With all of the recent updates in Google Ads, you may have missed that there have actually been some exciting recent updates in the LinkedIn platform as well.

Let’s take a look.

Hidden Fields in Lead Gen Forms

These new fields allow you to create and track additional fields in your Leads reports for third-party marketing automation software. These fields will not be visible to members you are targeting and are for reporting and testing purposes only. It’s impotant to know that these hidden fields don’t capture any member data.

When setting up a new form, you’ll now see an option to add Hidden Fields. You can add up to 20 fields per lead gen form.

Note that in order to use this feature, you’ll need to create a new lead gen form, this will not be accessible on existing forms. You can also use this feature if you aren’t using third-party integrations.

For reporting on these new fields, you’ll see a field name as a column title in your Leads report as well as a value assigned to the hidden field for every lead generated from that form.

Automated Bidding for Sponsored Content

LinkedIn has had auto-optimization settings for campaigns for a while now. They just released an additional automated feature: automated bidding. You can now select automated bidding, which will charge you by impression.

The counterpart to automated bidding, maximum cost per bid (CPC/CPV/CPM) allows you to specify the maximum amount you’re willing to spend for your desired action. LinkedIn also recommends this option for better control cost per result and campaign spend, but this new automated feature could definitely be worth testing for specific advertisers.

More information about cost and bid types is available here.

Third-Party Tracking

Advertisers are now able to add third-party tags to LinkedIn ad creatives.

When you setup a new text ad, sponsored content or dynamic ad, you’ll see a new button option to manage tracking.

Input each tag URL on the individual creative variants you want to track. Keep in mind that if you’re using the same tag to track impressions or clicks on multiple creatives, your impressions or clicks will be counted multiple tags so you’ll want to utilize unique tags for each variant.

LinkedIn says that if you get an error message, it’s likely because you’re trying to utilize a tag that isn’t currently supported.

48 hours after implementing the tags, check with the third-party vendor to make sure impressions are being counted.

For more information, check out this page from LinkedIn on setting up and managing third-party tracking.

What is your favorite recent update in LinkedIn? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.