[Dry stuff!] 】How to save money and improve efficiency in advertising? Data optimization "three axes"

How to extract value and potential opportunities from advertising data, and how to obtain advertising data that can be used for analysis as soon as possible.

1. What specific value does advertising data have?

Sun Tzu's Art of War says, "Everyone knows the form of my victory, but no one knows the form I use to achieve victory." What this means is that others only see my method to winning, but don’t know how I know this method.

At present, the manufacturers that have been more successful in going overseas include Tencent, Cheetah Mobile, NetEase, or SuperTapx, which launched "Love Balls". Every time these manufacturers launch a hit product , everyone can analyze it in detail, but if they can foresee some opportunities beforehand, then they will not be so far away from making a hit product. So how can we gain insight into the key to success before others? This requires data to drive decision making. Among them, public data is very worthy of reference, and its value is often underestimated. In fact, these data also took a lot of effort and budget to produce. So what is the specific value of advertising data? Below we analyze from four dimensions: distribution team, advertising platform, CP team and delivery team.

1. The value of advertising data to the publishing team

1) It helps to explore excellent advertising channels . By looking at the advertising data, you can understand which current advertising traffic channels are of high quality, what are the characteristics of these channels in different regions, which products are running on them, and what their respective effects are. More attention should be paid to new channels. At this stage, after comparing the global general platforms, it can be found that the competition between Facebook and Google is already very fierce, while Snapchat still has many opportunities. And in many categories, Snapchat has more advantages than Facebook. Facebook's demographic skews older, while Snapchat represents a younger trend.

By looking at advertising data, we can discover some new channels, such as some channels in Russia, some small and medium-sized traffic platforms in Europe and the United States, and some new channels in the Japanese market. The European, American and Japanese markets are all large markets with relatively high incomes and are worthy of everyone's attention. Advertising data is a good entry point, and we can verify the effect through advertising data.

2) Use advertising data to identify active advertisers immediately. You need to be the first to understand the latest trends in current buying volume and which channels are supporting it. For example, what channels support the trial ads that are very popular recently? What types of advertisers have followed suit? HOW DOES IT PERFORM? If you don't know these trends, you are relatively one step behind others.

3) Gain insights into competitors’ advertising strategies. By observing advertising data, it is easy to find out which channels competitors are running on and what their creative formats are. Even through some of their details, such as delivery schedule, delivery targeting, audience acquisition and other information, we can judge how effective their delivery is. This will provide you with more support in making decisions.

2. The value of advertising data to advertising platforms

The first step is to understand the composition of advertisers on competing platforms and snatch high-quality advertisers. For example, Google is undoubtedly very concerned about the advertiser composition of Facebook, especially new advertisers. If Google observes that a large number of new advertisers are only testing the waters on Facebook over a period of time, it will definitely become vigilant.

Through advertising data, you can see which new advertisers are on a certain target channel and even infer their budgets.

On the other hand, it is about grabbing high-quality traffic media. I must also pay attention to the media composition of my competitors. High-quality media should always be the top priority of advertising alliances . If some leading media can negotiate exclusive deals, they can well guarantee subsequent advertising effects.

The third is to understand the current best advertising events and delivery trends . The advertising SDK provided by the advertising platform must be able to provide the right product functions at the right time. For example, the trial ads that are very popular now, everyone is testing and watching. However, the advertising form of incentive videos has basically been verified by the industry. If an advertising network does not provide this product function now, it will definitely be eliminated.

3. The value of advertising data to CP

First, understand the pain points of the current market through advertising creatives. Advertising creativity adopts specific forms and techniques, often because this method can touch people's hearts and solve a certain need of the target customers.

Second, understand market dynamics and potential intentions of competitors through advertising data. For example, by analyzing advertising data from a large number of channels and regions, you can find out in which markets your competitors are advertising, where and how their budgets are spent, and thus determine their intentions.

4. The value of advertising data to the advertising team

For the delivery team, the value of advertising data is more direct. For example, understand your competitors' marketing strategies, understand the current best performance methods, etc. In addition, when creativity runs out, industry leaders such as Supercell and King can provide us with inspiration for creating materials.

2. How to extract value and business opportunities from advertising data?

1. How does CP use advertising data?

1) Look at the hot spots of major manufacturers to assist in product selection. When doing product research, on the one hand, you should look at the ranking of online products on the list, and on the other hand, you should also look at what products the corresponding company is currently promoting. Especially in the current "cold winter" season, only products with the "success gene" will be supported by a large amount of advertising push.

In other words, when time is limited, especially novices should choose games that are being promoted by major companies. For example, Voodoo, the god of casual games, his advertising data can be regarded as a weather vane of the industry.

SuperTapx shares the same characteristics as Voodoo, namely strong issuance. That is to say, many products are put on the shelves at the same time. Many teams had the same idea when working on Facebook and Instagram. Promote many products quickly, and focus on the product with the best data. By looking at the delivery data, competitors can know where the former’s focus is.

2) Analyze popular advertising copy to discover rigid needs and pain points. Each APP is designed to solve certain needs of the target group, and the advertising copy will clearly describe the problem it wants to solve. Because advertising and marketing have a very good grasp of basic needs and people's hearts.

3) Consider learning from other traffic monetization methods. For example, we pay attention to how the product is monetized, which advertising SDKs they reveal, and which advertisers perform well... All this information is worth learning from.

2. How does the advertising team use advertising data?

On the same traffic platform, at the same time, who is competing with you for traffic? If you find that there are rich players competing with you for your products, you need to adjust your delivery strategy in time. For example, you can change a channel, or figure out the time of delivery, and see if there are any easy points in the scheduling.

Which traffic platform is most worth connecting to, both in terms of quantity and quality?

Learn from the advertising strategies of big companies: Supercell, King, Funplus, Tencent, etc.

· Monitor competitor advertising strategies: material presentation, advertising format, traffic channels, and audience targeting settings;

Pay attention to advertising copy, summarize copywriting routines, and hit the user's heart directly;

Focus on materials that have been online for a long time, which generally perform well;

· Protect intellectual property rights and discover plagiarized creative materials as soon as possible.

3. Use advertising data to analyze the characteristics and differences of the target market

Taking the markets of China, the United States and Japan as examples, this paper analyzes their differences and respective opportunities. According to statistics from Newzoo, the top five countries in terms of global game market revenue are China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and Germany. Through advertising data, we can see the differences in channels among these markets and discover the latest advertising trends. Everyone is relatively familiar with the situation in China. The mainstream channels in the United States are Facebook and Google, and there are also some emerging channels such as Snapchat. From the data, we can see that some advertisers are turning to new channels. So, the data will give us a guide to try new channels.

The situation in Japan is somewhat different from that in the United States. In Japan, in addition to Facebook and Google, Twitter, Yahoo and the local SmartNews perform very well.

In addition, after comparing a large number of advertising materials in the Japanese market, we can find a pattern: the Japanese market pays more attention to localization, the integration and use of national cultural elements. For example, a game with naval battle materials has nothing to do with Mount Fuji, but if you include a picture of Mount Fuji in the advertising material, you will find that the effect is very good. So through advertising data, we can know the expressions that local audiences prefer.

4. Discover business opportunities and market niches from advertising data

This is especially important for the e-commerce industry. In particular, comprehensive analysis of advertising data and hot topics on forums such as Quora and Reddit can help discover potential hot-selling products.

For a small team, how do you determine which are the hot spots? First, discover and follow a large number of advertising posts. If there is good interaction in an advertising post, it is often a potential hit. Because general advertising posts are not very popular, the interaction is generally relatively ordinary. Therefore, when you see a post with very good interaction, you need to analyze its form of expression, what products it sells, and how people evaluate its products. Among them, the focus should be on the two data of "comments" and "shares". From these clues, we may be able to find the next "hot item". For e-commerce, especially small teams, it is good to produce one product a week.

3. Acquisition of Advertising Data

Since advertising data is so valuable, how do we obtain useful advertising data?

1. Use advertising retargeting strategy to collect advertising information

Retargeting means redirection, and this strategy is used by almost all major platforms. For example, if I search for information about outdoor sports on a certain platform, leave the page, and then go to Facebook, I may receive outdoor product advertisements pushed by Facebook. Facebook pushes ads to users based on their interests and advertising preferences.

How do we take advantage of this mechanism? It’s very simple. If I were making strategy mobile games , I would pay attention to a lot of things related to strategy mobile games and also do some related interactions. In this way, Facebook will push more advertisements for strategy mobile game products. In fact, a lot of first-hand data can be collected through this "very primitive" method.

2. Facebook’s Info and Ads feature.

That is, we can directly view the advertisements placed on the Facebook platform under the homepage of the manufacturer or product we follow.

This feature is good news for manufacturers who place large amounts of advertisements, because they can easily see the advertising situation of their competitors. The disadvantage is that this function can only see some online advertisements and cannot see changes in trends.

3. Make good use of spy tools

What should I do if I want to get more detailed data? At this time, some crawling techniques should be used. You can ask technical classmates to help you solve the problem, or buy some paid Spy tools according to your own needs. For some small teams or individuals, there are also free products, such as AdspyHub, which also has a good amount of data. But it is relatively simple and looks like a personal product. For enterprises that want to monitor data from more dimensions and channels, it is recommended to choose commercial products.