LinkedIn accelerates video push with native ads, content for company pages

Dive Brief:

LinkedIn is launch­ing two new video capa­bil­i­ties on its plat­form: video for spon­sored con­tent and video on com­pa­ny pages, per a news release made avail­able to Mar­ket­ing Dive. More than 46% of B2B adver­tis­ers said find­ing a qual­i­ty envi­ron­ment to reach deci­sion-mak­ers with video is a top chal­lenge, accord­ing to an inter­nal sur­vey cit­ed in the release.
Video for Spon­sored Con­tent will live on the LinkedIn news feed as a stand­alone post, giv­ing adver­tis­ers a native video ad option on the plat­form for the first time. Video is inte­grat­ed with the platform’s Matched Audi­ences so users can tar­get con­tent with account-based mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Mar­keters can use the Con­ver­sion Track­ing tool to mea­sure the num­ber of leads, web­site vis­its and oth­er insights that video con­tent gen­er­ates. Spon­sored Con­tent video launched in pri­vate beta in Octo­ber and has been test­ed by more than 700 adver­tis­ers. LinkedIn mem­bers spend near­ly 3x more time watch­ing video ads com­pared to sta­t­ic spon­sored con­tent, accord­ing to the release.
Com­pa­ny Page video lets orga­ni­za­tions share video con­tent relat­ed to a company’s cul­ture, prod­ucts, news and events to help them attract tal­ent and dri­ve engage­ment and con­ver­sa­tion. The videos are 5x more like­ly than oth­er con­tent for­mats to start a con­ver­sa­tion. Both video for Spon­sored Con­tent and Com­pa­ny Pages will be avail­able to all busi­ness­es in the next few weeks.

Dive Insight:

The addi­tion of native video ads to LinkedIn could be pow­er­ful for mar­keters look­ing to reach busi­ness audi­ences, giv­en the plat­for­m’s already impor­tant role in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and how native video con­tin­ues to grow thanks to its pres­ence across a num­ber of plat­forms, Face­book and Twit­ter. Native video can also help con­nect with mobile users.

Cur­rent­ly, Face­book rep­re­sents 46% of all video ads cre­at­ed, a share that jumps to 74% when includ­ing video ads on Insta­gram, accord­ing to Clinch research. The demand for video inven­to­ry will only grow, as 78% of mar­keters plan to increase their video ads in 2018.

B2B video mar­ket­ing, which LinkedIn is now mak­ing a lit­tle eas­i­er, can help busi­ness­es share knowl­edge, express them­selves, build brand aware­ness and gen­er­ate high-qual­i­ty leads. From the platform’s beta test­ing, com­pa­nies are see­ing high­er engage­ment with video ads com­pared to oth­er formats.Companies planned to spend $135 bil­lion on online video in 2017, 2x as much as on TV and 1.5x more than dig­i­tal ads, accord­ing to Mag­is­to research.

“Video stands out because it does­n’t tell, but it shows. On a plat­form where there’s more busi­ness con­tent, the video stands out more, espe­cial­ly on LinkedIn,” Renske Sierse­ma, social media man­ag­er at KLM Roy­al Dutch Air­lines, said in a state­ment, dis­cussing the val­ue of video in engag­ing with busi­ness audiences.

The new LinkedIn tools could help com­pa­nies and brands stream­line their video pro­duc­tion, so that they can pro­duce more con­tent. Accord­ing to the Mag­is­to research, 56% of brands are cre­at­ing videos at least once a week, with 26% cre­at­ing it dai­ly, 14% month­ly and 18% annually.

SOURCE