LinkedIn, the business-oriented social media platform, will monetize its mobile app with advertising, reports TechCrunch. This fast on the heels of a similar announcement by Facebook on February 1.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner made the announcement on an analyst call, and confirmed that the the company has already built the infrastructure and is ready to “start to introduce advertising in our mobile solutions” immediately (though he did not confirm when the company would). Weiner went on to say that mobile is LinkedIn’s fastest growing category in member visits,, accounting for more than 15% of unique visits. He also acknowledged that the LinkedIn apps offer superior performance over iOS than Android applications.
As The Telegraph describes, LinkedIn makes money in three ways: advertising, subscriptions and hiring solutions (that allow recruiters to post jobs). Those solutions in 2010 became the company’s largest and fastest segment, but advertising is still largely untapped.
Across the aisle, Facebook is expected to begin advertising on its mobile apps as of March 15.