Today LinkedIn announced that video ads are now available through their ad platform. These ads act the same as the typical LinkedIn sidebar ads, but overlay a play button on the thumbnail and expand the full video when clicked. There are several advantages to this for B2B companies:
- Videos end up targeted to the correct, business-focused audience (with LinkedIn's built-in targeting)
- Easy placement of videos (copy a link to your YouTube video, done)
- Easier to manage targeting (Google TrueView is great, but if you don't stay on top of your targeting or if you don't want to advertise on YouTube itself can be a pesky process to deal with)
A major disadvantage compared to Google's TrueView ads is that LinkedIn still requires a pay-per-click model, not a pay-per-view model.
We're excited for the potential here and are looking forward to the results.