If you haven’t noticed, LinkedIn has been rolling out new ad formats and platform features at a rapid pace over the last year. Back in March, LinkedIn announced video ads for all advertisers. In June LinkedIn took a page out of Facebook’s playbook with the launch of the carousel ad format. More recently LinkedIn has rolled out updates to the campaign manager that make it easier to compare data across campaigns and ads within the interface.
A few months back, I wrote about LinkedIn video ads becoming available for use in traffic and video views campaigns on the platform. LinkedIn’s release of the video ads gives advertisers an opportunity to test the informational power of video in a B2B focused environment. The beta test for video ads required that advertisers host videos ads offsite, making it difficult to decipher video view, completion, and cost data. LinkedIn made on-site hosting for video ads available with the release of video ads to all advertisers in March, giving advertisers the first opportunity to view and analyze video ads without pulling data from multiple sources.
The Test
My team launched a test of video ads in LinkedIn to determine the relative value of the new ad format. Video ads were tested in a traffic campaign on LinkedIn, while simultaneously running Facebook video ads in a traffic campaign on that platform. The client is a B2B lead gen company in marketing software industry. The test ran for roughly two weeks in June and used similar creative across Facebook and LinkedIn.
Results
Key Takeaways
- LinkedIn’s Cost per View was significantly lower at $.29 compared to Facebook’s Cost per View at $3.53
- LinkedIn delivered a significantly higher Video Completion Rate at at 31% compared to a 12% VCR for Facebook
- As expected, Facebook delivered significantly lower CPCs at $.78 compared to $8.53 on LinkedIn
The most surprising takeaway for our team was the high level of video ad interaction found on LinkedIn. It seems fairly logical that the LinkedIn audience is more receptive to our ads due to highly focused B2B targeting options available on the platform. There are also fewer advertisers crowding the LinkedIn platform with ads. A lower frequency of ads for the LinkedIn audience means that those users will be more receptive when an ad is served.
If we are purely focused on driving a high volume of traffic to our site with video ads, Facebook is the clear winner. Facebook’s audience is much larger, making it easier to drive more clicks at a lower cost.
Conclusion
LinkedIn video ads are absolutely worth a test if you are a B2B advertiser looking for an upper funnel presence to increase awareness. The narrowly focused audiences and lack of ad crowding on LinkedIn provide advertisers with strong tools to target and engage working professionals while they are socializing and researching business topics. I highly recommend testing LinkedIn video ads for B2B lead gen clients, especially if you already have video ads for Facebook.