LinkedIn, the professional networking site, claimed 500 million users on its platform on Monday. The Microsoft-owned site said that it now has more than 10 million active job listings and access to nine million companies. It added that it is publishing 100,000 articles every week. LinkedIn is also launching a targeted ad-solution called, Matched Audience Program, which will let advertisers target users based on their web-browsing habits and email addresses. The new ad product is a spin-off of the advertising services offered by Facebook, Google, Twitter and others, that lets advertisers target ads based on the information collected by the platform. Matched Audiences Program has three types of ads: 1) Website retargeting to retarget ads at people who visited a brand’s website, 2) Contact retargeting to target people based on their email addresses, including contact lists, 3) Account targeting to target people based on the companies they work for (account targeting). These ads will appear as sponsored content on people’s feeds. Earlier this month, the company introduced a native ad-solution and lead generator called Lead Generation Form that does away with the need for users to type in information into forms. Integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Microsoft also announced an integration of LinkedIn with its sales software Dynamics 365, Reuters reports. With the new integration, Dynamics 365 will comb through a salesperson's email, calendar and LinkedIn relationships to help gauge how warm their relationship is with a potential customer. The system will recommend ways to save an at-risk deal, like calling in a…
