If you are planning a LinkedIn video advertising campaign, considering what type of LinkedIn video ads to use, or figuring out what messaging to use in your creatives, this article is for you. Disclaimer: there’s a high possibility that your socks will be knocked off and that you will laugh very loudly. There’s no going back.

Twelve ads first, then the practical part: what to put in a LinkedIn video ad brief, the specs, and how to test what you make.

LinkedIn Video Ads Best Practices: The PESO Formula

Each of these video ads follow what we call the PESO Formula:

• A message about the Problem buyers have (the majority of the message)
• Using Emotion (usually humour) to exaggerate or show the pains that the problem causes
• Ending the video with the brand’s Solution
• And the Outcome that it produces when the problem is solved

This formula is based on 4 timeless LinkedIn advertising principles: 1) The more you show your understanding of the painful problem, the more buyers think you are the only one that can solve it. 2) The more visible the pain and the clearer it is that the problem causes that pain, the higher the perceived value of your solution. 3) You can’t bore complete strangers into listening, remembering, and sharing about your ad. 4) All purchases follow this sequence: Problem → Solution → Outcome.

How These Ads Work With the 95:5 Rule

When you use this formula, you’re doing advertising for both the long term and the short term: for both the 95% of buyers that aren’t ready to buy, and the 5% that are ready. For the 95%: they will remember you as the go-to solution when they eventually face the problem. For the 5%: they will see you as the brand that understands their problem the best, and as a result think you understand the solution the best.

List of 12 Best LinkedIn Video Ads

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 1: Webflow

PESO breakdown: P: Traditional web design platforms where things just simply stop working. E: Humour, metaphor, and exaggerated situations to make the frustration of web design relatable. Quotes like “Oh I think that’s the problem”. If you’ve ever used web editing tools, that quote is hilarious. S: Webflow is positioned as the web design tool that just works. O: An easy and productive web design experience.

Room for improvement: Nada. This ad makes the 5% of in-market buyers feel understood and will see Webflow as the solution. Because it’s so funny and memorable, the 95% of out-of-market buyers will easily remember Webflow as the solution when they eventually face the problem.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 2: The Client by Teamwork.com

This ad got 400 reposts and 600 comments almost immediately when it was launched. Have you ever shared an ad with a coworker saying, “Hey Tim, just wanted to share this video with you. It was really boring, so it made me think of you”? No, and that’s exactly the point. Most LinkedIn video ads do not make you laugh. This one does. A lot.

Video Ad Example 3: Cat Herders by HP

This one was NOT on LinkedIn. But it followed the PESO Formula so well it had to be included. P: Fragmented information technology systems. E: An extremely relatable metaphor to convey the frustration and chaos of fragmented systems. S: “We bring together information, ideas, and technologies and make them go where you want.” O: Smoothly managed IT infrastructure, eliminating chaos. Room for improvement: The problem and solution could be more specific.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 4: Slack, We Tried Slack

P: Fragmented workspace communication. E: Humour and exaggeration to communicate relatable truths about disorganised messaging. S: A unified workspace communication tool. O: Improved team collaboration and streamlined communication through Slack. Room for improvement: Nothing. We interviewed the Brand Lead at Teamwork.com who created The Client video above. This Slack ad was what inspired her to do the same. She remembered it 10 years after she saw it. If you can be the brand remembered as the solution to a specific problem by your entire TAM for 10 years, the success you’ll experience probably won’t be too far off from Slack’s.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 5: SAS Viya

P: Data mismanagement. E: Humour highlighting the frustration and inefficiencies. S: Data management and analytics. O: From tons of data to a POV. Results from this ad: 3x increase in Lead Gen Form completion rates, 31% increase in engagement rates, 28% decrease in Cost per Lead. As they say, brand advertising is the air cover that supports the ground troops. Show those results to the exec team next time they shoot down your brand advertising plans.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 6: The Big Meeting by Slack

Your solution is not a solution without a problem. You also can’t bore strangers into listening to you. Slack understands these two principles yet again. P: Inefficiency and wasted time caused by unproductive, repetitive meetings. E: Humour highlighting the chaos and frustration of managing countless tasks and meetings. S: Slack streamlines communication and project management. O: From disorganised chaos and meeting overload to a streamlined, manageable workflow.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 7: ClickUp

P: The frustration and inefficiency of using physical tools like whiteboards. E: Humour highlighting the frustration and chaos caused by physical tools in high-stakes work environments. S: ClickUp offers a digital, flexible alternative. O: From messy, uneditable whiteboard chaos to a streamlined digital solution that enhances productivity.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 8: DEEL

P: Managing payroll, taxes, expenses, and local regulations for a global workforce is complex, chaotic, and prone to costly mistakes. E: Humour using the popular “This is fine” meme to depict the frustration and anxiety HR managers face. S: Deel provides a compliant and streamlined solution for managing and paying workers across 150 countries. O: From chaotic, stressful HR management to a smooth, compliant, and efficient system where everything is “actually fine.”

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 9: Parisian Love by Google

We lied: this one isn’t a B2B ad. But many executive teams object to long-term brand advertising saying “We’re too boring. We’re a boring tech tool.” So I wanted to show you how a search engine, pretty dang boring if you think about it, can make you feel and remember. The rational stuff comes later in the buying journey. P: Life is uncertain and we have no one to ask about very specific challenges. E: Romance, curiosity, and sentimentality through a series of Google searches that tell a story. S: Google gives you answers to any question. O: The user successfully navigates life, thanks to Google.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 10: Winn.AI

P: The manual process of updating CRMs. E: Humour to exaggerate the frustration and missed opportunities caused by this problem. S: A No-Typing CRM. O: Sales teams get their job done. Note: this ad does something brilliant by marketing the problem with the legacy category and showing how a new category of CRM is needed: No Typing CRM.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 11: Thales

This one doesn’t have the most problem-focused message. But we wanted to show you how even cybersecurity can get emotional. Oh, and by the way, we produced this video.

LinkedIn Video Ad Example 12: Teamwork.com

P: Clients are difficult to manage, with unpredictable demands, unclear feedback, and constantly changing requirements, leading to inefficiency and lost profitability. E: Humour to highlight the frustration and chaos caused by demanding clients, making the problem relatable and engaging. S: Teamwork.com unifies and automates the management of clients. O: From struggling to manage client demands and losing profitability, to efficiently managing and profiting from every client demand.

If you’re looking for more B2B ad examples, check out our Top 6 Cybersecurity Video Ads or our Top 5 Fintech Video Ads.

What to put in a LinkedIn video production brief.

Every ad above started as a brief, and most weak LinkedIn ads can be traced back to a brief that only said “30-second video for LinkedIn”. That leaves the hook, the sound, the shape of the frame and the number of versions to chance. A brief that gets you a usable ad answers seven questions before anyone writes a script.

1. Who is it for, and what stage are they at?

Name the job titles and, ideally, the companies. LinkedIn’s own targeting has no “product marketing” or “identity security” category, so for niche B2B buyers a list of named accounts often beats job-function targeting. Then say whether this ad is for the 95% who aren’t buying yet or the 5% who are. That one decision changes the length, the tone and the call to action.

2. What is the one problem?

One. If the brief lists four pains, the ad will mention all four and land none. Write the problem in the buyer’s words, not your category’s. “Our analysts drown in false positives” beats “alert fatigue reduction”.

3. What happens in the first two seconds?

The hook is the most important line in the brief. People scroll the feed fast, and an ad that opens on a logo animation or a slow establishing shot has already lost most of them. Ask for three hook options and test them. Hooks that work in B2B:

• The problem, said out loud. Open on the pain, in the buyer’s words, as on-screen text.
• The pattern break. Something that doesn’t look like anything else in your category’s feed.
• The familiar story. A metaphor the viewer already knows, like HP’s cat herders.
• The character. A person the buyer recognises from their own job, mid-crisis.
• The joke. If it is funny, make sure it is funny in the first line, as Webflow’s is.

4. How does it work with the sound off?

LinkedIn plays video in the feed muted, so assume most people will never hear your voiceover. Brief for captions burned into the video file, on-screen text that carries the argument, and visuals that tell the story without narration. You can also upload a caption file in Campaign Manager, but burned-in captions show everywhere the file ends up, including when sales reuses it. Sound should be a bonus, never a requirement.

5. Which aspect ratios, and which lengths?

LinkedIn accepts 16:9, 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16. On mobile, square and vertical take up more of the screen than landscape, so they are the default for the feed. Ask for the hero at your main length and cutdowns at shorter ones. For awareness ads, 15 to 30 seconds is the range we brief most; retargeting to people who already know you can run longer. Compose the shoot or the animation for vertical from day one: cropping a landscape film into 9:16 after the fact usually loses the thing that mattered.

6. How many variants?

Enough to learn something, not so many that each one gets no budget. A practical starting set is three hooks on one body, cut at two lengths, in two aspect ratios: twelve files from one shoot or one animation. Brief variants at the start. Producing them as an afterthought costs more and they rarely match.

7. What will you test, and what counts as winning?

Decide this before production, because it decides which variants you need. If you are testing hooks, keep everything else the same. Pick one metric per stage: view-through to 50% or 75% for awareness, click-through or lead form completion for retargeting. More on how in the testing section below.

A sample LinkedIn video ad brief

Here is what that looks like filled in, for an imaginary identity verification product.

If your next brief can fill in every row, you will get an ad you can test, not just a video you can post.

LinkedIn video ad specs.

The technical limits are generous. The creative choices above matter far more, but put these in the brief so nothing gets rejected at upload.

Source: LinkedIn video ads guide, checked October 2026.

How to test LinkedIn video ads.

Campaign Manager has a built-in A/B test. You can test creative, audience or placement, LinkedIn splits the budget evenly between the two versions, and tests run from two weeks up to 90 days. You choose the metric that decides the winner when you set it up (Social Media Examiner).

Three rules keep the results useful:

1. Test one thing at a time. Hook A against hook B on the same body, same length, same audience. Change two things and you will not know which one worked.
2. Pick a metric that matches the stage. The cheapest click is not always the best ad. An awareness ad should win on how many people watched it through; a retargeting ad should win on leads.
3. Give it time. B2B audiences are small. Two weeks is the floor, not the target, and a test that ends on day four is telling you about noise.

Then feed what you learn back into the next brief. The winning hook tells you which problem statement your buyers recognise, and that is worth knowing well beyond LinkedIn.

What a LinkedIn video ad costs to make.

At Black Camel, the thinking comes first and costs nothing. Every project starts with a Film Blueprint: competitor research, a teardown, the creative brief, concepts, script and storyboard. You pay $0 until you sign off the storyboard. Production then starts from $10,000 per project. What moves the price is the scope: animation or a shoot, how many hooks, lengths and ratios, talent and licences, languages and deadline. Briefing the variants up front, rather than asking for them after the hero is finished, is the cheapest way to get them.