LinkedIn’s video push appears to be working in 2025

LinkedIn’s publisher program, which includes over 500 publishers and journalists, is also intended to amplify video content on the platform. Through the program, LinkedIn provides audience demographic data to news publishers, shares monthly newsletters with information about new tools, and operates workshops to educate members about the platform’s features. Weekly video creation from program members has grown by 67 percent year-over-year, per the company rep.

Promising numbers

LinkedIn has been making a concerted effort to woo video creators since March 2024, when the company began testing a dedicated vertical video feed on its mobile app. Since then, video consumption on LinkedIn has grown consistently, with the company reporting 34 percent year-over-year growth in video uploads in fiscal-Q4 2024 and 36 percent year-over-year growth in total video viewership in fiscal-Q1 2025. 

“Our team at LinkedIn has been focused on supporting members on the platform as they explore how to leverage video to share insights. We’ve hosted several workshops both at our offices and at industry events; we’ve held LinkedIn Live discussions on best practices for sharing videos; and we work closely with publishers, corporate comms executives and organizations to answer questions and provide guidance,” said LinkedIn News senior director and executive editor Laura Lorenzetti.

The first wave of short-form video creators to make the jump over to LinkedIn has been led by creators such as Natalie “Corporate Natalie” Marshall, whose humorous content about the nature of work and corporate life has propelled her to a following of nearly 150,000 on the platform. She boasts 1.1 million followers on Instagram and roughly 735,000 on TikTok.

Marshall told Digiday that she frequently communicates with a dedicated LinkedIn representative to share opportunities and feedback. (A LinkedIn representative confirmed that the company’s community management team “works with a number of members globally,” but declined to share specific numbers around the program.)

“We find that viewership doesn’t fall off as fast as it does on Instagram and TikTok,” said Marshall, who told Digiday that her LinkedIn video posts consistently receive more engagement and attention than her written content on the platform, in part because LinkedIn’s algorithm has a tendency to resurface older posts. “We are getting posts from months ago on our feed — and I think that’s probably a benefit for the brands to know that there’s longevity with their spend, if they are to do a partnership on LinkedIn.”

Marshall added that she had observed that LinkedIn users tend to spend more time watching each video than viewers elsewhere, speculating that users might be captured by the novelty of short-form video on the platform. She said that she had received interest in sponsored LinkedIn posts from advertisers such as Notion, for whom she posted her first paid text post on Jan. 30.

“On TikTok and Instagram, people are dropping off after 5 or 6 seconds, sometimes even less,” said Marshall, who didn’t share specific completion rates for her LinkedIn videos.

Brand spend on the rise

Brands are beginning to realize the value of marketing on LinkedIn, according to Brendan Gahan’s experience. Business is currently booming for Gahan’s LinkedIn influencer marketing agency, Creator Authority, with brands’ spending on the agency’s LinkedIn campaigns — both video and non-video — doubling between Q3 and Q4 of 2024 and on track to triple in Q1 of 2025, per Gahan, who said that his clients track metrics such as impressions, engagement and views to gauge the success of their sponsored content.

For now, most of Creator Authority’s clients are products or services geared toward professionals, such as Notion, although Gahan said that the agency is “having a lot of conversations” with more mainstream consumer brands. For most creators who make sponsored content on LinkedIn, it remains more of a side hustle than a full-time job. Still, the revenue can be considerable. For example, creator Lindsey Gamble told Digiday that he made five figures via sponsored LinkedIn posts in both text and video format in 2024.

“This still feels like that era of YouTube in 2010, where brands are starting to come in, the ecosystem is growing, and there’s acceleration,” Gahan said. “But to me, it feels like this is that initial wave, and we haven’t even come close to the mass mainstream.”

Prioritizing video

At the moment, LinkedIn does not publicly display the viewership of videos on the platform, although creators are able to see how many impressions their own videos have accrued. 

Among LinkedIn creators, it’s a common belief that the company’s algorithm actively prioritizes video content over other types. Earlier this month, creator Terry Rice ran an experiment in which he posted the same content as a video post and a text-based image post, finding that the video post far exceeded the text post in impressions — 786 to 181,000 — but the text post had a much higher engagement-to-impression rate of 12.7 percent versus the video’s engagement rate of 0.1 percent. (When asked about the impact of LinkedIn’s algorithm on video performance metrics, Lorenzetti declined to share specific details, instead pointing to an October 2024 blog post on the LinkedIn feed by LinkedIn senior director of product management Rishi Jobanputra.)

“In 2024, when they made significant investments in video on the platform, the algorithm updated as well, and they really are prioritizing video content over editorial,” said United Talent Agency marketing executive Jack Gallo, who counts LinkedIn as a client and has helped digitally native creators such as Emma Chamberlain make the jump to the platform.