The news: LinkedIn is giving more advertisers the ability to target connected TV (CTV) ads using its trove of first-party data through an integration with Google’s Display & Video 360 (DV360).

Advertisers can plan their CTV buys in DV360 with LinkedIn’s information on professional audiences, including job titles, industries, and levels of seniority. The offering is primarily meant to help B2B marketers reach decision-makers when they’re watching streaming content.

Why it matters: Breaking down the walls between social media and CTV lets marketers follow audiences through a fragmented media landscape. Even if social media platforms are able to acquire rich first-party data on consumers, such as personal interests and behaviors, marketers can easily lose users' attention when they turn on their TVs.

US adults spend more than 13 hours a day hopping between different types of media and platforms, per our forecast—using social data to power CTV ad targeting helps bridge this fragmentation. Personal preferences gleaned from social media can be paired with relevant streaming data to facilitate a better ad buy. For instance, marketers using LinkedIn’s data can reach audiences who work in the sports industry while they’re watching a football documentary—content they’re more likely to be engaged in.

Implications for marketers: LinkedIn’s CTV expansion to DV360—one of the largest demand-side platforms (DSPs) by market share—will increase ad land’s appetite for using social data to inform streaming buying. Expect other social platforms to follow suit for B2C marketing. Meta is already in the game thanks to its CTV apps, as is YouTube, and closed-loop measurement is becoming a competitive advantage as these offerings mature.

The rise of second-screen viewing—which we expect 81.2% of the US population to engage in this year—may initially seem like an obstacle to CTV, but it will be an opportunity for savvy marketers who can coordinate their campaigns across streaming and mobile. Viewers may also be scrolling social media and can therefore be reached using the same data that’s powering CTV ads. Feeding streaming data back into the mix makes the marketing connection between these two environments truly bi-directional.

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