• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

With its new ad formats, LinkedIn is focused primarily on boosting B2B marketers’ brand awareness throughout the funnel via high-attention placements, AI-powered tools and expanded personalization.

With “Reserved Ads,” LinkedIn is attempting to help marketers highlight their brand story for as many users as possible.

The new placement type puts a brand’s ads in the first ad slot on the platform's home feed within a range of dates and times meant to give the brand’s “message premium visibility and consistent delivery,” per the company’s announcement.

Reserved Ads cover all LinkedIn ad formats, including video, image and document ads. According to CMO Scorecard results, LinkedIn suggests that brands invest in high-attention ads in order to receive brand recall and higher response rates.

With post and video engagement higher than ever among LinkedIn's 350 million active monthly users, LinkedIn hopes that solidifying a top-of-feed ad placement -- specifically video-oriented -- could help brands not only maximize consumer exposure but user engagement.

LinkedIn is also introducing ad personalization options that allow brands to tailor ad copy to individual users via their first names, job titles, industries and company names.

Citing McKinsey's finding that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, LinkedIn writes that these personalization options will adapt brands’ creative to whichever user is seeing the ad.

Brands will also see the addition of generated “on-brand creative from a single seed input,” such as an existing headline or intro.

LinkedIn's AI system will deliver “multiple ready-to-use versions” of an ad that can be refined in Campaign Manager, the company explains.

Focusing on automation, LinkedIn will also begin rolling out “flexible ad creation” in the coming months, inviting marketers to upload multiple assets -- “up to four images, four videos, or four copy variations” -- and let the system automatically mix, match and optimize combinations across their campaigns.