Bold Choice

There is someone who sells advertising space on LinkedIn who scored a real coup.

LinkedIn's approach to advertising is a bit different from most websites. Given that LI is basically just another social media platform, advertisements are just another post, albeit a "sponsored" one. So rather than being special modules that have to be dropped into a page (and ad-blockers can detect), the ads look just like anything else in people's feeds.

Given this, I'm curious how they are targeted, because I've seen this ad pop up in my feed a few times recently. (This is another side effect of LinkedIn ads being posts on the site... one can link to them directly...)

To be sure, management types are just as likely to use LinkedIn as anyone else. But most companies, especially large ones, are going to have more individual contributors than managers, so one wonders if LinkedIn is really the right place for a spot that comes across as anti-labor. Especially given the number of people who use the site primarily to look for their next job. Of course, this may be why comments are turned off for the post. But people can still repost this into their own feeds. The one repost of this ad, was, unsurprisingly, critical of it.

Many businesses need to advertise their services; this being how they inform people that their services are available. And it's understood that advertising is something of a crapshoot.  After all, John Wanamaker is reported to have said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” But I suspect I know which half of the advertising budget this spot would up in.