Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on setting up your LinkedIn video campaigns based on your goals.
You're planning to run several videos and want to get as many impressions as possible, building a retargeting audience as you go. This brings up the first key question you have, about objectives.
Objectives: Brand Awareness vs. Video Views...
When it comes to choosing between Brand Awareness and Video Views, it really depends on what 'impressions' means to you. If 'impressions' strictly means just getting the ad served up on someone's screen (even if they scroll past instantly), then Brand Awareness will likely get you the most raw impressions for your budget as it's optimised for reach. However, you mentioned wanting people to 'see the video' and your KPI being 'as many impressions as possible' - which sounds a bit like you want actual engagement with the video content.
If the goal is truly for people to *watch* the videos, or even just engage with them for a few seconds, then the Video Views objective is definitely the one to go for. It optimises for completed views (or a percentage of the video watched, depending on settings), meaning LinkedIn will show your video to users most likely to stick around and watch it, rather than just those likely to have it appear in their feed.
So, I'd say if your goal is for people to actually consume the video content, choose Video Views. If it's purely about getting the ad pixel loaded on screens as many times as possible, Brand Awareness might technically get more impressions, but they'll be lower quality in terms of view duration.
Structuring your videos: One ad group or A/B testing?
You have three shortened versions of your main video and you're asking if it's better to put them in one ad group or separate them for A/B testing, given your goal isn't to find the single 'best' creative but to get max views across them.
If your primary aim is to maximise total views for your budget across the set of videos, putting them all in the same ad group and letting LinkedIn's algorithm optimise is generally the more efficient route. The platform will automatically allocate more budget to the video (or videos) that are performing best based on your chosen objective (Video Views in this case) within that specific audience. This means you'll likely achieve a lower average cost per view for the group as a whole compared to manually splitting them out and potentially overspending on a lower-performing creative just to finish an A/B test.
A/B testing is more useful when you want a statistically significant comparison between two specific elements (like Video A vs Video B) to determine a winner for future use, or to isolate the impact of one creative element. Since your goal is simply to get max views across the collection, letting LinkedIn handle the distribution is fine and probably better for overall volume and cost efficiency.
Summary of Recommendations:
| Area | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Ad Objective | Video Views | Optimises for actual video consumption, aligning better with getting people to "see" the video content, not just impressions. |
| Video Structure | All in One Ad Group | Allows LinkedIn to automatically allocate budget to the videos getting the most views, maximising total views for the budget across all creatives efficiently. |
A bit more context...
LinkedIn is a good platform for B2B, which I assume your videos are targeting decision makers given the typical use case. Getting people to watch video content can be a great way to build initial awareness and educate your audience. We've run campaigns targeting B2B decision makers on LinkedIn and seen costs per lead around $22, but the cost for video views will of course be much lower as it's a TOFU (Top Of Funnel) activity.
Setting up these campaigns correctly and optimising them requires a bit of know-how to ensure you're not just burning budget but actually getting your content seen by the right people who might become retargeting audience members later. Ensuring your targeting is spot on is key, even with a video views objective, as you want views from relevant potential customers, not just anyone.
Sometimes having someone with experience in running these types of campaigns on LinkedIn can make a big difference in performance and efficiency.
We're happy to give you some more tailored advice if you'd like to discuss your specific campaign in more detail. We offer a free consultation to chat through your goals and strategy.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
