LinkedIn Buys Bizo: What Does It Mean for B2B Marketing?

We all heard some exciting news this week from our friends at Bizo. After a 6 year journey, they were acquired for $175M by LinkedIn. As fellow travelers serving a growing audience of B2B marketers, we have gotten to know the Bizo folks well.

Both Bizo and Kwanzoo were early participants in the Oracle Appcloud. We have both been innovating where display meets marketing automation. We talk often at industry conferences. We serve mutual B2B customers, with display campaigns on the Bizo network powered by Kwanzoo rich media ads, as well as by Kwanzoo’s use of Bizo data through real-time-bidding (RTB) platforms for our clients.

We think the Bizo acquisition by LinkedIn will impact the overall B2B advertising market in several  interesting ways. While LinkedIn clearly has some strategic goals, we see some tactical disruption in the market that B2B marketers will want to know about. First a quick deal recap.

What LinkedIn Is Buying

LinkedIn is buying Bizo’s display business (media solutions) and multichannel nurturing solutions. LinkedIn says they will be spending time integrating Bizo’s technology with LinkedIn sponsored updates. While the exact shape this will take is unclear, they will perhaps provide new  opportunities for use of LinkedIn updates for content marketing.

We think what Bizo has built to integrate display ads with marketing automation (Eloqua) is of high value to B2B advertisers. Kwanzoo’s platform provides similar capabilities with seamless integration into MAP/CRM platforms (in our case, using rich media ads). B2B advertisers want to capture all ad activity back inside their MAP/CRM, so that they can personalize subsequent messages & offers to each prospect based on prior behavior (both on and off the advertiser’s company website).

LinkedIn is also buying the experience and expertise of Bizo’s team around the nuances of multichannel B2B lead nurturing that extends into retargeting and display. This will clearly give LinkedIn an additional quiver for their armor, as they go talk with B2B media teams. There are only a few of us around, braving the messiness of the display world, while we try to streamline the entire end-to-end B2B demand gen process, and help bring some order, as we work to deliver clear ROI metrics for retargeting and display campaigns.

And What They Are Not Buying

LinkedIn plans to leave Bizo’s Data Solutions alone. Bizo’s data solutions group offers Bizographic cookies for ad targeting through 3rd party RTB platform partners. We have tried the Bizo data in a few different B2B campaigns. LinkedIn’s reasons for not buying perhaps has less to do with the value of the data, and more to do with Bizo’s data usage and access policies across their audience network, conflicting with LinkedIn’s own data policies.

The B2B data space for ad targeting is still quite young. There are several providers with varying degrees of B2B market coverage – from Acxiom/Liveramp, to Oracle/Bluekai, and larger B2B media publishers – UBM TechWeb, Techtarget, MadisonLogic, Ziff Davis, and others.  Some of these publishers own proprietary targeting data, while others are now opening up their topic, intent and IP data for ad targeting to third parties. So it will be interesting to see how Bizo’s data business fares against larger players, as they invest and grow their B2B data set at a faster pace.

 What is Being Shut Down

Bizo is terminating their Self-Service Retargeting Platform. This suggests that LinkedIn wants to exclusively offer their Direct Ads (PPC text and image-based ads) to B2B advertisers. While that would be an alternative to Google SEM/PPC, many B2B marketers will now seek alternate solutions for retargeting with display ads. This is good news for Adroll and others.

We expect to see many more requests for Kwanzoo’s DIY plans which enable building out rich media ads that can be served on Adroll and many other retargeting, display and RTB platforms.

Strategic Considerations for B2B Marketers

As we all know, a company’s strategic goals get re-aligned when it gets acquired. How will Bizo’s solution offerings and partnerships evolve post acquisition? First, what will the acquisition mean in terms of today’s B2B media costs and campaign ROIs? Second, what is LinkedIn’s philosophy around nurturing an open ecosystem of partners. Finally, what will be the interplay between LinkedIn + Bizo and the Marketing Cloud ecosystems (OracleIBM, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft) that are forming across the industry?

Competitors No More

Prior to this acquisition, LinkedIn and Bizo have been alternative options for B2B marketers to deploy their media budgets, along with many other avenues that are available.

LinkedIn has an amazing asset as 1 in 3 business users globally are now on the LinkedIn network.This asset is clearly the big draw for most B2B advertisers.

Now that they also own Bizo, we’re seeing an increasing concentration of B2B data (power) in one company! LinkedIn already charges higher CPMs than most others in the industry. Now that they also own Bizo, will we see even higher CPMs?

 

Open to All or Just Open?

LinkedIn has had a smaller partner ecosystem for some time than many other social and marketing tech platform providers. Now with Bizo, will LinkedIn pursue an open platform approach, and empower a broad set of partners to better serve the global B2B audience holistically? Will LinkedIn’s partners and advertisers be able to track, and serve targeted messages and offers to prospects not just on the LinkedIn network and media properties, but on the advertiser’s own websites, and via third party ad networks, exchanges, RTB platforms and more?

All the major enterprise marketing cloud providers today seem to realize that no one company has a monopoly on all the marketing technology and talent that customers need, and are building out their partner ecosystems. Here at Kwanzoo, we actively participate in, and have developed integrations into the Oracle, IBM, and Salesforce Marketing Clouds, in addition to Marketo’s LaunchPoint ecosystem. We strongly believe that B2B customers are best served when the marketing and advertising technologies they use integrates seamlessly into all the existing technology in their (and their agencies’ and partners’) environment.

These are exciting times in a very dynamic B2B marketing industry. We once again wish the Bizo team the very best, as they embark on the next phase of their journey, within LinkedIn!

One thought on “LinkedIn Buys Bizo: What Does It Mean for B2B Marketing?

  1. Pingback: What Does the Bizo + LinkedIn Transaction Prove? | Madison Logic Blog

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