What you get
- The list, not a demographic. The same account list and titles that run in your feed campaigns, matched to households by LinkedIn. It is the only television inventory that can be bought that way, and the reason a B2B advertiser buys CTV through LinkedIn rather than a DSP.
- A flight planned from the benchmark. Audience size, daily budget, length, expected reach, frequency and CPM set from what 31 accounts paid and got, so the plan says "20% of the list at a frequency of 3 to 5 for about $8,000" rather than "let's test it".
- The spots. A 15 and a 30, cut from existing video-views or thought leader footage or produced, briefed for a living room: brand in the first two seconds, the name spoken and shown, one claim, no button.
- The structure underneath. CTV runs as the top of a full-funnel LinkedIn structure (thought leader ads, retargeting, message ads) on the same list, because that is where the effect shows up.
- Measurement agreed before launch, with a holdout, and a one-page read at the end of the flight: scale, hold or stop.
Who it is for, and who it is not
| Run it | Do not run it yet |
|---|---|
| $30,000 a month or more on LinkedIn, so $5,000 to $10,000 of CTV is a slice | Under $30,000 a month: the money does more in retargeting and thought leader ads |
| A named account list, 20,000 to 60,000 members with titles layered on | No list: cold CTV reaches 3.7% of the audience at 1.6 frequency and holds it 21 seconds |
| Buyer in the US, Canada or the UK | Buyer elsewhere: no inventory yet |
| Series B and later, enterprise or upper mid-market deal sizes, a sales cycle long enough for awareness to matter | Transactional or SMB deals where the feed and inbox already close |
| A video asset, or the appetite to make one | A screen recording with a voiceover is not a TV spot |
| Willing to measure lift, not leads, from the CTV line | Expecting the CTV row in Campaign Manager to show leads |
What happened in the feed when accounts added CTV
The question a CFO asks is not "how many people watched" but "what did it do". The panel can answer it within account: for every advertiser that started CTV with at least eight weeks of feed history before it, we compared their own feed campaigns in the eight weeks before the first CTV impression with the weeks CTV was running. Twelve accounts qualify.
| Feed metric, same account, during CTV vs 8 weeks before | Median change | Accounts where it rose |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page CTR | +42% | 9 of 12 |
| Site conversions per impression (accounts tracking conversions) | +65% | 7 of 7 |
| Cost per landing page click | −23% | lower in 5 of 12 (mixed) |
| CPM | +21% | 7 of 12 |
| Engagement rate | +1% | 6 of 12 (a tie) |
Read it honestly: twelve accounts, no control group, and a flight usually coincides with other changes. What it shows is direction, and the direction is that the feed campaigns on the same list got more clicks and more site conversions per impression while the spot was on air, at a somewhat higher CPM. Kiin Labs star: ★, directional. That is why we never run CTV alone and why the holdout is agreed before launch.
Two accounts, anonymised
| Account A · US enterprise software | Account B · North American B2B services | |
|---|---|---|
| CTV flight | $77,832 over 65 days, uploaded account list | $18,904 over 73 days, uploaded account list |
| Feed impressions, before → during | 2.5M → 3.8M | 259k → 994k |
| Feed CPM | $73.20 → $39.90 | $139.00 → $81.80 |
| Feed landing page CTR | 0.047% → 0.232% | 0.218% → 0.395% |
| Feed cost per landing page click | $155 → $17 | $64 → $21 |
| Feed site conversions | 1 → 125 | 142 → 1,892 |
| Feed leads (forms) | — | 68 → 99 |
Both accounts also raised feed spend during the flight, which is part of the story: CTV went on as the top of a bigger structure, not as a replacement. The CPM fall in both is what a warmer list looks like in the auction. These are two of the twelve; the median account moved less, and two moved the other way.
How we run it
- List and titles. The ABM list from the feed campaigns, titles layered on, exclusions applied (competitors, agencies, under 11 employees, current customers unless expansion): 20,000 to 60,000 members. Under 20,000 the CPM nearly doubles ($46.97 in the panel), so we widen before we launch.
- Flight. Eight to twelve weeks at $100 to $180 a day, manual CPM bid at the low end of LinkedIn's range, raised only when delivery stalls. Target: 20% of the list at a frequency of 3 to 5.
- Spots. A 15 and a 30, rotated; the brief above. Cut from existing footage where it exists.
- Underneath. Thought leader ads on the same list, retargeting of engagers and site visitors, message ads for the ask. CTV is the top of that, and the lift is read in those rows.
- Weekly. Reach, frequency and penetration against plan; delivery by publisher; the Companies tab engagement level on targeted versus untargeted accounts every fortnight.
- The read. At the end of the flight, one page: feed CPM, landing page CTR and conversions on the list before and during; Companies tab lift; brand or site lift if the study ran; pipeline against the holdout. Scale, hold or stop.
Budget and what it buys
| Plan | Media | What it bought in the panel at $25.76 CPM | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panel median (a test) | $75 a day, 40 days, about $3,000 | About 115,000 impressions; 5.4% of a 120,000-member audience at 1.95 frequency | Proves delivery, not effect |
| Kiin flight | $100 to $180 a day, 8 to 12 weeks, $5,600 to $15,000 | 220,000 to 580,000 impressions; 20% of a 30,000 to 50,000 list at a frequency of 3 to 5 | A readable lift test with a holdout |
| Always-on | $300 to $500 a day | The top three accounts in the panel spent $100,000 to $168,000 a year | Enterprise ABM programmes with a US buyer |
How it is measured
In order of weight: reach and frequency into the named list; the Companies tab engagement level on targeted versus untargeted accounts; feed CPM, landing page CTR and site conversions on the same list before and during; post-view conversions from the Insight Tag as evidence of matching; brand lift or site lift when the flight clears LinkedIn's study minimum; and pipeline in the CRM against the holdout. Completion rate is reported and not used: at 98.7% it says the spot is unskippable. All of it is on one page, monthly, alongside the four feed channels, in the same format as the rest of the paid media reporting.
Pricing
CTV is included in the B2B paid media retainer ($5,500 a month, about £4,100; media paid to LinkedIn on your own account and never marked up) for accounts on that tier, which is where a $30,000-a-month LinkedIn programme sits. Standalone CTV management for an account run in-house or by another agency is quoted on a call. Fees are flat, tied to media spend bands, never a percentage of spend; the tiers are on the pricing page.