Over the past few months, LinkedIn has sought to make itself more than just an online directory for professionals by striking various content-related deals with the likes of BusinessWeek, NYT and CNBC. With those in place, it’s time for the next step: forming an ad network. Dubbed the LinkedIn Audience Network, the social net is promising to make it easier to reach its 27 million members. The company’s announcement was fairly reticent on the details, such as what other sites it is including in the network. The new program is primarily about expanding existing ad targeting through LinkedIn’s inCrowds—which lists members according to pre-defined and scalable audience segments such as corporate execs, small business professionals and IT workers. Advertisers can also can work with LinkedIn to create their own custom audience segments. The company says the non-personally identifiable data it will make available to advertisers includes industry, job function, seniority, company size, gender and geography

—Techcrunch: Noting that most remnant ad nets charge between $0.60 and $1, on average, LinkedIn’s $30 CPMs are right in the premium price range, with some placements going for north of $75. Basic text ads go for $12 to $20 CPMs.

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