Future of B2B marketing and employer branding? LinkedIn introduces pre-roll video ads

Members of the Global Club for Experts in LinkedIn® Communication have identified a new activity by LinkedIn®: paid ads at the beginning of video content, much like those on YouTube. While this is clearly an experiment, it signals the potential future direction of the platform:

More video content. More ads. More relevant ad targeting. Potentially, this could even become a source of monetization for the best video creators.

While this is just an interpretation of the current updates, there is already an official source regarding these changes: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/native-advertising/brandlink

The feature is called BrandLink, and it connects brands with trusted publishers and creators by promoting pre-roll video ads alongside video content in the feed.

LinkedIn® claims this brings 130% higher average completion rates for BrandLink campaigns when compared to standard in-feed video ads, which is a very significant shift for non-organic content.