What are your thoughts on this?

Over 30 percent of members who view jobs on LinkedIn come from mobile, and Sponsored Jobs will now appear in one of the most engaging spots in our mobile experience. Early results show that Sponsored Jobs on mobile are about 4 times more engaging than Sponsored Jobs on the desktop.

Today LinkedIn has announced that sponsored jobs will appear in the LinkedIn feed on the member homepage. (Full Article) I see this as a natural evolution for sponsored posting within their network and clearly a direct nudge to the team at Indeed.com.

Who is the target for this product?

That I am not 100% sure of. Clearly the corporate world will benefit from the offering. Will this be an opportunity for agency based (not independent) recruiting operations to compete in specific markets? 

Why this matters:

Until now, posting jobs on LinkedIn simply meant using LinkedIn as a generic job board with actual results hoovering around marginal or slightly above the current pool of job boards available. (purely opinion) This is not to say that I have not seen cost per hire drop when used properly. Without making this very technical and chocked full of social media propaganda, branding and so on, I see this as a big win for the product team at LinkedIn as it expands into a larger target base, namely job seekers and news readers on LinkedIn.

As LinkedIn expands it's offerings over the next 12 months it's evident that you'll see products based heavily on engagement that have meaning and hold people onsite. LinkedIn is no longer interested in being cute and shiny. It's about revenue, growth and power and the way they will increase market share is by providing timely offerings that are relevant to "now". 

Authentic conversation is what drives Facebook (this includes photo's video etc) both in a 1 to 1 and 1 to many environment. LinkedIn is no different, in fact if I were a betting man I'd jump to say that the LinkedIn news feeds have stolen a significant amount of read time from more traditional news sites simply because the information is targeted, conversation and has a feeling of community based content. 

My questions are:

1. What is the shelf life of this remaining relevant to the market before it becomes synonymous with the feed and overlooked?
2. Based on what we know about LinkedIn and the industry of sponsored postings, how costly will bidding be?
3. What increase can the employer expect (what has been found in testing) on sponsored postings in the feeds in relation to the normal posting slots?