Secret War of Information Flow: In-depth Analysis of the Trading Model that Earns 10 Million Yuan Annually!

In the information flow industry, there are too many hidden champions that dive deep underwater and have excellent profitability. So, our article starts here.

Introduction: Since the revolution of mobile Internet, from the perspective of the entire mobile ecosystem, Toutiao has occupied most of the market share; from the perspective of Baidu, the share of search traffic, including mobile search, has continued to decline, and PC traffic is even not as good as 360 search. Baidu's information flow has also gradually gained momentum, and its market share is crucial.

According to our operating logic, our ads should be placed wherever the traffic goes. Therefore, this article will combine our team's experience in operating information flow and the problems encountered during the operation to analyze this business model from the perspective of advertising and project operation .

Consumption of more than 3 million

This is a screenshot of the consumption amount of one of our Baidu accounts.

This account has been online for half a year, and the monthly advertising fee is about 500,000 , which is very stable. Because we are deep in the front line, we can access enough accounts, so the consumption of this account is not that large. It is normal for many game developers to spend millions a day.

What I want to tell you is that Internet advertising is always evolving and becoming more precise. All we have to do is focus our efforts on this industry.

In the bidding-dominated PC Internet era, advertising costs have always been the largest expense for any company. According to calculations in the PC era, generally you earn as much as you invest, and this includes rebates. For example, in 2013, when Baidu search rebates were generally 40 points, spending 1 million on advertising meant earning 1 million in profit .

In the mobile era, Baidu has tightened advertising across the board since the Putian incident in 2016, reduced agency authority, and transformed more agents into directly-operated branches, resulting in almost no rebates. In 2016, there was a negative rebate situation. The renewal fee was 10,000 yuan, but the actual advertising fee received was only 9,000 yuan.

Thanks to the low cost of adding fans in the overall market and the strong conversion improvement of the WeChat model, the profit is not low even though the rebate is low at this time. Now everyone knows that the general rebates are not high, and the market has entered the stage of stock game .

What we need to do at this time is to optimize the team's internal strength. In fact, this is a trend, and our research shows that many of the companies that have performed well have established relatively mature team systems, optimized product types, and tried not to undertake projects that violate regulations.

Therefore, their two main operating directions now have become second-tier e-commerce based on information flow advertising and direct sales projects .

Information flow advertising + order distribution model, last year the most popular products were selling honey and white wine; and this year there is a hot issue that everyone should pay attention to, which is selling grilled shrimps. The profits are very high, and they are following the TikTok model, but the problem with all second-tier e-commerce is that they are not sustainable and the testing costs are relatively high.

Regarding selling grilled shrimps on Douyin, it can be said that it is still in its bonus period, because many people are still very new to it. If your sense of smell is sensitive enough, selling this kind of food on Douyin’s information flow can achieve high conversion rates for at least a year.

Currently, many people are doing Douyin training to increase their followers. Although it is a relatively good channel, if you are reading this article, it is not recommended that you make fans on your own. It takes too long to see results if you make your own fans and you are controlled by the platform rules, which brings too much uncertainty !

I have always believed that genes are important. We are good at paid promotion, so let’s take this model to the extreme. This is the basis for you to make money. Don’t go and generate traffic yourself. Spending money to buy traffic is the most efficient thing to do . Of course, the premise is that you keep bidding and doing information flow promotion.

This is the opportunity cost. Why do many people learn a lot of things but find them useless? It is because of blind learning, wasting time and too high opportunity costs. Many friends made money from bidding, then went to do other things, and then failed to make money and finally returned to the advertising industry.

This is genetics. I have fallen into these traps myself. I hope everyone can understand it correctly!

I still want to emphasize, please remember what I said, you must stay focused and you must play to your strengths!

Logical architecture of information flow advertising

What is the difficulty in information flow advertising?

If you compare search ads and mobile ads, you will find that the logic of information flow ads is completely different. The most notable feature of search advertising, whether on PC or mobile, is that people are looking for information.

I will search only when I have this need, and there is a very big disadvantage here.

For example, red sandalwood , a project that many people are working on, has become the representative of the rosewood market. In Xianyou County, Putian City, a mature industrial chain has been formed. The market demand is huge, let’s look at the picture.

This is Baidu's entire search index.

So how many people in the country are actually interested in this thing? It won’t be less than several million! Therefore, 90 percent of people do not search on Baidu, or even on any other search engine. However, he has a real need for this, so the advantages of information flow are reflected.

Whether it is Baidu's information flow product or Toutiao's information flow product, its operating logic is big data.

Over the years, these leading Internet companies have recorded the data of every visitor and stored it in multiple dimensions on their own servers. Therefore, the era of big data has truly arrived.

So, when we place information flow ads, we are essentially catching up with this wave of dividends and the precise distribution of data. Previously, the only precise ads were Baidu Search and the later Baidu Alliance.

Note: Baidu Union was the advertising product with the best technical strength developed by Baidu during the golden age of PC Internet. If you advertised on it, you would definitely make a lot of money. It can be said to be a deep reflection of Baidu's technology.

With the end of the PC era, online alliances have gradually faded out of mainstream platforms. It can be said that nowadays people basically do not visit websites, but it has to be said that Baidu, as the TOP1 in Internet advertising , is indeed leading the trend in the PC era. Of course, it is also currently at the forefront of information flow advertising technology.

I have said so much just to tell you one thing: improve your fundamental understanding and have a clear plan for your strategic positioning. Don’t be blinded by some spam information. If you want to explode, the only way is to grasp the trend !

Therefore, the underlying architecture of information flow is to accurately present your advertisements in front of potential customers with needs.

So what are the core aspects of Baidu’s information flow?

Omitting the basic operations, here I summarize several core ideas for your reference:

1. Keyword groups are the most accurate. Interest groups can be left untriggered in the early stage of testing, otherwise there will be a bottomless pit of money burning. Newbies should pay special attention to this. For experienced people, just open them directly, which will be effective quickly and produce a large amount of data.

2. Don’t repeat the ideas. The click-through rate of three-image ideas will be higher. It is recommended that you use three-image ideas as the main idea and single-image ideas as the auxiliary idea. The background color of the material should be clean and warm tones should be the main color to increase clicks.

3. The bidding suggestion is to start high and end low. In the early stage, the click-through rate data must be measured to determine the accuracy of the crowd;

4. New units should not be 100% duplicate of old units, as this will cause internal friction and increase advertising costs.

We will not further explain these basic routine operations.

Follow OCPC

If you have been doing information flow advertising, you may be familiar with OCPC. I will explain this model in detail because it is very important.

Everyone knows CPC, which means pay-per-click. OCPC is also pay-per-click, but it is an optimized pay-per-click. All major information flow platforms have basically adopted OCPC as standard in 2018. The launch of this product can be said to have enabled the platform data and algorithms to empower our advertising, saving us time and money on advertising testing.

As shown in the figure below, OCPC has diversified conversion types, which can greatly enrich the dimensions of our data feedback.

The next stage to look at is the following one. OCPC is divided into two phases:

In the second stage, advertising costs will increase, but the quality of traffic can be guaranteed.

Case Study

The biggest advantage of Baidu's information flow, which is different from the information flows of other platforms such as Toutiao, is that it has an exclusive search database for the entire network.

This database has been accumulated for more than ten years. Currently, in terms of big data, the BAT group has the largest and most accurate data . This is the most basic logic for us to optimize the effectiveness of information flow advertising.

Because it is professional, it is simple. I believe that Toutiao will spend more energy on it. So, if you want to get started, you can start with Baidu.

The following case is a project transformation of a stable test, as shown in the following figure:

Let's analyze it briefly:

This account is a relatively mature account, with daily consumption of around 6,000. The conversion price of this OCPC is 64 yuan , and there is still some room for continued optimization.

Due to image pixel issues, we did not take a complete screenshot, but instead captured key data indicators, which can more intuitively reflect the actual effect.

Baidu has recommended such a good product to us, and it is crucial whether we can use it well.

Organizational structure with annual revenue of tens of millions

This article mainly discusses issues related to information flow, and rarely discusses the detailed steps of specific operations.

As far as Internet advertising is concerned, the advertising fees spent over the years have been enough, but more importantly, the experience gained from investing this money cannot be bought with real money. Different from more technical training, we prefer a model that combines technology with practical operations.

A few days ago, a friend said that he spent more than 100,000 yuan on testing information flow, but did not achieve the expected results . The core issue is not the problem of basic settings, but the problem of positioning. First, your product must correspond to the information flow platform, and secondly, your conversion goals should be as simple and direct as possible.

For example, for direct sales projects, the main statistics are about adding fans; for APP types, the main statistics are about registrations; for game types, the main statistics are about activations; for second-class e-commerce, the main statistics are about orders, etc.

Only after establishing the conversion goal can you set the assessment KPI for the conversion goal. This is obvious logic.

So, how does this model of tens of millions in advertising expenses and tens of millions in profits actually work? I would like to share some of my own operational experience for your reference.

The first problem to be solved is the project issue, which involves costs, profits, and repurchase rates, all of which need to be strictly defined.

The second is the team structure. The normal configuration is the basic model of bidder + customer service. This is a core position, and assessment indicators must be established. Bidders focus on data assessment, while customer service focuses on performance assessment. It is easier to establish supervisor assessment indicators on this basis.

The last step is compliance development. In the early days of the Internet, there were many fakes and scammers. With the legislation and regulation of the Internet, everyone should consider the long-term development of the team and not engage in irregular projects. This aspect is especially important for larger teams.

At the project level, I will give you a detailed explanation later to broaden your thinking.

Of course, the organizational structure is a very complex thing. So far we are not perfect and there is still a lot of room for improvement. Therefore, we still adhere to the principle of making progress together with everyone, learning together and making progress together!

When your business has reached a certain level, you may find how important learning, change and improvement are.

Summary and Thoughts

Why did some people make a lot of money by operating the grilled shrimp project on Douyin?

Why did someone plan to quickly start the liquor and honey project?

Why can information flow drive so many projects to flourish?

Why does the evolution of big data make advertising effects more controllable?

And why, many people don’t focus on doing it, expanding projects, and building teams?

In fact, the most fundamental reason is that there is a lack of accurate positioning and the vision and ability to grasp trends. Ability is something that depends on years of learning and accumulation.

I have always believed that the reason why a person is successful and can make money is not because of how smart he is, but because he can constantly improve himself, grasp the trend and focus on one thing . Internet advertising has been proven time and again to be the most profitable model, but now the competition is more intense and team operation is imperative!

Author: Advertising Circle Bidding

Source: Advertising Circle Bidding