How LinkedIn Is Bringing B2B Marketing To Connected TV

In the first episode of Big Brains, Media Cartographer Evan Shapiro sits down with LinkedIn VP of Product & Business Development Lee Womer to unpack how the world’s largest professional network is redefining what B2B advertising looks like—on LinkedIn and far beyond it. From data-driven targeting on connected TV to the evolving role of partnerships in a privacy-first world, Womer shares how LinkedIn is helping brands reach decision-makers wherever they are, with greater precision and purpose.

Evan Shapiro: Tell me about your role at LinkedIn.

Lee Womer: At LinkedIn Business Development, we work with partners in the ecosystem who provide data that help us power our products, help us distribute our products, and might have products that are adjacent to ours where we need to make our workflow work better. And so for me personally, I oversee our partnerships in the marketing and sales space.

So think about any company that helps us deliver our ad products or our sales products to customers. And so at LinkedIn, every single impression we serve, basically every dollar we earn in the ad industry in one way or another, is enabled by a partner, whether that's companies that help customers manage their campaigns or reach customers on third party sites or measure their ad spend.

My team oversees all those partnerships.

ES: How do you how do you describe LinkedIn as an ad environment? Is it a B2B, B2C? Is it a social media platform? Is it a networking platform? I see it as a weird hybrid of all those things. I use it as a social media platform as my top of funnel marketing platform. But how do you look at it as an ad environment?

LW: Yeah, so fundamentally it starts it's a professional network. And so the content on LinkedIn is professional. The network part is important basically, and we provide an environment where users can find trusted professional content. Now for advertisers, that's a really attractive place to be.

We do have some B2C business, but it tends to our main focus and where we think we really have sort of the most unique play is in the B2B space. And so our main focus is B2B advertisers, and we think we're providing you really a unique platform for that.

ES: I totally agree with that, which I find fascinating. And then I've really kind of just started to track is as part of your role in partner development and business development is to create these opportunities on connected talent. So you've done partnership with Roku, with NBC, if I'm not mistaken. How does LinkedIn play on television?

LW: Yeah. So at LinkedIn, we have a billion profiles on on site. And those billion profiles, the billion members who put their information on LinkedIn profiles. They put things like title and their company, their industry. We can we can infer seniority from that. And when you think about it, that's really valuable information to a B2B marketer.

And so we have created a CTV offering that allows advertisers to reach audiences on third-party publisher sites. You mentioned a few of them NBCU, Paramount or some other ones, and really tell their story in an immersive way to professionals that are maybe not not at work, not not in front of a computer screen, but in an environment where they're, you know, they're consuming media and and and they're sort of we're able to capture their attention and help brands capture their attention.

ES: And so you're using your data stack and the information you have about your users to create an opportunity for brands to go through you, track the consumer on LinkedIn and then go all flow all the way through your partnerships to a Roku, to a Peacock, to a Paramount Plus or a Pluto.

LW: Yeah, that's right. And I would probably use the word target. So it's less about yes, less about tracking. We're very focused on privacy at LinkedIn, but when you think about it. So one of the things we've seen is that brand advertisers, first of all, the the B2B sales cycle is very long. So in any B2B sales cycle, you tend to have 68 decision makers can take can take three months or sorry, three quarters. It can take as headquarters, it can take eight, nine months easily if you're buying a CRM. B2B advertisers, we have seen that when they engage their audiences throughout that process, they see better outcomes. 

ES: To just what typically happens. You'll be watching television and you'll see a B2B ad run in the middle of a football game or a tennis match. And I sit there and I go, Well, obviously this is a B2B and maybe they're reaching me, but they're also reaching so much waste on top of that.

LW: So that's why if you think about just to take an extreme example and build on your example. So why are there no B2B ads in the Super Bowl? Well, because those spots are extremely expensive and 100% of the audience can buy a. To see product like Coca Cola. So a B-to-B advertiser who's looking to get their story out can't compete economically on those traditional forms of media.

So if you apply LinkedIn audience targeting, you can actually target based on some of those attributes i mentioned. You can target i.t decision makers who might be in the market for a crm and actually allow advertisers to get their story out in a way that makes the economics work.

ES: And you connect your data stack to the Roku or Paramount+ or peacock data stack, and suddenly you're reaching just mid-level managers who are making certain decisions.

LW: Yeah, exactly. So those platforms pass us an identifier and then advertisers come to the LinkedIn ad platform and target the use LinkedIn targeting as an overlay to reach the individuals you want. That could be the segment you mentioned.

ES: How long have you been at LinkedIn?

LW: I've been at LinkedIn for over 12 years. So yeah, I started. I helped in the very early days of the company. I helped form the corporate development team that does M&A. I moved into partnerships and at one point or another I've pretty much overseen partnerships for every part of the company. And right now the marketing and sales businesses are a big focus and there's really interesting work to do.

ES: Yeah, and how do you see your partnership practice and the practice of marketing using your products and then integrating them to other products out in the world? How do you see that changed over the last couple of years and then convert that? How do you see change coming in the next, let's say, 12 months?

LW: It's a time of incredible change in our industry. And so, you know, I mentioned at the outset, but, you know, our our advertising products are heavily dependent on partners and sort of every part in the stack that's been that's been a constant and I think has only become more so over time as as we've sort of evolved our capabilities to offer more functionality to customers in terms of what the future holds. I mean, that's a hard thing to predict. I think change is the one thing that is pretty likely to happen. And the data.

ES: I feel like we as an industry need to. But you know, you use examples like you've just demonstrated and it feels like we are getting better with the use of data to eliminate waste and you know, and to collaborate around data to that. That seems to be a relatively new ad.

LW: Yeah, we are. And I mean, I think that there's there's a bunch of countervailing forces. I mean, companies are getting more sophisticated with their use of data. The technology is advancing. There's also sort of an evolving environment in terms of regulations and privacy. The thing that I think is, you know, it's it's the partner ecosystem that we've built. I think the important thing is that in these times, being tightly integrated and deeply connected to players in the external space is really key to remaining agile because it's it's hard to what I was alluding to earlier, I do think it's it's hard to predict exactly how all of those just tectonic forces are going to play out. But if you're deeply connected and with with the broader ecosystem, you're constantly gaining insight. You're well positioned to evolve the solution as those dynamics evolve.