If you’re here, you likely already know the benefits to running LinkedIn Video Ads, but are looking for ways to make yours as cost effective as possible.

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Well, you’ve come to the right place.

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In this article, we’ll walk you through which campaign objective and bidding strategy are best for optimizing towards lower LinkedIn Video Ad costs.

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Let’s dive in! 🌊🤿

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WHAT IS YOUR LINKEDIN ADS CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE?

When optimizing for lower costs on your LinkedIn Video Ads, the first step is to choose a campaign objective.

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This really comes down to what kind of front-end result you’re looking to generate: impressions, clicks, video views, leads, etc.

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We recommend choosing an objective that will allow you to bid for either clicks or video views.

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That’s because bidding by reach or impressions, unless your ad performance is meeting a certain threshold (more on that later), can be one of the most expensive ways to bid on LinkedIn Ads.

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Objectives that allow you to bid for clicks or video views include Website Visits, Engagement, Video Views, Lead Generation, and Website Conversions.

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Now let’s narrow this down even further.

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We have a whole podcast episode dedicated to getting lower costs and better performance from your LinkedIn Lead Generation Ads, so feel free to check that out. We won’t cover the Lead Generation objective in this post.

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And we don’t recommend the Website Conversions objective because it’s really only effective if you’re getting a high volume of conversions from your LinkedIn Ads, so it’s not a great objective to start out with.

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That leaves us with Website Visits, Engagement, and Video Views.

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In a recent case study we conducted on which objective resulted in the lowest LinkedIn Video Ad costs, we found that Video Views and Engagement were the best, depending on which key result you wanted to focus on: clicks or video views.

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According to our study, the Video Views objective had a much higher cost per click (CPC) and lower click volume compared to both Engagement and Website Visits, but a much lower cost per view (CPV) at 50% and a higher video completion rate.

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On the other hand, the Engagement and Website Visits objectives had comparable click volume and CPCs, but Engagement had a lower CPV at 50% and higher video completion rate, as well.

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So our recommendation is, if your goal is to generate a higher volume of clicks at a lower cost, while also getting a decent cost per video view, go with the Engagement objective.

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If you care more about generating a high volume of video views at a lower cost, go with the Video Views objective.

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SET YOUR LINKEDIN ADS BID APPROPRIATELY

We have an entire podcast episode dedicated to bidding strategy, but we’ll sum up some key points here as they relate to LinkedIn Video Ads.

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The first is to bid lower than what LinkedIn recommends.

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If your budget is large or your audience is small, you may need to bid higher in order to get traction.

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But oftentimes, assuming your ads are high-performing, you shouldn’t have a hard time spending your full daily budget by bidding lower than LinkedIn’s recommended range.

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Second, set your bidding optimization goals to either clicks or video views (again, depending on the key result you care about and the objective you selected).

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We wouldn’t recommend bidding by reach or impressions unless you’re seeing exceptional performance relative to your key result.

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If that’s clicks, then a clickthrough rate 2 – 3x LinkedIn’s average (0.44%) is the perfect time to switch to bidding by impressions or reach because it’s more cost effective.

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Transparently, we don’t have data yet on when to switch to impressions bidding when optimizing for video views, but the same principle applies.

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If you’re seeing a video view rate higher than LinkedIn’s average (29.5%), then try switching to impressions bidding to see if costs drop.

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HOW GOOD IS YOUR LINKEDIN VIDEO AD?

As hinted at earlier, your LinkedIn Video Ad performance can also have an effect on your costs.

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If your clickthrough rate or view rate are low, for example, then your CPC and CPV respectively will likely be high.

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This typically occurs when your ad messaging isn’t relevant to your target audience.

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In this case, either your ad or your audience targeting needs to be tweaked.

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If you suspect your Video Ad itself is the root of the problem, check out this list of best practices for high-performing LinkedIn Video Ad creative for some direction.

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NOW WHAT?

Now that you know how to reduce the costs of your LinkedIn Video Ads, you should be better equipped to maximize your return from the platform.

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Feel free to save this guide as a resource!

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If you want to learn about some additional low-cost LinkedIn Ad formats, check out this episode of The LinkedIn Ads Show.

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And if you want to maximize your return by minimizing waste within your LinkedIn Ads account, consider booking a discovery call with us at B2Linked.

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We’d absolutely love the chance to get to work with you!

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Written by Eric Jones