Over the past few years, professional social platform LinkedIn has been ramping up the volume of video content it shows on its platform. While the Microsoft-owned network started allowing users to upload video back in 2017, its launch of a new short-form video feed last year signalled a full-on embrace of TikTok-style content.
With video accounting for more and more engagement on the platform, it’s becoming a bigger part of LinkedIn’s advertising offering too.
As a debutante at last month’s NewFronts, LinkedIn announced a revamp of its Wire Program, which connects advertisers to content from major publishers. Rebranded to BrandLink, this programme now includes content from top individual creators and ‘LinkedInfluencers’, including Steven Bartlett, Allie K. Miller, and Gary Vaynerchuk.
And this week, the company has announced several new updates on the video advertising front. The company is launching ‘first impression ads’, a vertical video format for single-day campaigns which are reserved for the first ad impression targeted individuals see on a given day.
It’s also expanding its CTV ad offering which it launched last year, and is now generally available in the US and Canada. Paramount has been added to LinkedIn’s CTV Select product, enabling advertisers to run campaigns specifically on Paramount’s CTV inventory with fixed pricing. LinkedIn also has new partnerships with Innovid (enabling advertisers to repurpose existing assets for CTV campaigns) and Sprinklr (allowing advertisers to create, edit, and manage LinkedIn CTV campaigns within Sprinklr’s platform).
Finally, the networking platform has agreed a new partnership with Adobe, allowing advertisers to export video ads designed in Adobe Express directly to LinkedIn Ads.
Video a priority for B2B marketers
You’ll find plenty of comments on LinkedIn despairing at the platform’s embrace of short-form video, with some users complaining that it’s starting to look less like a professional networking forum and more like the other major social platforms.
But like it or loathe it, LinkedIn says video viewership on the platform is booming. The company announced in January that video viewership was up 36 percent year-on-year, while video creation was growing at double the rate of other original post formats.
And research commissioned by LinkedIn shows that B2B marketers are keen to invest more in video too. In the survey, run by Censuswide, 75 percent of respondents said they agree that short-form video helps them reach decision makers, and 77 percent believed short-form video helps build trust with their audiences. Meanwhile 66 percent agreed that if they don’t invest in video this year, they will lose out to competitors.
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