I recently ran two ads, one LinkedIn Adson Facebook and one on LinkedIn and the results couldn’t be more different.

LinkedIn now has their own Pay-Per-Click advertising called DirectAds.   You may not have even noticed the ads and that’s part of the problem.

Linked in has 3 types of ads, Banner Ads, Media Box ads and DirectAds.  You can access the DirectAds feature by going to the More menu at the top of your LinkedIn screen.  The Banner ads and Media Box ads are for larger budgets ($25,000+  wooheee a little rich for my blood!).

Here’s where the PPC ads appear in LinkedIn.  Did you miss them?  I know I have.

 

LinkedIn-ad-location

But I got a coupon from LinkedIn for $100 of free advertising.  So I thought, “What the heck, I’ll give it a try.”

I created two similar campaigns in Facebook and LinkedIn.  Unfortunately I couldn’t replicate them exactly because I was advertising an Event in Facebook and just advertising a sales page in LinkedIn.   The sales page and the Facebook event had the exact same wording.  I was advertising a Facebook Bootcamp event in Denver and limited my geographic target to only the Denver area.

When it came time bid for my clicks on LinkedIn, I was given a recommended bid of a staggering $4.23/click!  That click better be good!  I went with their recommendation and ended up paying $3.25/click.  Still a pretty penny.

Facebook ads recommend a $1.25/click bid which sounded still high but better than LinkedIn.  I ran both ads for about 3 days and here are the two results:

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn ad

 Facebook:

Facebook Bootcamp adI know the Facebook ad results are a little hard to see, so here is a chart:

 

Facebook LinkedIn
Impressions 212,632 70,679
Clicks 74 23
Average Cost per Click $0.31 $3.25
Total Spent $65.09 $74.78
Conversions 7 0

 

Winner? FACEBOOK!!! I don’t know who you think you are, LinkedIn, charging $3.25/click but you better deliver some good value at those prices.  And I just didn’t see it.