6 major information flow advertising platforms, which channel is the most powerful

iResearch predicts that in the next two years, information flow advertising will continue to grow at a rate of more than 50%, and the overall market size will reach 55.7 billion yuan in 2017. In terms of form and product, the form of information flow advertising is constantly innovating, from graphics and text, large images to videos, dynamic images, etc., among which native video advertising is increasingly recognized by users and advertisers.

From the user's perspective, information flow ads have a high degree of acceptance and memorability, and there is a strong correlation between the brand image of the media platform and the brand image quality of the ads.

1. Toutiao

The biggest advantage of Toutiao is that it has established a content ecosystem in the past two years. It has self-media authors helping it create content. In addition, it has relatively strong commercialization capabilities and can distribute commercial income to these creators. For the first time, content producers have benefited on a large scale, so this will inspire more content producers to join Toutiao's self-media ranks.

Therefore, Toutiao has formed a relatively benign positive cycle - commercial income supports self-media authors, self-media authors create content on Toutiao to attract traffic , and with traffic there is more advertising inventory for commercial monetization, and there is more money to purchase traffic and expand market share.

In addition, Toutiao also has some technical advantages - it has a relatively advanced content distribution engine and advertising distribution engine.

Of course, Toutiao still has some disadvantages - the obsessive belief in machine algorithms will ignore the attributes of users as independent people. As individuals, users have diverse needs. They may be interested in cars , sports, and finance. However, if a user reads a lot of articles about cars over a period of time, most of the content recommended by the algorithm will be about cars, while ignoring some of the user's other needs, which will cause the user to feel tired of the content recommended by the machine. So I said, "Success or failure depends on machine recommendation." Of course, Toutiao is already deeply aware of this problem. They have added a large number of editorial talents in the past six months and used manual intervention to intervene in machine algorithms.

2. Tencent Social Advertising

Tencent Social Advertising (formerly Guangdiantong ) is backed by Tencent's huge self-owned traffic, and they are relatively restrained in commercialization, so its traffic reserves are sufficient. In addition, they are also subsidizing users. Many apps have joined their alliance and the profits are quite good. Therefore, I think Guangdiantong has already formed a certain moat in this regard, and it is difficult for other media to snatch its traffic.

Secondly, in terms of the commercialization of the advertising system, I think GuangDianTong’s system is relatively advanced, which to a certain extent provides advertisers with good marketing effects. So you will find that in the past two years, as long as there is mobile advertising, there is basically no one who does not invest in GuangDianTong.

Zhihuitui is a product of the internal competition between Tencent OMG advertising system and Tencent social advertising system. With their recent personnel adjustments, the future development of this product depends more on their internal company decisions. It already has a certain customer base, but it is definitely not as large as GuangDianTong in terms of revenue scale.

Is it necessary for a company to have two advertising systems with very similar logic, competing with each other for traffic, and then serving advertisers? I think this is an issue that Tencent’s top management needs to consider.

3. Weibo Super Fans Pass

Currently, Toutiao and Weibo are getting closer to each other. Toutiao wants to use information flow to penetrate social media, while Weibo is using social content to occupy information flow, competing with each other for territory. Weibo lacks experience in content distribution as a social platform, but it still has obvious advantages in the outbreak and timeliness of hot events.

Weibo launched Fanstong in 2012, officially entering the information flow advertising field. The biggest feature of the newly launched Super Fans Pass in September this year is that it provides a richer selection of data labels, product forms and delivery methods, which will more efficiently meet the diversified marketing needs of advertisers and help advertisers find the best solution between accuracy and scale.

Fanstong has some natural features that other platforms do not have - attention, interaction, likes and reposts. I believe that with the existence of this form, Weibo should become the second tier in this industry within a period of time. But whether it is getting bigger or smaller is still unclear.

Information flow advertising has become a standard feature of mainstream advertising media, and Weibo is no exception, and has contributed more than half of its revenue. During the reporting period, Weibo's advertising and marketing revenue was US$276.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 77%. Other revenue was $43.2 million, up 114% from the same period last year.

4. Sina Fuyi

To be honest, I am not very optimistic about platforms like Sina Fuyi, which may fall into the third tier in the next few years. In the future, if a large number of users have Tencent News , Tiantian Express , and Toutiao installed on their mobile phones, then the number of people installing Sina will decrease, the time spent on Sina will be less, and the media's advertising inventory will be smaller.

When the advertising inventory is relatively small, the commercial monetization capabilities are limited. In addition, advertisers have operating costs when they place ads. For example, if a client has a daily budget of 20,000 yuan, and you ask him to divide it into 10 parts and invest 2,000 yuan in one media, the client will not do this because the operating costs are too high. He would rather invest 20,000 yuan on one platform as long as the effect is not particularly different. This results in those media with less investment being unable to support more content teams and unable to obtain more traffic, and will enter a negative cycle. However, it is difficult to say when this negative cycle will begin. This year, Sina is still making great efforts to catch up and wants to become the second tier.

5. UC Headlines

I think UC Headlines Dayu account also belongs to the end of the second tier. Whether UC focuses more on content or search is a question that UC’s boss needs to consider deeply. If you want to highlight search, the content will definitely be affected, and vice versa. At present, the search plate is slightly larger than the information flow. UC has very few products this year, so it is very difficult to enter the first echelon. The threshold for the first echelon is getting higher and higher. In the future, it should be positioned as having tens of billions to be eligible to enter.

6. Baidu information flow advertising

Feed flow is one of Baidu’s main focus this year. Since the beginning of this year, Robin Li has repeatedly mentioned Baidu's Feed Stream products in public.

A few days ago, at Baidu's third quarter earnings analyst meeting, Robin Li specifically said that Baidu Mobile combines information flow and search functions to provide users with very personalized services. "Our information flow content is based on our understanding of user needs, especially the user's search content and interests. There is still a lot of potential to be tapped in understanding users, and Baidu's recommendation algorithm is constantly improving every day."

Baidu's information flow revenue will not exceed 10 billion this year. As for what to do in the future, it depends on whether Baidu will have some chemical reactions with the personnel changes and whether it can greatly promote this matter. Otherwise, based on the current situation, there is no hope for information flow advertising to reach 10 billion in revenue this year. It is still possible to enter the second tier this year and achieve revenue of 20 to 30 billion.

Since Baidu's stunning transformation into AI , the development trend of its information flow business as reflected on the books has become even brighter. At the moment, the situation has almost reached a head-on battle in the information flow. Recently, there have been reports that WeChat is revising its official accounts and is also preparing to enter the information flow. Alibaba has also previously launched the Dayu account, which focuses on the information flow business. BAT has obviously been competing secretly in the field of information flow.

The current battlefield of information flow advertising

Not all media have to rely on information flow advertising to make money. Some media have natural user payment scenarios, such as Momo . Women’s facial masks are selling really well on Momo. In addition, according to the financial report, Momo Live 's revenue has accounted for 80%, relying on users to pay by giving gifts. These C-end products are very easy to make. If you do it well, users will not be disgusted and will actively give you money. Then why bother to make money from advertisers and then be scolded by users? According to the current situation forecast:

• The first tier, only those with revenues of up to 10 billion can enter the first tier. Toutiao and Guangdiantong have obtained tickets to the first tier. Of course, if Baidu performs well in the future, it will still have the opportunity to achieve 10 billion yuan in revenue and enter the first echelon next year or the year after.
• The second tier has a threshold of at least 3-5 billion. I believe that Fanstong and NetEase will have no problem reaching this figure this year, and they can be considered as players who have already secured tickets. In addition, it is questionable whether Sina and Sohu can enter, because part of their revenue comes from the PC. It should be possible to see it in the first half of next year or June.
• The third echelon, including Pear Video and Yidian Zixun , is still in the stage of competing for users, and commercialization has just begun.

I think they would be better off being more restrained in using advertising for commercial purposes in the future. Monetize in a commercial form that suits the media's attributes, taking into account user experience , and then quietly make money, making the media happy and the users happy too.

The author of this article is @4A Advertising Weekly and it is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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