Analysis of the characteristics of 14 information flow channels including Baidu and Tik Tok!

In recent years, super apps such as Bilibili, NetEase Cloud Music, Zuoyebang, Kuaishou, and Douyin have successively launched information flow advertising businesses. There are more and more information flow channels to choose from in the market. Understanding the characteristics of major information flow channels and screening out channels suitable for the release of their own products has become a compulsory course for all of us.

Today, based on my own experience in advertising, I have summarized the characteristics of mainstream information flow channels in recent years and some advertising suggestions for your reference when choosing channels for advertising.

01. Tencent social platform

Tencent can be said to be the leader in the social industry. It was established the earliest and has occupied a huge amount of traffic with QQ and WeChat, basically covering all Internet users; as well as information flow advertisements based on Tencent News.

• Main Products

Tencent News, WeChat Moments, official accounts, QQ Space, browsers, Tencent.com, Tencent Video, Tencent News, Tiantian Express, etc.

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: No. 1 social application ranking (QQ, WeChat), wide coverage, high daily user activity and stickiness, suitable for brand promotion, concentrated young users, and supports oCPM model delivery. Tencent News has rich information flow resources, precise target customer positioning, and profitable results from careful calculations.

Disadvantages: Many platforms, a wide range of people, and difficult to accurately identify

• Industry placement recommendations

For QQ ads, it is recommended to place ads on light industry or daily life products. For WeChat ads, it is necessary to confirm the user group of your product, clarify the product tone, and place ads to the target group.

Hard advertising exposure + soft advertising placement, advertising effect is achieved faster!

02. Zhihu

What impressed us most about Zhihu is its high-class quality. We visit Zhihu whenever we have time. Zhihu's user base tends to be young, white-collar, high-income, and highly educated, concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, and their spending power is also extremely high.

• Advertising display format

Zhihu’s advertising space is mainly divided into four sections: recommendation page, question page, answer page and follow-up page.

Zhihu’s creativity is mainly divided into: large pictures, texts, videos, small pictures, and picture groups.

• Platform advantages

Advantages: high quality traffic, relatively rational, and high purchasing power

• Industry placement recommendations

It can be applied to real estate, home furnishing, games, finance, education and training, e-commerce, Internet services, tourism and other related industries.

03. Weibo

Weibo can be said to be a gathering place for the spectators. It has an active fan base that tends to be young, with a majority of female users. They are easily influenced by public opinion and love gossip. It is a real-time bidding advertising product based on massive users, which widely delivers advertising information to fans and potential fans. Then, information is delivered accurately to the target group based on user attributes and social relationships. At the same time, Weibo's "Fanstong" also has all the functions of ordinary Weibo, such as forwarding, commenting, collecting, liking, etc., which can achieve secondary dissemination of advertisements and is a very practical marketing tool.

• Advertising display format

Blog promotion (single picture + multiple pictures + nine-square grid), application promotion, account promotion, video promotion.

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: You can specify the user group that interacts with blog posts and daily life. At the same time, the proportion of daily active users on mobile terminals reaches 91%. It can be flexibly used in various forms such as blog posts, applications, accounts, videos, pictures and texts, and nine-square grids, and native communication can be achieved through mobile social networking!

Disadvantages: high cost, requires high maintenance cost and uncontrollable flow.

• Industry placement recommendations

Life products (such as food, clothing, etc.), regional products (such as photography, etc.), games, apps, beauty products, etc. can be biased towards feminine products, but the advertisements should be distinctive to increase the interaction rate.

04. 360 Products

360 information flow advertising realizes the coordinated development of information flow advertising on PC and mobile terminals, and perfect integration with tool products. It has three major advantages: massive cross-end resources, world-leading personalized redirection technology, and functional and sophisticated delivery models.

• Main Products

360 Browser, Security Guard and other products.

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: Large PC traffic, high coverage, web games based on 360 search, can be placed according to keywords

Disadvantages: Multiple and diverse cooperative media, poor traffic quality

• Industry placement recommendations

Large audience industries such as web games and medical care.

05. Tik Tok

Douyin performs well in big data and has achieved a high level of personalized product push, especially for new users who have just registered an account. It will push 10-20 different video contents, and then record your behavior based on the number of times you watch the video, and start to constantly define labels for you.

• Advertising display format

In terms of information flow advertising, it mainly relies on video ads placed by advertisers to be displayed in the information flow of Douyin’s recommended channel.

It also supports jumping from video ad clicks to the landing page set by the advertiser, helping advertisers achieve their marketing promotion goals on Douyin.

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: Douyin officially claims that there are 500 million daily active users, which shows how huge the number is. Therefore, there is a large amount of exposure in advertising and the awareness of the new brand is also good. After all, many brands have become popular because of Douyin.

Disadvantages: Douyin is expensive, which is beyond doubt; and it has extremely high requirements for materials, the overall level of interest among the public is low, and the requirements and restrictions on the industry are also relatively high.

• Industry placement recommendations

Tik Tok’s entertainment positioning limits it to certain industries and makes it unsuitable for advertising. In terms of investment, it is recommended to invest in games, apps, e-commerce and other general traffic products. At the same time, brand exposure on Douyin is also an excellent choice

06. Kuaishou

Kuaishou, the national short video social app, has 130 million daily active users and high user stickiness. It officially launched the Kuaishou marketing platform on October 30.

• User characteristics

Most users are from China's third- and fourth-tier cities and rural areas, and the age range of users is mainly between 12 and 35 years old

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: Huge traffic, regional penetration advantages, covering the third- and fourth-tier traffic bonus areas; 80% of users are young, and there are a large number of sinking mid-level users;

Disadvantages: Advertisement review is relatively strict, and social and live broadcast related products are generally not allowed to be posted

• Industry placement recommendations

Kuaishou is not very suitable for brand awareness, but is more suitable for product sales. In terms of investment, catering, APP, retail, e-commerce, etc. are recommended.

07. iQiyi

iQiyi ranks No.1 in video advertising. Qilinshen is an iQiyi promotion platform. Relying on the iQiyi platform, its huge user base and high-quality traffic resources, combined with the industry characteristics of business owners, it provides business owners with a cross-platform, multi-terminal online promotion service platform.

• Advertising display format

Information flow ads (channel information flow, social information flow, news information flow, playback information flow), in-frame ads (patch ads, pause ads, floating ads), display ads (open screen ads, focus picture ads)

• Platform advantages

Rich resources and a wide range of people. The average daily coverage of independent devices is 150 million, the average monthly coverage of independent devices is 550 million, the effective time of a single machine is 11.5 hours, and the monthly viewing time is 6.38 billion hours. By leveraging Baidu's big data and strong technical strength, iQiyi's effective promotion seamlessly embeds advertisements into relevant videos.

• Industry placement recommendations

It is suitable for games, e-commerce, medical care, online earning, home improvement and other related industries to carry out brand awareness and reinforcement, or to inform promotional information. Increasing bids to obtain high-quality traffic can sometimes increase ROI.

08. Sina Performance Advertising Platform

Sina Performance Advertising is an advertising marketing system under Sina that charges based on performance, mainly including the advertising trading platform SAX and the advertising delivery platform Fuyi.

• User characteristics

Users tend to be mostly male, older, and more educated

• Platform advantages

Users are relatively older and have strong purchasing power.

• Industry placement recommendations

Most of them are men, and can invest in stocks, finance, games, cars, men's health, etc.

09. Baidu Information Flow

As one of the three major traffic giants, Baidu's search engine occupies the majority of domestic users. This is a platform that is extremely suitable for beginners, and can display native advertisements in the information flow of major Baidu platforms.

• Advertising display format

Baidu's information flow platforms mainly include Baidu, Tieba, and browsers. Their display forms are also diverse, but they can basically be divided into two categories: picture, text + video information flow.

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: search foundation, keyword targeting, and the ability to target forums

Disadvantages: The delivery operation is relatively complicated, and the traffic and cost are relatively unstable.

• Industry placement recommendations

The user coverage is wide, and most products are suitable for advertising. Combined with search advertising, it can better reach the target users in a comprehensive manner.

10. Toutiao

Toutiao is a recommendation engine product based on data mining. It is also one of the fastest growing product services in the domestic Internet field, and is currently the largest information flow platform.

• Advertising display format

Support jumping to H5 page and one-click downloading APP

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: The algorithm is mature, the word package is targeted, it is very convenient to build a mobile website, and the ocpm and cpa system algorithms have good effects. Users use the app for more than 76 minutes a day. At the same time, the app can be quickly promoted within 5 seconds to lock in target users, and the user model can be updated within 10 seconds, making advertising more accurate.

Disadvantages: poor traffic quality and serious fake order behavior. The cost of headline news information flow is high.

• Industry placement recommendations

For finance, life, games, apps, etc., you can try the OCPM bidding method and place bids according to the categories in the navigation bar.

11. Beautiful pictures

Meitu's commercialization has been fully launched, connecting to five high-traffic platforms, including Meitu XiuXiu, Beauty Camera, Beauty Camera, Chao Zipai, and Meipai. Different APPs meet the needs of different user scenarios, continuously improve artificial intelligence, etc., to enhance Meitu's reputation!

• Advertising display format

The videos are mainly trendy selfies and beautiful photos.

• Platform advantages

It has 480 million monthly active users and 500 million total overseas users, with the majority of its consumer groups being female and having strong purchasing power. At the same time, it has 1.5 billion independent device installations worldwide and processes 68 billion photos annually.

• Industry placement recommendations

E-commerce, beauty, online services, wedding photography and other related industries.

12. Momo

Momo is a short video platform, and its users are mainly young people born in the 1980s and 2000s. 70% of its users have an income of over 10,000 yuan, and the majority of users are female. There are entrances in both "Nearby" and "Follow". At the same time, Momo platform has tens of thousands of celebrities, 1 billion exposures, and each commercializable celebrity has 600,000 fans per person. The total active user penetration rate of short videos is 58%, which is enough to show the power of Momo as a short video platform!

• Advertising display format

Topic marketing, filter advertising, Momo celebrity videos, live video interactive products such as anchor promotion, video topic marketing, etc.

• Platform advantages

The average daily number of short video uploads is over 1 million, with a penetration rate of 46%. Original content, creativity-driven, and precisely targeted.

• Industry placement recommendations

Apps, games, finance, e-commerce, beauty and plastic surgery and other related industries are for reference only.

13. Bilibili

China's leading youth cultural community and one of the favorite apps for young users aged 24 and under.

• User characteristics

Users aged 0 to 17 are the absolute majority of Bilibili users, followed by users aged 18 to 24, and users aged 25 and above account for less than 10%. Among college and middle school students in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, more than 50% of them are Bilibili users.

• Platform advantages

Advantages: A large number of young users gather here, the largest ACG community, and users are very curious about new things.

• Industry placement recommendations

The advertising materials are in line with the style of the second dimension, suitable for young user groups and the advertising of second dimension style products

14. Google

Google Adwords, a keyword advertising export-friendly program, charges only based on the number of ad clicks, display is free, the initial investment cost is low, and every penny is spent on potential customers.

• Advertising display format

Search ads, brand ads, and performance display ads.

• Platform advantages and disadvantages

Advantages: wide advertising coverage, no human intervention, coverage of user groups with commercial value, high returns and low costs

Disadvantage: The bounce rate of the website is too high

• Industry placement recommendations

Cross-border e-commerce, B2B, B2C

The above are some of the mainstream information flow advertising channels and their characteristics. When placing ads, you can do so based on your own product situation and the characteristics of each channel. Otherwise, all efforts will be in vain if the direction is wrong.

Source: Weikamen