LinkedIn’s expanding their video services to allow native video advertising.
Now, organizations will be able to post video directly to Company Pages. Marketers will also be able to use LinkedIn’s suite of advertising tools to promote video though Sponsored Content and lead generation campaigns, the company announced Thursday.
“We’re allowing marketers to tap into our targeting and lead generation capabilities,” Abhishek Shrivastava, director of product for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions said in an interview.
Marketers will have access to new ways to bid and measure their video campaigns, based on “cost-per-view,” in addition to CPC and CPM bidding.
“So when you are buying video ads, you can choose to pay for each view,” Shrivastava said.
This is the first time video will be integrated into LinkedIn’s advertising suite. Before this, only personal accounts and non-company pages could post native video. The user experience is exactly the same — company video posts will appear in a News Feed on mute and on auto-play.
“…That’s what makes it so exciting,” Shrivastava said. “The combination of video will all the other tools – with lead generation, conversion tracking, matched audiences…and our other tools we have on the backed.”
Shrivastava says LinkedIn began developing the program after seeing a “growing demand from advertisers.”
“We did a survey and what it showed was that showing videos in the right context was a key challenge for them,” Shrivastava said. “[With LinkedIn] It goes beyond top-of-the-funnel tactics”
According to a LinkedIn release, around 700 companies participated in their beta program, which kicked off last October. Shrivastava said companies saw around three times more engagement on average from users interacting with native video.
This is the newest addition to LinkedIn’s efforts to expand their digital advertising services for B2B marketers, following their expanded Audience Network last year. Following the changes, LinkedIn reported a 60 percent spike in views on their News Feed, and twice the engagement from likes, comments and shares.
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