Note: This was featured as part of our Web Wednesday segment on Charleston’s 105.5 The Bridge with Box in the Morning. You can catch us every Wednesday morning at 8:20 am ET for your dose of social media & digital marketing news. You can listen to the segment below:
Although many people forget about LinkedIn when they think about social media, it’s still an incredibly powerful platform, especially for B2B companies. One of the reasons that it’s so easily forgotten is because LinkedIn hasn’t always been great about staying up-to-date with the latest social media trends.
However, they’re finally starting to catch up after the close of their beta test for video ads. Prudential Financial and Microsoft Canada just wrapped up beta testing new sponsored video content with the platform and have seen a huge success from the ads. And this comes just a couple of months after LinkedIn began allowing native videos in user profiles as a way to round out their online resumes.
Previously, LinkedIn only allowed users to share YouTube videos that wouldn’t autoplay in the feed. With this new ad type, the video ads are set to autoplay in user feeds and are labeled “Promoted” to distinguish them as sponsored content.
These are currently only available in mobile, which still reaches a huge audience considering 58% of LinkedIn users access the platform from their mobile devices.
If you’ve ever run a LinkedIn ad before, you’ve done so through the platform’s Campaign Manager. This is how advertisers will be able to upload videos to run as sponsored content, and will include all of the same targeting options as traditional LinkedIn ads. You’ll be able to see view count as well as views by the percent of video completed, but more metrics should be coming available as this ad type rolls out.
This is pretty game-changing for a platform that’s been stuck in the past, and we’re excited to see what’s going to come next! Need help marketing your business on LinkedIn? Call us at (888) 632-4499 or fill out our free consultation form to learn what we can do for your business.
