Business-focused social network LinkedIn says video uploads have increased 45 percent on the platform, year-over-year, so it’s testing the Wire Program for in-stream video ads to run alongside publisher content from Bloomberg, Forbes, NBCUniversal, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, among others. The B2B social network is also expanding capabilities in Accelerate, its AI campaign creation and optimization offering. The new features are part of LinkedIn’s effort to boost marketer participation in brand-building and engagement among what the company says is a community of one billion global professionals.

LinkedIn’s Wire Program “enables media companies to sell 3- to 15-second-long pre-roll ads on their editorial video,” writes Digiday. Barron’s, Business Insider, LinkedIn News, MarketWatch and Yahoo Finance are also part of the beta test, which launched this week.

The Wire Program is available in all languages to global advertisers that want to set up content sponsorships with the initial group of publishers. “At launch, the Wire Program will not offer EU member targeting,” LinkedIn explains in a news post.

“In its alpha phase, the terms of the deal included a 50-50 revenue split between the publisher and LinkedIn, as well as a fixed CPM of $50,” Digiday reports. “The $50 CPM is on par with the platform’s rates for its other ad offerings.” As of July, “pricing will move to an auction model, determined by demand from advertisers for specific audience segments.” The revenue split is set to remain the same.

In April, the Microsoft-owned company introduced LinkedIn CTV, an ad solution to help sponsors reach target B2B customers on connected television. Broadcasting & Cable writes that iSpot.tv will “provide measurement” to support LinkedIn CTV.

“B2B advertisers have historically felt ignored,” writes Search Engine Land, which calls the improvements “a welcome update,” and says the Accelerate campaigns are being made available globally “for lead generation and website visits objectives.” Accelerate is integrating Microsoft Designer, improving ad targeting with exclusion lists and adding “an AI marketing assistant for campaign guidance.”

Axios reports LinkedIn is also more broadly testing an AI assistant for Premium members that “leverages Microsoft’s AI technology to prompt users to chat with an AI assistant to learn more about a particular company or topic.”

While Accelerate is available in all languages in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, AI-generated creative content is “currently available in English only,” the company says. LinkedIn will discuss its new AI marketing tools next week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where it will officially release its 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark report.