Creating Successful Video Ads on LinkedIn

As a LinkedIn Certified Marketing Partner, VidMob enables clients to analyze their advertising efforts based on their objectives and understand the ‘why’ behind their creative performance. In a recent webinar about Successful Content Marketing we discussed how LinkedIn leveraged VidMob Intelligent Creative to understand which tactics significantly improved creative performance for campaigns aimed at three advertising objectives: Brand Awareness, Thought Leadership, and Lead Generation.

VidMob analyzed more than 19K videos from 2019 and 2020, reviewing both creative and performance data to determine which elements in the videos were most effective at mapping back to those three objectives.^[1] Utilizing Intelligent Creative, LinkedIn and VidMob determined a few creative considerations to optimize your full-funnel marketing objectives.

How to Build Your LinkedIn Creative Strategy Based on Your Advertising Goals

Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness is all about staying relevant to consumers by communicating brand values, culture, and background. We’ve outlined some creative tactics that can help lead to successful long-term growth:

1. Personalizing human presence.

A smile or a face led to a 13% lift in Video View Rate compared to the average, whereas more generic visuals of human presence, like crowds or an audience, dropped View Rate.

2. Incorporating aspirational messaging.

Use of words like “succeed,” “future,” and “transformation” led to a 31% lift in View Rate.

3. Introducing branding later.

We saw a 40% lift in Completion Rate when branding appeared in the second half of the video.

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership creative can position a brand as the subject matter expert, pique interest, and elicit reactions. Want to break through? Consider these creative guidelines for your next thought leadership campaign:

1. Introducing branding in the first 2 seconds.

As opposed to brand building content, in thought leadership content, brand introduction in the first 2 seconds led to a 16% lift in Engagement Rate.

2. Creating short GIF-style content.

Thought leadership content usually leads to another location such as a blog post or interview, so GIF-style creative less than 5 seconds increased Engagement Rate by 52%.

3. Selective word choice.

Buzz words like “workflow” and “productivity” led to a 31% lift in Engagement Rate.

Lead Generation

Lead generation content often provides specific solutions, builds a pipeline, and encourages consumers to take the next step. A few creative techniques have proven effective:

1. Introducing branding early (and on top…left).

We saw a 58% lift in Company Page CTR when branding was introduced in the first 2 seconds, and a 50% lift in CTR when logos were introduced in the top third of the screen as opposed to the middle or bottom of the screen.

2. Use of direct CTA messaging.

When action-oriented words like “start,” “make,” and “discover” appear onscreen, the CTR was 20% higher than when featuring human presence.

3. Quick scene changes.

Incorporating 4+ scene changes within the first 3 seconds of a video led to a 19% increase in CTR.

Once a brand decides on the desired outcome of an ad, fine-tuned creative elements can help achieve those goals. These insights represent a foundation for brands to start with, but the best results require constantly asking brand-specific questions and answering them through testing and analysis of creative data. With a full-funnel strategy and a willingness to iterate creative tests, brands can finally optimize their assets to unlock performance gains.

If you’d like a preview of how VidMob’s Creative Analytics tool can advance your advertising efforts and help improve your creative performance, email LMSContentPartners@linkedin.com or see more detail on the LinkedIn Marketing Partners here. To watch the full discussion, check out LinkedIn and VidMob’s session on Successful Content Marketing.

[1] The data highlighted in the webinar and this post stem from an analysis of 19,074 video ads that delivered 425 M impressions on the LinkedIn platform between January 1, 2019 and April 30, 2020.