LinkedIn Video Ads
Mar 17, 2020 - Marcel OdenaLinkedIn video ads are great—they’ve got all the pluses of the audiovisual format along with the advantages of the LinkedIn platform in terms of targeting users and reaching our target audience. The objective of advertising is to reach our target audience at the right time with the right message. Through LinkedIn video ads, we can get closer to this objective by displaying specific advertisements depending on where the user is within our sales funnel.
What are LinkedIn Video Ads like?
LinkedIn video ads are comprised of:
- The video of your choice
- A small amount of text that accompanies the video
- And, depending on the ad format we select, we elect to add a call to action (CTA).
Below you’ll find an example of a video ad on LinkedIn:
In this example, note how there’s a video, some text to accompany the ad, and a “Learn more” call to action button that invites the user to learn more.
The objective of LinkedIn video campaigns
We must specify the objective we want to pursue when creating a LinkedIn video campaign. There are currently these options for video ad campaigns:
- Brand awareness: with this objective you can bid per CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions). Optimization goal: deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.
- Website visits: you can bid either to CPC or CPM. Optimization goal: deliver your ads to people most likely to click and then take valuable actions (conversions) on your website. With this option, we can add a call to action in the ad so the user will see a button and clicking on it will direct them to the specific landing page we’ve configured. This option is highly beneficial when the message that complements our video is in-depth, and we want the user to read more by visiting our landing page.
- Video views: you can bid to CPM or CPV (Cost Per Video View). Optimization goal: deliver your ads to people most likely to view your video ad for 2 continuous seconds or more.
- Lead generation: you can bid either to CPC or CPM. Optimization goal: deliver your ads to the people most likely to submit a LinkedIn lead gen form. This option is great to collect information from potential customers with LinkedIn lead gen forms. This option also allows you to add a button with a call to action. When the user clicks on the button, a native lead generation form appears in LinkedIn, which already has its fields filled in with the user’s data
- Website conversions: you can bid either to CPC or CPM. Optimization goal: deliver ads to people most likely to take valuable actions (conversions) on your website.
LinkedIn Video Ad Format
When we’re creating a LinkedIn video campaign, we have to select the “video” ad format option. You can see how to do so in the settings below:
Next, I’ll show you the fields to fill in to create a video ad.
In order to create the video ad you have to include:
- Ad Name: it is optional, but I highly recommend you to set a name so you can later easily find it and see the performance for that ad.
- Introductory text: a small amount of text that accompanies the video.
- Video file: the video you want to promote (you have to upload it on the platform)
- Headline: the main message that people in your campaign will see on your ad. It is shown below the video.
- Destination URL: the landing page where you would like the user to land. This only will take effect for some objective campaigns, for lead generation objective this won’t work, if the user clicks on the video the lead gen form will show up.
Depending on the objective you will see additional options. For the Lead Generation objective you will see an additional option to select the lead gen form you want to use:
LinkedIn Video Ad Specifications
You can review all the specifications and requirements of the LinkedIn video ads on the official LinkedIn page.
I just want to point out these requirements:
- File size: 200 MB maximum, this can be a problem sometimes. If that’s the case I suggest you find a tool to reduce the size of the video. If your video is already on Youtube, Vimeo or other you can download your video from there with a lower quality so you don’t exceed the maximum allowed size.
- File format: MP4.
- Video captions: must be in SRT format. Video ads on LinkedIn feed show up in mute, so it is highly recommended to add captions to your video, so the user can read what is it about and decide whether he/she turns the volume on.
- Pixel and aspect ratio requirements: you can use video with landscape, square and vertical aspect ratio. You can see the pixel specs in this link.
Targeting options for LinkedIn Video Campaigns
The targeting options available for LinkedIn video campaigns are the same as any other type of campaign.
We can target LinkedIn users by their position, the size of the company, their industry, etc.
If you want to learn more about targeting options, I recommend you read the article Targeting Criteria on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Video Ad Metrics
Once the video campaign is active, the video ads will start displaying. And after a while, we’ll have enough data to analyze performance.
In addition to the standard platform metrics (impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, conversions, leads, etc.), we also have specific metrics related to the video format.
In order to see specific video ad metrics you have to select the video column:
Below you can see the video metrics the platform allows you to review:
Views: this is the number of times a video ad has been viewed. LinkedIn counts a view when the user has seen at least two or more seconds of playback while the video is at least 50% on screen, or a click on the CTA, whichever comes first.
View Rate: refers to the relationship between the number of views and ad impressions (views/impressions x 100). A ratio of 100% would indicate the video is super interesting because every single user stops scrolling when they see it and starts watching. On the contrary, a 0% ratio would mean that the video is of no interest at all to our target audience.
Estimated Cost Per View (eCPV): is an estimate of how much each visualization will cost. This metric is reached by dividing the total cost of the campaign by the number of views during a specific period.
25%, 50%, 75% views: indicates the number of times your video was watched to 25%, 50%, 75% of its length, including watches that skipped to this point. These metrics are useful because they give us an idea of whether the video appeals to our audience and what extent.
Completions: this metric indicates the number of times your video was watched to 97-100% of its length, including watches that skipped to this point. It’s kind of like a superstar metric because if a user sees the whole video it means that he/she was interested in our product/company.
Completion Rate: refers to the relationship between the number of times the video was completed and the number of times it was viewed. A ratio of 100% would mean all users who have seen the ad have seen the entire video (it would be a standout success). On the other hand, a ratio of 0% means none of the users watched until the end.
Full Screen Plays: this is the number of times members click on your video, going to fullscreen mode.
LinkedIn Video Ad Examples
Well, now you know what LinkedIn video ads are like and what metrics to analyze. You are probably asking yourself:
How could I use LinkedIn video campaigns to grow my company?
Good question. Now I’ll give you several ideas for campaigns you could create to better position your company, improve its branding, and generate leads.
>> Idea nº 1: generating awareness for “top-of-the-funnel” users. The video ad format is an excellent opportunity to present your company and its products and services to your ideal audience. Even getting them to watch just the first few seconds of your video will be worth it because, over time, your brand will form a place in their memory.
If done well, you can place your product in the shortlist of your potential customers.
What happens if we ask a user to name three brands of a product/service? At least 2-3 brands will come to mind without them having to think too much. And we want our brand to be on this list, right?
Here you can see an example from Salesforce:
This concept is masterfully explained by the great marketer Luis Bassat in his book The Red Book of Advertising. Even though in the book, he explains the idea in terms of traditional advertising (TV, Radio, etc.), in my opinion, it’s equally applicable to online marketing and B2B advertising.
>> Idea nº 2: Show videos of a technical nature. Display a short video of 2-3 minutes that explains, in an educational way, the “killer features” of our product/software (or service). We’d also include a CTA to request a demonstration or another appropriate CTA.
Here you can see an example from Vimeo:
>> Idea nº3: Show testimonial videos. Create video ads showcasing the success story of some of your customers and explain how their companies have improved because of it. As a CTA, we could offer to provide a demonstration of your product, let them download a success story in PDF format or send them to a landing page.
Here you can see an example from Salesforce:
Pushing down the funnel…
One of the challenges marketing departments typically face is contributing to sales generation, especially when the lead has already been acquired. And this means to help the company to get the lead to progress down the “funnel” until they’re convinced of two things:
- they need product/software like ours to do whatever they need
- we’re an excellent company to consider when shopping for such product/software
LinkedIn Video Ads can help for sure to achieve this goal.
You can learn more about reading this article: Why you need to create a strategy to push your leads through the sales funnel.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you understand LinkedIn video ads. And I hope that while reading this article, you’ve visualized all the potential that could be applied to improve the business objectives of your company.
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