Understand the essence of information flow advertising strategy in one article!

Case description: The advertiser promoted the download of a dried fruit and fresh produce O2O APP.

This case only promotes the APP on Bytedance, but because the client's business requires city-specific promotion by category, and there are single product or brand activities to cooperate, we need a combined dimension.

According to needs, we first divided the advertising groups into three categories, namely city + single product, city + activity, and online coupons. Then, within each advertising group, we divided the advertising plans according to targeting and advertising creativity, thereby balancing the completeness and effectiveness of the test scenarios in the account structure.

Example of multi-dimensional combination account structure

The account structure is directly reflected in the number and naming of ad groups and ad plans. The naming of ad groups and ad plans usually follows the following key points.

A few key points

(1) The naming logic of advertising groups and advertising plans is clear and recognizable.

(2) Do not repeat the names of advertising groups and advertising plans.

(3) It is recommended to name in a fixed format. Different directional dimensions or material styles can be distinguished by using connectors.

Key indicators in the user conversion path

Operators need to know the conversion path of the delivery plan in the entire marketing process, so we usually use marketing funnels to understand the user conversion path. The marketing funnel can be understood as an inverted pyramid structure, with its levels divided into display, click, visit, browsing, consultation, transaction, etc., decreasing step by step.

Different information flow advertising platforms have developed corresponding indicator systems around the marketing funnel to measure and analyze the data of each funnel node. Next, we will still take Bytedance as an example to look at the conversion indicators of Toutiao.

Definition of key indicators

In the figure below, we define the most common user conversion scenario, which is the entire process from a user seeing an ad, to clicking, arriving at the site, downloading the APP, registering, and converting to payment.

Key indicators for common user conversion scenarios

Let’s see what are the key data indicators used in the analysis in this process.

If the marketing funnel is divided into six major conversion nodes, namely display, click, arrival, download activation/retention, and conversion , the definition of each node indicator is as follows.

1. Display volume

That is, exposure, the number of times the ad is exposed. What we usually refer to as the amount of exposure. Exposure is the primary task of advertising, because the display volume is the first link for advertisements to reach users.

2. Clicks

The number of clicks by target users due to their interests.

3. Visits

Also known as site traffic, it refers to the number of times users reach the advertiser's landing page. There are two scenarios here. If the delivery target is the advertiser's H5 page, or the user has downloaded and activated the advertiser's APP, then there is no need to go through the download and activation process from clicking to the H5 page. On the contrary, if the user is a new customer and has not downloaded the advertiser's APP before, and the advertiser's landing page is a page within the APP based on Deeplink technology, then download and activation are necessary prerequisites for counting visits.

4. Download activation amount

When the delivery target is APP download, it refers to the number of times users download the APP for the first time and activate it.

5. Number of inquiries/retentions/registrations

The next node after the visit may be in-site consultation, telephone consultation, contact with information or user registration, depending on the specific industry and promotion goals. This link often corresponds to the "consider" link in the user conversion path.

6. Volume

Also known as paid volume or paid conversion volume, it refers to the amount the user ultimately pays. The corresponding user conversion path is the "purchase" link.

The above concepts are generally applicable to information flow ads, but the naming may be different on different advertising platforms. For example, the "impression volume" defined on Bytedance is named "exposure volume" on the Tencent Social Advertising (TSA) delivery platform.

In information flow advertising, the exposure of the user conversion path is a necessary prerequisite for effective conversion, while the clicks, arrivals, etc. in the middle are often the process goals of optimization. The process of information flow optimization generally starts with increasing exposure from the marketing conversion funnel, and then realizing a benign funnel mechanism through data such as click-through rate, reach rate, download activation rate, etc. This is a process of forward deduction.

In information flow advertising, advertisers’ KPIs generally assess conversion effect indicators. This means that optimizers need to reverse-engineer the goals of each node in the conversion path from the performance KPI.

Therefore, we usually define display and click indicators as front-end data on the media advertising platform side, and define user visits, conversions and other data as back-end data.

Front-end and back-end metrics

Front-end indicators correspond to user exposure, clicks, and interaction links, usually including display indicators and social interaction indicators; back-end indicators correspond to conversion data, interactive data within advertiser landing pages, etc.

Display indicators

Display indicators are used to measure data on exposure and clicks in the user conversion path.

Basic display indicators are highly consistent on different delivery platforms, including exposure, clicks, click-through rate, average click price, cost per thousand impressions, expenditure, etc., as shown in the table.

Basic display indicator description

Social interaction indicators are front-end indicators that are only applicable to social and information media, and are convenient for measuring the diverse demands of digital marketing.

Social interaction metrics

It is usually used to describe the value of advertisers' fan acquisition, content reach, social interaction and secondary dissemination.

The social interaction indicators of the Bytedance advertising platform are shown in the figure.

Social interaction indicators on Toutiao

It can be seen that in addition to common indicators such as attention, reading, and forwarding, Toutiao has added indicators such as challenge views and music views based on its own content marketing methods.

In addition, Bytedance has also introduced video play counts (VV) and promotion and retention quality indicators for short video marketing, as shown in the figure.

Videos on Toutiao and additional creative indicators

Conversion metrics

It is used to measure the data from the user’s arrival at the site through H5 or APP download activation/APP opening to the final payment conversion stage.

The conversion indicators of information flow advertising are generally divided into web page categories and APP categories. A common delivery scenario for web pages is to direct users to the advertiser's H5 page. Common indicators for apps include Deeplink recall of old customers or download activation of new customers.

The two indicators correspond to two types of user scenarios, and their indicator data are also different.

The figure below describes the APP conversion indicators on the Ocean Engine. We can see that there are indicator data for conversion behaviors such as downloading, installation, activation and subsequent registration.

APP conversion indicators on Toutiao’s delivery platform

Let’s take a look at the definition of web page conversion indicators of Ocean Engine, as shown in the figure below.

Web page conversion indicators on Toutiao’s delivery platform

The web page conversion indicators of Ocean Engine mainly correspond to the "retention" link of the user conversion path. In addition, Ocean Engine uses an additional set of conversion indicators to measure deep conversion data, which can be used in conjunction with APP or web page conversion indicators, as shown in the figure.

Integrated conversion indicators on Toutiao delivery platform

It should be noted that the conversion indicators of advertisers in different industries are different. Still taking the download and activation business scenario as an example, when advertisers evaluate APP conversion goals, their pre-transaction indicators are common, including download volume, download cost, activation volume, activation rate, activation cost, registration volume, registration rate, registration cost, etc.

But post-trade behavior indicators vary by industry. We use the industry classification method commonly used in the field of digital marketing, and its deep conversion indicators are shown in the table.

Explanation of the differences in conversion indicators in different industries

The definition of the indicator system on each information flow delivery platform can best reflect the marketing logic and application scenarios of the platform. After understanding the user conversion path, the analysis tools of typical super platforms and the common evaluation indicators of typical industries, we will explore in depth how to use the delivery tools of different platforms to achieve KPIs.

Author: Ming Xuehai

Source: Ming Xuehai