About B2Linked
Founded in 2014 by AJ Wilcox, B2Linked is a specialized agency focused exclusively on LinkedIn advertising. With over a decade of experience, B2Linked has managed more than $200 million in LinkedIn ad spend across a diverse client portfolio ranging from small businesses to enterprise-level companies. The agency maintains a local US-based team with AJ serving as the strategist across all accounts.
B2Linked’s mission is to identify and optimize every use case where LinkedIn ads can deliver exceptional results. Their expertise stems from AJ’s background running LinkedIn’s largest spending ad account prior to starting the agency.
The Challenge
Digital advertising is rapidly evolving and B2B marketers must constantly seek more effective targeting methods to reach decision-makers. While LinkedIn offers robust targeting capabilities through job titles, company size, and industry parameters, it can’t intelligently serve ads based on research stages or buyer intent. To enhance the performance of a LinkedIn advertising strategy, an intent data solution must be integrated into the approach.
The B2Linked team wanted to answer a critical question: Does pairing Intentsify’s data with LinkedIn’s standard targeting features create more efficient ad spend and a better experience for the target audience? If so, by how much, and is the improvement significant enough to recommend as a best practice to clients?
Testing Approach
B2Linked designed a systematic test for a Data-as-a-Service client comparing Intentsify’s intent data against LinkedIn’s native targeting capabilities. The experiment was structured to create as close to an “apples to apples” comparison as possible.
Test Structure:
- 13 Total Campaigns: 8 using only LinkedIn-based targeting and 5 using LinkedIn plus Intentsify’s intent and audience data
- Consistent Creative: All campaigns used the same video and static image creative
- Identical Bidding Strategy: Same bid amounts and strategy across all campaigns ($.20 video views and $10 lead form click bids)
- Retargeting Uniformity: All audiences were retargeted with the same assets (a case study and checklist)
LinkedIn Targeting Parameters:
For the LinkedIn only campaigns, the targeting parameters were kept consistent.
- MarTech industry segmented by company size (1-200 employees and 201+ employees)
- Further divided by relevant job titles and member skills
Intentsify Implementation:
For the Intentsify + LinkedIn campaigns, a consistent process was also used.
- Exported active intent accounts and buying group contacts from Intentsify
- Manually uploaded these lists to LinkedIn’s predictive audience builder
- Applied the same job title and skill targeting filters as the LinkedIn-based campaigns
- Achieved over 90% match rate when uploading intent data to LinkedIn
Pro Tip: Match rate on LinkedIn directly impacts the size of your targeted audience and the effectiveness of your campaigns. A high match rate means more of your uploaded data can be matched to LinkedIn member accounts, leading to a more precise audience. Best practice for a company matched audience is over 75% match rate. In the test, Intentsify’s data had over a 90% match rate.
Results
The test revealed several noteworthy performance differences between the two targeting approaches:
Video Engagement Metrics
When comparing the video view rates for 25 – 100% completion, the Intentsify + LI group had a more engaged and active audience. The video view rate indicates the percentage of viewers who watched a video ad to a specific duration. The cost per view was also cheaper in the Intentsify + LI group ($0.83 cheaper for 100% video completion compared to the LinkedIn only group.)
This indicates that the audience identified by Intentsify’s intent data was both more engaged in the video, and it cost less to get that engagement.
Video View Rate
Cost Per View
Lead Gen Cost and Engagement Rate
The Intentsify + LI group also saw a significantly lower cost per lead (CPL), and higher conversion rate (CvR), and link click through rate (LCTR).
Audience Behavior
- Dwell Time: Intentsify audiences showed longer average dwell times with the ads on screen (Average 5.25 seconds vs. 5 seconds)
- Engagement Quality: While cost per link click (CPLC) was slightly higher with Intentsify, the overall engagement quality was superior
Efficiency Metrics
- Budget Efficiency: Intentsify campaigns used approximately half the budget while delivering superior performance
- Audience Precision: Intentsify targeted 113,000 people versus LinkedIn’s 336,000 (roughly one-third the audience size)
Pipeline Impact
- Deal Quality: LinkedIn targeting influenced more pipeline opportunities overall for the test client (which makes sense considering the audience is larger, so spend was higher), but Intentsify targeting influenced higher-value opportunities.
- Average Deal Size: $150,000 for Intentsify-influenced opportunities versus $91,000 for LinkedIn-influenced opportunities
Key Takeaways
- Attention Quality: Intent data targeting delivers audiences that pay significantly more attention to content as evidenced by video completion rates and dwell time.
- Audience Efficiency: Intent data enables reaching smaller, more focused audiences, reducing wasted impressions and maximizing budget efficiency.
- Higher-Value Opportunities: Intent data targeting appears to influence higher-value deals.
- Implementation Considerations: Intentsify data showed excellent match rates (over 90%) when uploaded to LinkedIn, making implementation relatively straightforward.
Conclusion
The test demonstrates that intent data from Intentsify can deliver meaningful performance improvements over LinkedIn’s standard targeting capabilities. By focusing on accounts showing active purchase intent, advertisers can engage more attentive audiences and potentially influence higher-value opportunities.
For B2B marketers looking to optimize their LinkedIn advertising strategy, incorporating intent data is a valuable approach. To learn how, download the guide, How To Enhance Your LinkedIn Ad Investment or reach out for a demo.
Note: This case study is based on a specific test conducted by B2Linked. Results may vary depending on industry, offer, creative, and other factors.
