While the platform doesn't move as fast as others in terms of innovation and new developments, LinkedIn has slowly but surely been upgrading its ad options - and reportedly, businesses are taking notice of the shift.

As explained by Digiday, an increasing number of marketers are now looking to shift their ad budgets away from Facebook and Twitter, and towards LinkedIn, which has long been considered an inferior advertising option. Part of this change has been facilitated by LinkedIn adding a range of new options, including Carousel Ads, Sponsored Video Content for company pages, and most recently, Interest Targeting based on on-platform behaviors.

LinkedIn's next update on this front, according to Digiday, will be Lookalike Audiences, enabling advertisers to target users with similar profiles to their existing customer listings.

The addition of lookalikes could provide a significant boost for LinkedIn marketers, adding a whole new consideration to how B2B organizations, in particular, connect with relevant decisions makers. Given LinkedIn's professional focus, lookalikes on LinkedIn would be matched based on their professional qualifications, position and experience, as opposed to lookalike audiences on Facebook which are matched based on more general interests.

Through this, brands could focus their campaigns on groups of relevant buyers in specific markets, with the capacity to hone their approach likely based on various specific LinkedIn profile vectors.

For example, if you wanted to reach CIOs in a specific market, you could theoretically create a listing of CIOs you have within your database and use that as the qualifying data set for LinkedIn to find others with the same position title whom you're not connected with. How, exactly, LinkedIn's system would work in this regards remains to be seen, but the potential could be significant.

At present, there's no official word from LinkedIn on lookalike audiences, and we'll keep you updated on any progress. But it may be another factor to keep in mind - and with LinkedIn's ad options evolving, the platform itself could be a more relevant consideration moving forward.