Seems comments made by Kevin Eyres, managing director of European operations for LinkedIn, were optimistic in pegging ad rates at a $75 CPM. To a degree. A customer who's bought advertising on LinkedIn wrote in to let us know that last fall they negotiated a campaign to run ads against the social network's "premium content" for a $12 CPM, $3 less than the listed $15 rate. The company is now charging $45 for that same inventory, they report. A quick look at the rate card shows that the $45 price point is for vertical banner ads targetted to IT and small business professionals. Custom targeting goes as high as $76.50 per thousand impressions. Good thing to know that you can bargain down those rates 20 percent. And it's still an order of magnitude more than any other social network has been able to charge. While Facebook charges less than a dollar for slutty come-ons, LinkedIn keeps it strictly SFW. After the jump, what the company refuses to allow in ads on the site.

Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's European managing director, reported that LinkedIn commands $50-$75 per thousand impressions on its advertising, in discussing plans for the social network's expansion into the U.K .and the continent. That figure, if Eyres is not being overoptimistic, puts LinkedIn in the same range that high-end business publications like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal command for their websites, and orders of magnitude higher than the rates seen on consumer social networks like Facebook and MySpace. [The Industry Standard]