Why is Weibo becoming a standard “must-buy” marketing channel for advertisers?

On August 9, Beijing time, Weibo’s stock price reached an all-time high, and its market value exceeded the 20 billion US dollar mark. After surpassing Twitter in terms of user size last quarter, Weibo once again leads the social media industry with absolute advantage, consolidating its position as the third largest independent social company after Facebook and Tencent.

1. Open social networking, wider dissemination

For advertisers, there are many choices of domestic social media (Weibo, WeChat , QQ, Momo, etc.), but each platform has different attributes. Weibo is a platform for users to obtain and share information, WeChat focuses on communication and sharing within the relationship chain of acquaintances, QQ focuses on young students, and Momo is a social platform for young strangers.

In the era of traditional media, information content mainly relied on "mass communication"; after the emergence of social media, especially mobile terminals gradually became the mainstream, "interpersonal communication" became an important channel for information dissemination.

WeChat is relatively closed, with information being transmitted from acquaintances to acquaintances and then to strangers; Momo is relatively open, but information is transmitted from stranger to stranger and lacks trust; QQ's user base is relatively young and its commercial value is not prominent enough; Weibo, on the other hand, spreads information layer by layer through the nodes of "following" and "being followed" between people, with wide coverage, fast speed, and trust, making it easy to be accepted.

2. Huge user base

Users are the core of advertising. Only when there are enough and broad enough users can the commercial value of advertising be supported.

According to the calculation model previously given by Morgan Stanley, the user scale ratio of international mainstream social media and IM tools is about 54%. For the Chinese market, that is, the ratio of the user scale of Weibo to WeChat, as of the first quarter of this year, it was about 36%. There is still a lot of room for growth in the scale of Weibo users.

Weibo's second quarter financial report showed that Weibo's monthly active users had reached 361 million, a single-quarter increase of 21 million, and the proportion of monthly active users from mobile terminals further increased to 92%. Momo, which is also an interest-based social platform, has only 85.2 million monthly active users.

3. User Dependence Rising

It won’t work if you only have the number of users but not the quality of them. Ads not only need to be seen, but also need to be seen by users with commercial value and be able to click and interact.

As an interest-based social media platform, Weibo's user usage rate has climbed to 38.7%, up 4.7 percentage points from the same period last year, thanks to the establishment and strengthening of the celebrity, internet celebrity and media content ecosystem, as well as its in-depth layout in short videos and mobile live streaming .

As the user base and usage rate continue to grow, the usage time of Weibo users is also increasing. According to QuestMobile's second quarter report, the average monthly usage time of Weibo client users reached 443 minutes, an increase of nearly 50% from the first quarter.

4. Improved user commercial value

Since 2014, the number of Weibo users has been decreasing in different regions. From first- and second-tier cities, the number of users has shifted to third-, fourth- and even fifth-tier cities, and the number of users in lower-tier cities has now accounted for more than 50% of monthly active users.

Users are getting younger, with those aged between 16 and 25 accounting for 70%. Junior high school students, high school students, college students, and young people who have graduated from college for two or three years have become the core group of people on Weibo.

At the same time, Weibo transitioned from the previous top users such as celebrities, media, and current affairs to vertical middle users such as Internet celebrities and big Vs , and was finally completely diluted by the influx of bottom-level individual users. It is precisely because of this complete architecture that the ecological structure of Weibo's content production and sharing has reached a balance, and Weibo's participation rate has reached 49.7%.

5. Increased recognition among advertisers

With the continuous increase in the scale of Weibo users and the continuous maturity of its content ecosystem, Weibo is entering a period of commercial explosion. In the second quarter, Weibo's total revenue reached 1.73 billion, a year-on-year increase of 79%. Among them, advertising revenue reached 1.49 billion, a year-on-year increase of 78%.

In the first half of 2017, Weibo provided companies with precise advertising resources based on user attributes and interests, using images, text, videos and other display methods. This gradually became an industry trend and was recognized by many companies. Weibo's brand advertising revenue in the second quarter increased by 88% year-on-year, and its small, medium and self-service advertising revenue increased by 85% year-on-year. ,

At the same time, Weibo continues to explore new advertising models to attract more advertisers to join. For example, in the first quarter, the number of Weibo video advertising customers increased by 50% month-on-month.

With the continuous improvement of user engagement, the migration of advertisers' budgets to mobile devices, and the continuous enrichment of Weibo advertising formats, Weibo is gradually becoming a standard "must-buy" social media platform.

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