• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 29, 2019

LinkedIn’s pending purchase of Drawbridge for an undisclosed fee is intended to help marketers better measure the return on investments of advertising and marketing campaigns running across mobile and desktop.

Tomer Cohen, vice president of product at LinkedIn, announced the deal in a Marketing Solutions blog post. He wrote that the goal is to help “customers better reach and understand their professional audiences.”

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions revenue grew about 46% in the past year, according to Cohen.

“We believe Drawbridge’s team and technology will allow us to accelerate the capabilities of our Marketing Solutions platform,” he wrote.

Cohen expects that following the closing of the transaction, LinkedIn will continue to give marketers the controls they need to manage the data they choose to use on the platform.

Ad spend on LinkedIn is expected to increase by 26% in 2019, according to analysis from InfiniGrow, an AI-driven marketing planning optimization platform.

The uptick, per the data, is driven by the introduction of video and live video, the redesigned LinkedIn Campaign Manager and the addition of interest targeting.

Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for an estimated $26.2 billion. LinkedIn has made four known acquisitions since then. In October 2018, the company reportedly paid $400 million for Glint, which helps organizations increase employee engagement.

Apparently, Drawbridge began dumping some of its assets early last year. In May 2018, Drawbridge sold the company’s managed services business to Gimbal, a first party data powered marketing and advertising platform.

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, a former AdMob scientist, launched Drawbridge in 2011. Over the years, the company received the majority of its $70 million in capital funding from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.

Adobe, Excelate, LiveRamp, Oracle, Salesforce, and The Trade Desk are some of the integration partners that Drawbridge lists on its website.