Linkedin video ads

Supported aspect ratios: 1:1 (square, recommended), 4:5 (vertical, second best), 16:9 (landscape, only if reusing existing horizontal video). Square is the highest-performing format because it occupies the most pixel real estate in feed. Vertical comes second; landscape is the smallest and loses scroll attention fastest.

File specs: MP4 or MOV, max 200MB, max 30 minutes duration. Practical maximum: 90 seconds. Optimal: 15-30 seconds for cold audiences, 30-60 seconds for warm. Anything past 90 seconds bleeds completion rate hard.

Captions are not optional. LinkedIn auto-plays muted. A video without baked-in captions communicates nothing for the first 4-8 seconds before the viewer decides to enable sound (most don't). Burn captions into the file - don't rely on LinkedIn's auto-caption SRT upload, which is unreliable in 2026 for non-English audio and accented speech.

Setup happens in Campaign Manager. Pick Sponsored Content -> Video ad. Upload the MP4. Add headline (max 70 characters) and introductory text (max 600 characters). Pick a custom thumbnail or accept the auto-generated one (auto-generated is usually a bad frame; upload custom).

Choose video when motion or audio carry essential information. Product demos that need to show interaction, customer testimonials where the voice matters, founder talking-head content where presence is the message. If the content can be conveyed as static cards or text, ship that format instead - video production overhead is the highest of any LinkedIn format.

Choose thought leader video for cold acquisition. Founder talking-head shipped from the personal profile via thought leader ads outperforms company-page video for cold audiences by 2-3x on engagement. The video format compounds with the thought leader format.

Choose carousel over video for sequential content. If the content has 4-6 discrete beats (numbered framework, product features, before-after-bridge), carousel pulls through better than video. Video flows continuously; carousel paces explicitly.

Choose video for retargeting warm audiences. Audiences who already know the brand will give a video 8-15 seconds of attention. Cold audiences won't. Match video to the warm side of the funnel for best ROAS.

Internal: linkedin-thought-leader-ads, linkedin-carousel-ads, linkedin-ads-best-practices.

First frame is the entire ad. Whatever is on screen at second 0 decides whether the video gets watched past second 2. Big readable text overlay, a recognizable founder face, or a high-contrast graphic. Empty product screens, slow fades, and animated logos all fail the first-frame test.

Hook the first 3 seconds with specific language. 'We just hit $10M ARR' beats 'We have exciting news'. '6 mistakes that cost us $200k' beats 'Lessons we learned'. Numerical specificity in the first 3 seconds correlates with 30-50% higher 6-second hold rate.

Cut to product or face within 6 seconds. Long intros, agency-style logo reveals, and brand-mark openings all kill hold rate. Either show the founder or show the product within 6 seconds. Brand mark goes at the end, not the beginning.

Captions in large readable type with high contrast. Caption legibility decides watch-through more than caption content. Use sans-serif at minimum 60pt equivalent, white text with a dark drop shadow or black box behind. Test legibility by viewing the video at thumbnail size in feed.

Soft CTA in the final 3 seconds. 'See the full breakdown' or 'Follow for more on this' outperforms 'Book a demo' as the video-end CTA. Video ads work best as awareness/consideration plays earning the click-through to longer content, not as direct-response demos.

Test 15-second and 60-second cuts of the same content. The shorter version usually wins on click-through-to-landing even when the longer version wins on view-through. Click-through is the metric that pays the bills.