LinkedIn says it will start testing video ads that will autoplay without sound
Kurt Wagner / Recode :
Context & Ripple Effects
This Recode report is the starting gun for LinkedIn's video ad business: a small test group of marketers gets sound-off autoplay units, a format borrowed from how feeds elsewhere had already shifted to muted viewing. The bet paid out on a long timeline — within months LinkedIn moved from test to a full native rollout of autoplaying feed video ads, extending the format to Company Pages for businesses and publishers.
Seven years later the same muted-autoplay foundation underpins LinkedIn's pitch to media companies: a video ad program that sources say will earn Bloomberg and WSJ $2M+ each in 2024, plus a revenue-share experiment with Pinterest letting publishers sell ads on their own videos. The 2017 test is where that publisher-revenue arc began.
First-order effects
- Marketers in the test group gain a new B2B video inventory type priced and measured like social feed ads, while LinkedIn gets its first read on whether professional-feed users will watch sound-off video at scale.
Second-order effects
- Once the test validates the format, LinkedIn's own follow-up — the 2018 native feed rollout with Company Pages video — turns a marketer-only product into one publishers and brands can fill, expanding supply faster than the original test ever could.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, LinkedIn's ad business structurally shifts from selling only its own first-party inventory to splitting video revenue with publishers — the Bloomberg/WSJ-scale payouts reported in 2024 suggest the platform now competes for premium media budgets, not just recruiter and SaaS spend.
The trend: Professional social platforms are converting muted autoplay video from an engagement feature into a shared revenue pipeline with premium publishers.