One article will introduce you to mainstream information flow advertising products!

My sharing is divided into four parts:

First, the evolution of feed stream products;

Second, the domestic feed flow market structure;

Third, Baidu Feed product features and product logic;

Fourth, analysis and comparison of multiple domestic feed flow products.

Let’s first talk about the evolution of commercial feed products (to be precise, feeds are divided into user feeds and commercial feeds. Since this article discusses commercial feeds, commercial feeds are referred to as feeds below).

The commercial product monetization form of the Feed Stream has its evolutionary background.

The first factor is that the monetization capacity of top traffic/high-quality traffic of major media outlets through display advertising has reached a ceiling;

The second factor is that the long-tail traffic monetization model in the form of traditional DSP that emerged in 2011/2012 also encountered a clear growth ceiling in 2016.

The third factor is reading habits in the mobile era. The unique feature of Baidu's Feed flow product is the recommendation engine + search engine. In fact, as early as the PC era of 2007/2008, there were search engine companies that wanted to make a recommendation engine/discovery engine. Unfortunately, due to various reasons such as the traffic growth dividend of the PC era and the user reading habits of the PC era, the "discovery engine" product failed to take off.

Today, feed flow has caught up with the right time and place, and it is only possible with the streaming user experience on mobile devices. In other words, feed stream commercial products are a new form of commercial products that were "invented" to adapt to the unique reading habits of the mobile era when the monetization of top traffic through display advertising has reached a ceiling and the monetization of long-tail traffic through affiliate marketing/DSP has also reached a ceiling. The essence of the media-side feed stream commercial product is that the media monetizes the best quality part of its own traffic in the form of the media's private DSP.

Let’s first look at the success of FaceBook (hereinafter referred to as FB) in the field of feed flow. In 2013, FB's feed achieved impressive results the first year it was launched. The average number of clicks on FB news feed ads is 44 times higher than that on FB right column ads, the conversion rate is 5 times higher, and the cost per click is 45% lower.

So what about this year? As of Q3 this year, FB's third-quarter revenue was $7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 56%, and its profit increased three times year-on-year to $2.3 billion. The growth momentum basically came from mobile advertising, and information flow advertising is the only form of monetization on mobile devices. The Wall Street Journal predicts that information flow will account for 86% of FB's annual revenue of $27 billion in 2016.

Let’s look at the domestic situation. The first and most influential information flow product from 0 to 1 was Sina Weibo ’s Fans Channel . The following years of 2015 and 2016 were a period of rapid development of information flow. It is estimated that in 2016, the total feed revenue of Toutiao , Fenmintong, Zhihuitui , Tencent Social Advertising and other companies will exceed 20 billion. We believe that the entire domestic feed flow market will soon exceed 100 billion.

To place information flow ads, please contact Qinggua Media to open an account and conduct in-depth cooperation!

Next, let’s take a look at the domestic feed flow market structure. The domestic feed flow classification is as follows:

Representative social platforms: Weibo Fans Channel , Guangdiantong (renamed Tencent Social Advertising in 2016), Momo, Tieba, etc.

Representatives of news and information: Toutiao, Yidian Zixun , Zhihuitui which is mainly based on Tencent News Client/Tiantian Kuaibao, Sina Fuyi based on Sina News Client/Sina WAP, Sohu Huisuan of Sohu News Client, NetEase News Client, etc.

Representative browsers : UC Browser, Baidu Browser, Sogou Browser, and QQ Browser.

Representative mobile phone manufacturers: Xiaomi, OPPO, and Meizu.

Search representative: Sohu.com.

Representatives of the content alliance: represented by WiFi Master Key.

Although the origins of each feed product are different, they all look more and more alike, which can be considered a Chinese characteristic. However, the origin of each feed flow often determines the user usage scenario of the product to a large extent, and the user usage scenario determines the monetization ability and value of the commercial product.

There is a wealth of information available on Baidu Feed’s product logic and features. I think the unique capability of Baidu Feed is its ability to deliver content based on the search behavior of users across the entire network. Sohu's keywords can come from user search terms, while Tieba's keyword targeting comes more from keywords extracted from article content. Baidu Browser's targeting method is currently more conventional.

I strongly agree with the three major features of Baidu Feed released by Baidu Moments in November: "We have more, we are smarter, and we are stronger."

1. “Others have more than me”: Baidu’s feed flow products were born with a golden key, born on several super apps with hundreds of millions of users (such as Sogou, Tieba, browsers, etc.), and supplemented by Baidu’s content ecosystem;

2. “Better than others”: Baidu Feed not only has the same targeting capabilities as other feed products, but also has unique and accurate user search intent data in the industry;

3. "We are better than others": Baidu is probably one of the domestic technology companies that has invested the most in the field of artificial intelligence.

The following is the core part of my sharing - the comparative analysis between Baidu’s feed flow products and other feed flow products. Let’s first look at the comparison with the headlines.

Toutiao’s feed stream commercial products have different selling methods such as CPT/CPM/CPC in different positions, which will not be elaborated here. Here's a short story about the flow of talent. I believe everyone has noticed that Toutiao has recruited a large number of technical and sales personnel this year. In fact, as early as the first half of 2015, Toutiao had already invested heavily in technical recruitment, hiring a large number of technical experts from Weibo Fans, Baidu Commercial Products, Microsoft Research/Engineering, and even recruiting scientists with annual salaries of several million. These technological investments have largely laid a solid product technology foundation for the rapid development in 2016. Let’s talk about some of the special product features in 2016.

Toutiao launched a new product this year - opening screen broadcast. For example, during Double Eleven , Tmall or JD.com can provide users with high-intensity exposure through the opening screen broadcast of Toutiao. If customers feel that Toutiao's hundreds of millions of coverage is not enough, Toutiao can then look for its alliance partners. For example, in the fields of weather applications, travel applications, and food applications, find several partners and let everyone display together on the screen, so that the customer's marketing activities have more exposure and also provide monetization value for the alliance partners.

There is also a product called Linked Independence Day, which is also a display-type advertising format, and its feature is industry exclusivity. Let’s give another example. Before Double 12, Toutiao could allow rival companies like JD.com and Tmall to compete for industry exclusivity. From the opening screen to the information flow to the detail page, it was all this customer, with a strong display, thereby obtaining a better premium. There is a similar linkage with video ads. From the opening screen video to the information flow to the landing page, everything can be linked together to stimulate users' interest through dynamic videos at multiple moments of user interaction.

There are also product improvements in video playback. When the user is on WIFI, video ads in the headlines can play automatically. Don’t underestimate this automatic playback. Which one will attract users to watch it longer, a static picture of a Mercedes-Benz or a video of a handsome guy driving a Mercedes-Benz? The ability to automatically play videos is particularly attractive to brand advertisers.

Toutiao provides keyword targeting capabilities. Judging from the current data Toutiao has, most keyword targeting should be extracted from the content of the articles users read. Now Toutiao’s user product design places more emphasis on search function. The enhancement of search products, on the one hand, provides extremely accurate user intent data for keyword targeting, and on the other hand, allows users to stick more deeply to the headlines.

Toutiao provides the function of dynamic word package for creative optimization. FB and Phoenix Nest also have similar functions. For example, a fresh food e-commerce advertiser can upload a word package that includes the words cherry and apple. User A likes to eat cherries very much (and has read related articles, which has been recorded by Toutiao’s system), so what User A sees is “XX fresh food, cherries are selling hot”; User B likes to eat apples, so what he sees is “XX fresh food, apples are selling hot”. By making some changes to the copy , the click-through rate of ads can be greatly increased.

Automatic delivery of multiple creative ideas is another leading capability. Friends who do traditional DSP delivery know that after uploading several creatives at the same time, they need to monitor the effectiveness of each creative every once in a while and manually adjust the traffic based on the creative results. Now Toutiao directly provides this capability, allowing advertisers to display multiple creatives in rotation. Toutiao's system automatically helps advertisers allocate more traffic to creatives with better performance based on the performance of each creative.

Based on the above information, we all feel that the maturity of Toutiao's commercial products is still very advanced among many domestic feed flow products.

Let’s take a look at the latest product developments on Toutiao’s user products in recent times (August to December 2016). The first is the entry of big Vs. Before, we only regarded Toutiao as a news client, but now even big Vs are using Toutiao. The second is content construction. We know that before 2015, Toutiao had conflicts with several media outlets due to content scraping. Since 2015, Toutiao has stepped up its content development efforts. Toutiao started to develop its account in the middle and late 2015. Like WeChat subscription accounts , it invites companies or individuals to join. It even provides the ability to synchronize WeChat subscription account content with one click. Now vertical media such as Huxiu, 36Kr , Financial Times, and Baozou Comics have all opened Toutiao accounts, which shows the influence of Toutiao accounts.

Personally, I read a lot of Internet information on Toutiao. The third one is Toutiao Q&A. Aiming at question-and-answer forums, we organize some interesting and slightly controversial topics, invite everyone to answer them, and deposit a lot of content on this platform. The fourth is to continuously strengthen search capabilities.

For example, when we just read the news that a famous sports star cheated on his wife, our first reaction is often to curiously "Baidu" who the rumored girlfriend is, what she looks like, and what her background is, which is beyond the headlines; but now Toutiao provides a very convenient search function, which not only strengthens the search box, but also adds a clickable search link for "rumored girlfriend", so interested users can satisfy their curiosity with just a touch. Let’s make a bold prediction: does Toutiao have a chance to become the fifth search engine company in China?

With the arrival of big Vs, Toutiao Q&A, content construction of Toutiao accounts, and the continuous strengthening of search capabilities, can we still say that Toutiao is still the entertaining news client we remember?

I compare Toutiao and Baidu products as follows:

Today’s headlines:

① It has 400-600 million users, which is roughly the same as that of Sohu, and covers a wide range of people;

② Originated from news client, with high user stickiness;

③Content construction has been going on for 1 year and has been very effective;

④Compared with other domestic products, commercial products are highly mature.

Compared with Baidu:

① Keyword targeting comes from the tags of articles read by users, and its current accuracy is not as good as "search intent";

② The promotion of quasi-2C and 2B products is still not accurate enough.

Next, let’s compare the feed ads in Tencent Social Advertising (formerly Guangdiantong).

This product has a very large user base and is very mature. The WeChat Moments feed ads that everyone is familiar with are more brand-oriented and have higher prices. Few performance-oriented advertisers place ads in WeChat Moments . The characteristics of the QQ user base are that active users are relatively young. It doesn’t mean that the younger age of the active population means poor monetization ability, but based on the characteristics of the active population, the promotion effect of the game is particularly good, and the effect of promoting food, drink and entertainment for little girls will not be bad either, because the population is extremely precise. Sohu's users cover a wide range of groups, from sixty-year-olds to teenagers, all of whom are active users of Baidu. Therefore, due to the characteristics of the crowd, the QQ-related traffic in Tencent's social advertising will be much more restricted than Baidu's promotion industry. It is worth mentioning that Tencent Social Advertising recently launched WeChat Moments advertising based on business districts. The threshold for placement is very low, allowing restaurants/cafes/bakers and other ground-based shops to be exposed to precise groups of people according to business districts. This capability is currently leading among many domestic feeds.

Next, let’s look at Zhihuitui. Zhihuitui is also a big product launched by Tencent in 2016. The feed ads in Zhihuitui mainly rely on the traffic of Tencent News client and Tiantian Kuaibao, as well as the traffic of Tencent News plug-in in WeChat/QQ. With Tencent News client ranking first in market share, Tencent launched Tiantian Kuaibao, aiming at Toutiao. The content of traditional news clients is relatively more serious, while the latter is more entertaining and has also grown rapidly in 2016. Let me tell you a little story. 2016 was a year of rapid growth for Zhihuitui, and the incentive policies provided to its partners were very generous, several times that of its competitors.

Friends in the online marketing circle all know that during the period of rapid development, the media often offer very generous policies to partners/agents, including Baidu Feed. News clients represented by Zhihuitui have higher stickiness than searches, which means that they are not as urgently needed as searches and are opened less frequently than searches.

UC Browser's report shows that it has more than 500 million users, with more than 100 million daily active users. The official average usage time per person is 98 minutes, which exceeds Toutiao. However, the length of time users spend using UC is not entirely due to the fact that users are immersed in the UC feed, but more to the use of browser functions. The usage time of Toutiao is the actual immersion time of users.

UC Browser has an ability that cannot be underestimated: connecting to Alibaba's big data. The characteristics of UC are a large user base, high frequency of activation, and high frequency of exposure. UC is also the most successful browser with built-in feed flow in China. However, Baidu Browser and QQ Browser have already had a single product impact on the UC-Feed flow. The browser-based UC-Feed stream has a volume advantage over Baidu Browser Feed, but it also lacks the support of "search intent" data compared to Sogou Search. It cannot accurately grasp the "thousands of people, thousands of faces, thousands of moments" of user decision-making moments like Sogou Feed.

Let’s talk about Fensong again. This product is China’s first famous feed flow commercial product and is of epoch-making significance. Fanstong has distinct features:

① The crowd behind Fanstong has obvious characteristics, young and entertaining. Girls born after 1995 are an important part of active traffic, and the promotion effect of food/beauty is outstanding;

② The advertising recommendation mechanism based on the "big V-fans" relationship is a feature; for example, if we want to increase the fans and readings of the big V Fan Bingbing, we can first find other big Vs with similar styles to Fan Bingbing through the relationship between big Vs, such as Yang Mi; then push Fan Bingbing's account and Weibo to Yang Mi's fans, which is very effective. This recommendation based on the naturally formed follow-up relationship between big Vs and their fans is much more accurate than recommendations based on semantic understanding of text.

③ Support integration with the company’s own DMP data. Similar to the look-alike capability of traditional DSP delivery using first-party/second-party DMP data. For example, we developed an APP and obtained the mobile phone numbers and device numbers of 1,000 users, hoping to gain 10,000 new APP customers through Fanstong. We can package and upload these own mobile phone numbers/device numbers, let Fanstong "understand and find out" the user characteristics of these users on Fanstong, and then find more similar users among all Weibo users based on these characteristics, so as to achieve the effect of 10,000 new APP customers.

Compared with Baidu:

① Fanstong has a smaller user base than the previous super apps and is more vertical;

② Due to the search scenarios and user groups, the commercial monetization capabilities of Sogou are more universal;

We have analyzed several feed flows in the industry one by one, and then we can understand this sentence: the origin of each feed flow often determines the user usage scenario of the product to a large extent, and the user usage scenario determines the monetization ability and value of the commercial product.

Compared with immersive and high-viscosity feed flow products, such as social and news client products, the traffic of Baidu feed flow based on Sogou, Baidu Browser, and content alliance (Baidu Tieba feed traffic belongs to the former social category) is in a state of high-screen startup, but the user's intention to actively browse the feed flow is not strong enough.

For Baidu, the challenges of feed flow in 2017 are not small: first, competitors are very strong. Whether it is the number of users of super apps, product maturity, or the technical capabilities of competitors, Baidu needs to overtake them in 2017; second, Baidu must use user information flow as a starting point, change from passive to active, cultivate users' habit of actively browsing Baidu's information flow, and greatly increase users' immersion time. In this way, the future of Baidu Feed flow will be limitless. We are all very much looking forward to Baidu's Feed product achieving great success and providing advertisers with a new and effective marketing and promotion channel .

To place information flow ads, please contact Qinggua Media to open an account and conduct in-depth cooperation!

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The author of this article @九枝兰网络营销 is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!