LinkedIn allows 25 video uploads in 24 hours: plan a 60-variant test

A LinkedIn ad account can upload at most 25 videos in 24 hours in Campaign Manager, and uploads must come from a desktop device. A test of 60 variants therefore takes three calendar days of uploading (60 divided by 25 is 2.4, rounded up to 3). Make all 60 files first, check each one, then upload 25, 25 and 10.

What LinkedIn's page says

These rules are on LinkedIn's own video ads specification page. The same page says the video file must be uploaded directly to LinkedIn, not linked from a site such as YouTube or Vimeo, and that Apple ProRes is not supported.

A three-day schedule

Day one uploads variants 1 to 25, day two 26 to 50, day three 51 to 60. LinkedIn's wording is 'within 24 hours', which does not say calendar day, so do not assume a midnight reset; leave a margin and stop at 24 if a failed upload might be retried. The page does not say whether a rejected file counts toward the 25, so budget as if it does.

• Name files so the order is fixed: v01 to v60.
• Run every file through a check before it goes into the queue, so no upload slot is spent on a file that will be rejected.
• Keep a copy of the exact MP4 you uploaded; LinkedIn's page requires a direct file, so you cannot swap in a link later.

Why the cap changes how you test

The cap makes the order of your test matter. If the 60 variants are six hooks times ten endings, upload by hook rather than by ending, so that the first day already contains a complete comparison between endings for a few hooks. After day one you have 25 live variants and can start reading results while days two and three load.

It also argues for fewer, better variants. Twenty-five uploads in a day is enough for a serious first round: five hooks times five endings. Use the second and third days for the follow-up round built from what won, not for more of the same.

Producing 60 variants on Sume

Suppose each variant is a 20-second cut with a different opening. Video trim makes one new MP4 per job at $0.02, so 60 trims are $1.20. If each variant needs a different hook slot joined to a shared body, a timeline render bills $0.10 per output minute rounded up with a one-minute minimum, so a 20-second render is $0.10 and 60 of them are $6.00 (Sume catalog, read 2026-10-08).

Before upload, probe each result with video inspect. The probe returns size_bytes, duration_seconds, video_codec and container, which is enough to check LinkedIn's size, length and codec rows. The trim exact mode re-encodes with libx264 in yuv420p, per Sume's docs, which matches LinkedIn's H.264 requirement; the keyframe mode copies the source stream, so it only passes if the source is already H.264 in MP4.

MAX_PER_DAY = 25
variants = 60
days = -(-variants // MAX_PER_DAY)
print(days)                   # 3
print(variants * 0.02)        # 1.2  trims at $0.02
print(variants * 0.10)        # 6.0  20 s renders at $0.10