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In today’s media-rich online landscape, it’s becoming harder and harder for businesses to really stand out with their digital marketing initiatives – a particularly pressing issue for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are often reliant on online communications to raise awareness of their brand and services.
As such, these companies are likely to welcome the news that the professional network LinkedIn is once again expanding its video advertising capabilities to allow brands to include video as part of their sponsored content and company pages. This follows the successful introduction of video content for member pages last August, and will add another useful tool to SMEs’ comms arsenal.
How will the new video ads work?
The addition of native video ads for LinkedIn sponsored content will allow companies to incorporate video content directly as part of their news feed as a standalone post, making it easier than ever to engage with business decision-makers. This works hand-in-hand with LinkedIn’s existing B2B targeting capabilities, allowing brands to aim their visual content at a tailored audience using metrics such as job titles, seniority, company name, industry or skills.
It will also be possible to measure the performance of a campaign by analysing the insights and detailed breakdowns provided about the types of professionals watching, engaging with, and converting on these video ads, with LinkedIn’s Conversion Tracking tool integrated into the new platform to make it easy to measure the number of leads, sign-ups, website visits, and other actions generated by the content.
Meanwhile, the new video options enabled for company pages will provide SMEs with a more visually engaging and dynamic way of showcasing their corporate culture, products, news and events, helping them to attract talent and drive engagement and conversation. Both of these features will be available to all businesses in the coming weeks, with Oracle Moat software tools to be made available to facilitate third-party video measurement and viewability later this year.
What benefits might be achieved?
These new services have been launched by LinkedIn in response to growing demand. A recent survey carried out by the social network revealed that 46 per cent of B2B advertisers saw finding a quality environment for video campaigns as a major challenge, and the new offering has been designed to help address this.
Since launching a private beta test in October last year, more than 700 advertisers – including GE, Philips and Audi Canada – have tested video for sponsored content to highlight their products and services, as well as their company mission, customer success stories and thought leadership content. It has been shown that this has had a significant impact on brand engagement, with LinkedIn members spending almost three times longer watching video ads compared to time spent with static content.
Renske Siersema, social media manager at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, explained how the addition of these video services is creating tangible benefits for her organisation, saying: “Video stands out because it doesn’t tell, but it shows. On a platform where there’s more business content, a video stands out more, especially on LinkedIn.”
Source: LinkedIn Business