LinkedIn launches autoplay mobile video ads

Video advertising is set to roll out to all advertisers by the first half of 2018.

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LinkedIn has announced a closed beta for testing video ad units as Sponsored Content. This comes just two months after enabling native videos in the LinkedIn Feed. Beta testers include Prudential Financial and Microsoft Canada.

The video ads will autoplay and appear as a standalone unit with a “Promoted” label to distinguish them as paid content. They are only being tested on mobile at this time.

Linkedin Videomobile

Advertisers can upload videos through the Campaign Manager, their Company Page or their Showcase Page and promote them with a Sponsored Content campaign. Audience targeting options will be the same as for all other LinkedIn ads, including the Matched Audiences option.

Some ad performance metrics will be available to advertisers in the beta test, including view count and views by the percent of video completed. Several additional metrics and data points specifically for video will be added in the next several months.

This is LinkedIn’s second go-round with video ads. In 2012, LinkedIn launched support for video ads, but the videos had to reside on YouTube and did not autoplay. That ended after a couple of years, before LinkedIn had a solid mobile presence, was bought by Microsoft and video ads became table stakes.


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About the author

Susan Wenograd
Contributor
Susan Wenograd is VP of marketing strategy at Aimclear, a holistic digital marketing agency. She has spent 14 years in the industry, with the last 10 primarily focused on paid media and all it entails. She's also had extensive experience in email marketing and content creation in leadership roles for both agency and in-house, managing multiple millions of dollars in the span of her career. She speaks internationally on marketing strategy, and blogs frequently for industry publications.

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