According to a recent internal LinkedIn study, over 46% of B2B (Business-To-Business) advertisers surveyed said that finding a quality environment in which to reach target audiences when running their video campaigns on other platforms was a major challenge. Based on this and other feedback, LinkedIn has announced two major updates that let users utilize sight, sound and motion to tell more compelling stories – Video for Sponsored Content and Company Pages. “These offerings build on the momentum of member video, which we launched in August,” said the company. Also, as a part of its Video for Sponsored Content platform, LinkedIn has signed an agreement with Oracle’s Moat to offer third-party video measurement and viewability, and intends to make these services available to customers later this year.
It added that native video ads represent the next evolution of LinkedIn Sponsored Content, that lets users engage with business decision-makers throughout the buyer’s journey on Linkedin. Unlike pre-roll or post-roll video ads, Video for Sponsored Content lives directly in the news feed as a standalone post. Video for Sponsored Content helps users achieve their marketing objectives by:
- Building brand awareness by telling rich, visual stories in the premium context of LinkedIn
- Driving qualified traffic to your desktop or mobile website
- Collecting high quality leads with a persistent “call to action” button or through LinkedIn’s integrated Lead Gen Forms product
“Without accurate targeting, your ads won’t be seen by the right audiences,” said the company. “With LinkedIn’s suite of B2B targeting capabilities available for Video for Sponsored Content, you can find your audience by traits like job title, seniority, company name, industry, skills, and more. What’s more, the integration with our Matched Audiences Solution ensures that you can target your sales team’s highest-priority accounts with Account-Based-Marketing (ABM) campaigns.”
Since launching its private beta in October of 2017, over 700 advertisers – including GE, Philips and Audi Canada – have tested Video for Sponsored Content to highlight not only their products and services, but also their company mission, customer success stories, and thought-leadership content. “These videos are helping marketers deepen engagement with their brands. On average, LinkedIn members spend almost three times more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content,” the company added. “Marketers understand that everything hinges on delivering greater ROI. With video for Sponsored Content, you can measure your campaign’s success through insights and detailed breakdowns about the types of professionals watching, engaging with, and even converting on your video ads. LinkedIn’s proprietary Conversion Tracking Tool is also integrated, enabling you to measure the number of leads, sign-ups, website visits, and other valuable actions that your video content generates.”
Company Page Video
Organic native video has been embraced by LinkedIn members as a new and creative way to share knowledge and express themselves. “We’re also making video sharing available for all companies and publishers,” it said. “With Company Page Video, organizations can now share first-hand looks into their culture, products, news, events and more. Companies are also showing how they’re effectively attracting talent, and driving engagement and conversation with professional audiences right from their Company Page on LinkedIn. Company Page Video is five times more likely than other types of content to start a conversation among members, based on results in our beta program,” LinkedIn added.
