?? LinkedIn’s New AI-Campaign Tool, the Surge in B2B Influencer Marketing and X’s Latest Chatbot Updates

Welcome to Prosek’s Digital Download: where industry-leading insights in financial services and digital marketing collide.

In this week’s edition, we’re exploring recent updates on LinkedIn’s new incoming AI tool for campaign building, how brands are riding the wave of influencer marketing straight onto LinkedIn and X’s push for its platform AI chatbot, Grok.?

Put on your reading glasses and let’s dive in!

- Katherine Quan

3 Can’t-Miss Digital Updates

Social Media and Advertising

LinkedIn is Officially Rolling Out Its Own AI-Campaign Tool

• What’s happening: By the end of the year, LinkedIn is set to launch its very own AI-powered campaign tool named Accelerate – an AI-black box designed to cut down the ad building process through end-to-end campaign recommendations and automatic optimizations. Announced during the Cannes Lions conference, this feature was initially released back in October 2023 to select advertisers in North America but has now reached 50% global roll out in beta. With integrated Microsoft Designer functionality, Accelerate Campaigns are reportedly seeing fantastic results, creating ads with higher efficiency and lowering cost per action.?
• Why it matters: While campaigns previously have been built manually and can be relatively complex to construct, Accelerate is designed to streamline this process. By letting the platform cover the manual, tedious work, advertisers supposedly will only need to make minor tweaks prior to launching. Expected to be made available to all marketers by early fall, Accelerate will provide full targeting capabilities, measurement optimizations, performance reports and even creative outlines. While its full potential and value remains to be seen, marketers should experiment with the tool to understand its value in reducing time spent and increasing efficiencies.

Why You Shouldn’t Overlook LinkedIn Influencer Marketing Anymore

• What’s happening: Many have written off influencer as a consumer tactic, but 75% of B2B marketers are now investing in influencers to market their companies. It’s a strategy that’s here to stay, and LinkedIn has been all over this trend for years, building a strong platform for creators. LinkedIn has already released Creator Mode and newsletter functionality, and it’s testing a short-form vertical video similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
• Why it matters: As original content sharing continues on a sharp upward trajectory, influencer marketing on LinkedIn is starting to become particularly appealing to both creators and brands. With these specialized capabilities, marketers must seriously evaluate whether influencer marketing has a place within their budgets. But don’t wait too long - those that are slow to act may risk getting left behind.

X Looks to Further Integrate Grok AI Chatbot

• What’s happening: X is looking to expand its AI capabilities by making Grok, an AI chatbot, more accessible to paying users and enhancing its functionality. New integrations include providing profile analyses to distinguish bot accounts, displaying context on trending words or people and having Grok appear as a separate window on X.
• Why it matters: Despite many AI applications receiving mixed reviews, social platforms seem convinced that generative AI will eventually play an integral part of their functionality. The experimentation and implementation of AI features across social will continue, and this is just another sign of this trend. Marketers should be experimenting with and gaining insight into how to best leverage these new AI features for content generation, measurement, automation and monitoring.

Good Reads

• YouTube Tests Community Spaces to Drive Fan Engagement
• TikTok Tightens Restrictions on Teen Ad Targeting, Boosts AI Transparency?
• Top CMO Concerns for the Second Half of 2024
• X is Building a ‘Dislike’ Button For Downvoting Replies
• Reddit Subreddits to Google Search: Maximizing Your Brand’s Impact
• Meta Lifts All Restrictions on Trump’s Accounts Ahead of US Election

Marketing Inspiration?

Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone, demonstrated strong cultural messaging and the values behind the Blackstone brand by spotlighting an important philanthropic event it hosted.

Jefferies posted a multi-image recap highlighting a welcome event for the firm’s 2024 incoming summer interns to share excitement for their arrival as well as upcoming opportunities such as group teach-ins and speaker series.

Churchill Asset Management shared a clean, informative document-format post to promote an expert Q&A article in which firm leaders shared their outlooks for portfolio-based activity in the back half of 2024.