Video ad tips

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Video ads on LinkedIn provide a compelling way to reach a professional audience. Make the most of your campaigns with these tips for identifying your objective, creating effective content, and proving the value of your video ads.

Choose your video campaign objective

Identify your key objective for each video campaign. This will inform your video content and how you measure success.

Objectives that support video include:

 • Brand Awareness (tell people about your brand through impression-based campaigns)
 • Consideration (get people to click to find out more about your brand)
 • Conversion (drive leads and actions important on your own website)

Measure success based on your objective

After choosing your objective, you’ll understand how to analyze the results of your video ad campaigns.

Metrics that align to common video ad goals:

 • Brand Awareness (tell people about your brand through impression-based campaigns)
 • Consideration (get people to click to find out more about your brand)
 • Conversion (drive leads and actions important on your own website)

Learn how to view and download metrics for video ads.

You can also leverage 3rd party tracking platforms, such as Moat, to get detailed video performance metrics and track success. Learn more about third party tracking here.

Plan video content based on your objective

Content is at the heart of a successful video ad campaign– keep it concise, visually compelling, and focus on the storytelling to drive your point home.

Identify your objective before creating content, so that your video aligns with the type of success you want to drive. Here are key content types for each objective.

For brand awareness and consideration:

•  Position yourself as a thought leader
•  Tell your brand story
•  Share stories of customer success

For conversion:

• Show a quick demo of your product
• Give a sneak peek of your webinar 
•  Preview your event 

Get inspiration and how-to tips for creating powerful video content.

Follow best practices for creating videos

• Show what you want your audience to see in the first 10 seconds of the video. 

• Viewer attention drops after that point.

• Capture and maintain your audience’s attention with visual storytelling. 

• Deliver your message with graphics, people, and text that extend viewer attention span.

• Think like a silent film director: a large portion of LinkedIn members will watch your ad with the sound off. 

• Consider burning in video subtitles.

•Learn the fundamental strategies you should include when developing video ads creative.

• Refer to LinkedIn video ad specs while planning to make sure that your content is formatted properly.


Optimize your video length based on your objective:

• Keep videos under 30 seconds for brand awareness and brand consideration goals. A study by LinkedIn* found that videos under 30 seconds reported a 200% lift in view completion rates (Source: LinkedIn internal study, 2018).

•  Test longer videos for demand generation. The same study found that longer form content drove as many clicks and views as shorter videos because they help tell a more complex product or brand story.

Create your video ad campaign

Log in to Campaign Manager, the advertising platform on LinkedIn, to create your campaign.

Select your objective under brand awareness, consideration and conversions. 
Video format is available for all objectives.

Once you begin creating your campaign, you can:

• Sponsor videos you’ve already uploaded to your LinkedIn Page
• Upload videos you already have—from your website, blog, or other social channels

Make sure that your bid method matches your marketing objective: 

• To get website visits, bid by cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM)
• To collect leads, bid by cost per click (CPC)
• To get video views, bid by cost per view (CPV)
• To get more clicks for your budget, automate your bid (Automated bid)

On Campaign Manager, LinkedIn automatically selects the optimal bid method for your video campaigns.

Follow best practices for Sponsored Content

Video ads are one form of Sponsored Content on LinkedIn. Make the most of your campaigns with tips for creating effective ads.

• Create 4-5 ads in your campaign to give your campaign more exposure and opportunity to optimize for highest performance. You can create up to 5 ads at one time by uploading or selecting up to 5 videos in the media library during campaign creation. Learn more here

• Be descriptive about the video in the ad headline and text. This will help your audience understand your message.

• Feature a clear CTA (call to action), so your audience knows how to act on their interest.

• Be specific with ad targeting, but not so specific that you narrow your audience. Choose location and two other targeting criteria to start, and follow ad targeting best practices.

Get more Sponsored Content tips to maximize results from your video ad campaign.

Test and optimize your videos

Every brand has a different recipe for success. Increase your ROI by testing the tactics that work best for your video ad campaigns.

Try the following tests to get started. For clear results, test one variable at a time. This will help you understand the factors that affect your campaign results.

A/B test the same content with different lengths:

• Short (5-15 sec): Try looped videos similar to animated gifs or “cliffhanger” videos that encourage your audience to learn more.

• Medium (~30 sec): Establish your point in the first 5 seconds, then drive it home.  Strong examples include quick product overviews or “talking head” interviews.

• Long (1 min+): Tell a richer story that makes an emotional connection or impart knowledge (i.e. snippets from a recent webinar).

While most people are likely to finish watching shorter videos, long-form videos can be an effective way to tell a rich story about customer success, your brand, or an exclusive offer.


A/B test the introductory text:

• Try calling out your audience.


A/B test different content:

• Social proof: Try different customer testimonials to learn which resonate most with your audience.

• Landing experience: If you’re collecting leads, test different landing pages to learn which web page drives higher conversions.

To measure success, use demographic reporting to understand which audience segments have the highest video view rates. Optimize your campaigns and tailor your content to address audiences that are resonating with your content.

For more tips and ideas, download The Secret Sauce: How LinkedIn uses LinkedIn for Marketing.