LinkedIn Study Tells Us What Great B2B Video Looks Like

The modern consumer is exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads every single day (Forbes). Think back to the adverts you have seen in the last 24 hours, how many can you remember – 1, 2, maybe as many as 3?

This highlights the importance of creative and engaging adverts. When it comes to adverts, video is king – in fact, 86% of marketers say video has helped them increase traffic to their website (Wyzowl). How can you optimise your video to ensure your audience remembers your ad?

The Study

LinkedIn partnered with an independent research agency, Digitizer, to help answer all of our questions.

The study analyzed over 3,500 ads on Linkedin worth over 500 hours of video ad footage. Combining a process of automation and human processing methods, the research team categorised the ads into 38 categories such as type, style and production and fed the groupings into an ad performance generator.

The ad performance generator assessed success metrics such as view-through rate (VTR), click-through rate (CTR), cost per view (CPV) and cost per click (CPC). This led the team to 4 key metrics that the most successful video ads shared.

Finding One: Include a Demo and an Offer

Every day, people search LinkedIn to learn about different brands and products, so why not use your ads as an opportunity to show off your products and services? The LinkedIn research found that demo videos of products performed extremely well, driving the highest performance in video engagement, compilation and click-through rate.

The study also revealed that video ads including an offer performed best. Most audiences will keep watching until the end of a video, regardless of the length, to see an offer. The ads which included promotional offers had a completion rate 1.2 times higher than the average video.

Finding Two: Animation

Animation is a breath of fresh air when it comes to online video and can be an engaging and sophisticated way of telling your audience how fantastic your products and services are.

Ads that incorporated elements of animation and motion graphics out-performed the average LinkedIn video ad, with a 3% increase in click-through rate. Get animating!

Finding Three: Audio

What questions come to mind when thinking about social media video content? Music or no music, captions or no captions?

Audio is an important component of your video ad; LinkedIn’s study discovered that a whopping 79% of videos on the LinkedIn feed are watched with the sound turned off. Displaying captions can ensure that the vital information that you want to inform your viewers of can still be transferred.

Another finding from the study was that the use of single audio sources performed better e.g., videos with either a simple narration track or a musical track.. Videos with multitrack audio (such as music overlaid with a voice-over) suffered some of the worst video completion and engagement rates. When it comes to audio, less is more.

Finding Four: Keep Copy Short and add a CTA Button

Video has proven to be a much more effective way of grabbing and retaining your audience’s attention. In fact, the study showed that consumers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared with 10% when reading it in a text. Let your video do the work for you!

Of all the videos in the study, those with long descriptions or introductory text beyond four to five lines suffered the worst performance metrics. Copy between 100 – 150 characters performed the best, so try condensing the copy on your video ad to keep it short and snappy!

Optimise Your Video

So there we have it, there’s your official research in optimising your B2B video ads on LinkedIn. If you would like to read more about the study, visit AdAge.

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