit. Display remarketing campaigns allow you to reach relevant potential buyers with personalized content.

Mobile Friendly: Advertisers can reach the hundreds of millions of people that browse the internet on their mobile device. Display ads are formatted perfectly for a mobile screen, which helps to increase overall success rates. 

Currently, the biggest challenge that advertisers, brands, and marketers face relates to the continued reliance on third-party cookies and the fact that various web browsers are looking to crack down in the coming months.

Banner and display ads are everywhere online - so much so that users might not even notice them anymore. That’s known as “banner blindness” and it is a very real phenomenon in which users automatically tune our banner ads online.

For brands and online marketing professionals, banner blindness makes it very important to experiment with different types of display advertising. The most effective types of display advertising campaigns fall into three buckets:

Campaigns focused on increasing familiarity and brand recognition with the goal of increasing future sales and affinity.

Campaigns focused on getting users to click or engage with display or banner ads with the goal of generating sales.

Campaigns focused on targeting users that have interacted with your ads or visited your website in the past with the goal of improving conversion rates.

Now that you now a but more about display campaigns, you might be asking yourself: what kind of display advertising options are there? Given all of the advertising noise online, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the various types of display advertising to help optimize the effectiveness of your marketing.

Here are a few ad options that your brand can start experimenting with today (examples in the next section):

Google Display Network and Google AdWords (Google Ads)

As mentioned briefly, the Google Display Network is a group of more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. According to Google, Display Network sites reach over 90% of Internet users worldwide.

Google AdWords now known as Google Ads, provides brands and marketers with access to both the Google Search Network and Google Display Network (GDN).

Google Search Network is the most common, well-known form of PPC advertising. With the Google Search Network, your ads will be eligible to appear on Google SERPs (search engine results pages). 

Google Display Network (GDN) gives advertisers the opportunity to place their ads on a variety of sites across the internet.

Interstitial ads have become a mainstay in the era of the mobile phone.

Interstitial ads are full-screen ads that cover the interface of their host app or website. They're typically displayed at natural transition points in the flow of an app, such as between activities in a game.

When an app shows an interstitial ad, the user has the choice to either tap on the ad and continue to its destination or close it and return to the app. Check out this example from Google:

During Google Marketing Live 2019, Google revealed that three 6-second bumper video ads were 107% more memorable, and generated 134% more purchase intent than a single 30-second TrueView ad.

Obviously, a video display ad is an ad in a video format. But in advertising terms, “video ad” typically refers to ads on online digital channels such as social media, YouTube, apps, and websites.

For example, Swiss clothing brand On runs in-stream video ads on YouTube promoting new product lines. The beauty of in-stream video ads is that they are charged on a per view basis, meaning you don’t have to bid against other brands: 

Google’s Dynamic Remarketing will create ads for you that include your price, image, and text of your choice, all based on the behavior of your website visitors. Mobile SMS provider, Attentive, uses Google Dynamic Remarketing ads on major publications like The New York Times to target recent visitors to their website:

Dynamic remarketing helps you build leads and sales by bringing previous visitors back to your site to complete what they started. 

We’ve been talking a lot about Google, but Facebook has a ton of value to offer advertisers at every stage of the funnel with their Facebook Audience Network. 

 According to Facebook, the Audience Network gives publishers and developers the option to choose between three different ad units: banners, interstitials and native ads. All three ad units have access to the same great targeting and advertisers, since the ads are automatically rendered to fit the unit you chose.

Of course, with a robust display advertising strategy, you’ll also want to know how your ads are performing and how to improve them over time.

Here are several key display ad metric analytics that you’ll want to measure:

Impressions: Impressions are when a display advertisement appears on a user's screen.  Impressions are not action-based - they are defined by a user potentially seeing the advertisement. This makes impression-based advertising ideal brand awareness campaigns.

Click-through rate (CTR): Click-through rate, or CTR, is an advertising metric that measures the number of clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions.

Views/viewers: There are several important metrics to consider when it comes to measuring video ad success. These include:
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Conversion: An action that's “counted” when someone interacts with your ad. For example, this might include clicks to your website or views of a video ad. However, that interaction must lead to a desired outcome (such as a purchase or a page view) as a result of the advertisement.

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