The introduction of Lead Gen Ad by LinkedIn brings an offering that compete head to head with Facebook Lead Ad, which was introduced back in 2015 after copied taking reference from Twitter. Ironically, the sunsetting of Twitter Lead Gen Card was due to lack of product development, thereby go into a vicious cycle of lack of demand for the Twitter offering.

As one of the key B2B social channels, instead of doubling down their Lead Gen Card by making it more compelling to B2B customers (e.g. with more flexibility in customisation of fields and layout), Twitter sunsets their product offering that was viable and promising. Facebook has since enhanced their Lead Ad offering as Lead Ad works well when executed correctly. This has certainly gotten the attention of LinkedIn to join in the party.

So how does LinkedIn compare with Facebook Lead Gen Ad?

Being a B2B marketer who have run both LinkedIn Lead Gen Ad and Facebook Lead Ad, here is my two cents:

1. LinkedIn Lead Gen Ad did perform better when compared with LinkedIn Sponsored Updates.

In the B2B marketing space, it is known to all that LinkedIn Sponsored Updates is not cheap, with Cost Per Click hovering around $5-10. Form conversion hovers at 3% while Cost Per Registration can be at staggering cost of $150 to $300. However, with Lead Gen Ad, we are bypassing the landing page which improves the conversion rate tremendously, resulting in Cost Per Registration to be 2 to 3 times lower, at around $60-$100. As compared to Facebook, LinkedIn's precise B2B targeting is lacking of scale and inventory, which leads us to the next point.

2. LinkedIn Lead Gen Ad cost is considerably higher than Facebook.

This is based on the campaign we had run on LinkedIn. In a typical Facebook Lead Ad, the Cost Per Registration of $10-$40 is achievable.

However, with the saturation of ads and increase of competition among B2B and B2C, it is likely that the Cost Per Registration on Facebook Lead Ad will increase.

What's next for Programmatic?

With both LinkedIn and Facebook taking a piece of the pie from B2B advertising budget, what is left for Programmatic media? Programmatic advertising has been notorious for high Lead Generation Cost, especially in B2B space, with the single notion that banner is not a good Lead Gen mechanics. So what's better? With HTML5, banners can be developed into form capturing banner ads i.e. Lead Gen Form Ads. The thing with Lead Gen Form Ad is that it is difficult to develop as it requires coding, databases, form capturing and more. Does Lead Gen Form Ad sounds like a great deal? If you are interested to give it a try, Enzymic offers Lead Gen Form Ads customisation (no coding required, just setup and run). Check out the sample here.

Lead Gen Form Ad is here to stay and we at Enzymic expects Lead Gen Form Ads to improve B2B lead generation efforts. In next few posts, we will illustrate how to build an end to end user journey comprising of different content ads and lead gen tactics.