LinkedIn made Video for Sponsored Content, video ads which appear as sponsored posts in the feed, generally available on Thursday.
It also rolled out video-compatible Company Pages for brands and publishers.
Since LinkedIn’s beta launch of sponsored video last October, more than 700 advertisers, including KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, GE and Philips, have signed on.
LinkedIn claimed those sponsored video posts average triple the time spent in the news feed compared to text-based posts.
“The approach we’ve taken with video is to really align with B2B objectives – whether its top of the funnel to drive brand awareness or bottom of the funnel [business outcomes] by collecting leads or driving traffic to [the] website,” said Abhishek Shrivastava, director of product for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.
LinkedIn has also enhanced its ability to measure video.
For marketers who want independent verification, LinkedIn has added third-party video viewability verification via Oracle’s Moat.
Video for Sponsored Posts also comes embedded with LinkedIn Website Demographics.
LinkedIn launched this tool last July to help marketers gauge more about their site visitors.
For instance, it determines their industry vertical and professional role, such as finance professionals at the director level or higher, Shrivastava said. The tool also tracks referrals to their site or landing page.
Also included in LinkedIn’s sponsored video product is the ability for marketers to gauge video-specific metrics, conversion tracking and email matching via its Matched Audiences product.
And LinkedIn added pricing options for video, including traditional CPM, cost per click and cost per view.
Cost per view was important for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which wanted to optimize more toward viewable impressions from business travelers, according to company social media manager Renske Siersema.
The campaign is still underway, but early results showed KLM obtained a 63% lower cost per view with LinkedIn video than its average on other digital platforms.
It also had a 34% view rate – or the number of viewers divided by the total served impressions.
LinkedIn will continue to enhance its video offerings. It’s exploring what video durations create the most engagement in the news feed.
Although short-form videos – those 30 seconds or less – make more sense if an advertiser’s goal is to drive more video completions or a direct call to action, longer videos might perform better for branding, educational or training purposes, Shrivastava said.
