The secret of Tencent Video’s advertising materials to achieve high volume

The author recently met a friend in the same industry who claimed that he had been working in optimization for three years and relied on a set of materials to conquer the world. Although he changed companies during this period, this set of materials never let him down.

Regardless of how true this story is, as an optimizer who is exhausted from struggling with materials every day, I feel more envious than interested. I even want to learn from their experience so that I can find a permanent shortcut for myself. But how can there be so many good things in the world? "Knowledge gained from books is always shallow." The real good method still needs to be explored and practiced by yourself.

Today I would like to share with you my thoughts on material production during the two years I have been working at Tencent Advertising.

First of all, I don’t need to say much about the importance of materials. Those who do optimization know that the mystery of information flow lies in the materials.

In the past few years, the information flow was mainly static graphics and texts. In the production of materials, we mainly focused on two points:

First: Visual impact

Second: Delivering information

It is simple to understand, that is, to catch the user's attention among many information flows, then accurately convey the information to the user, and stimulate potential users to further click on the advertisement.

This logic is still applicable to current video ads . However, compared to static graphic ads, users have a slightly higher threshold for understanding video ads. Therefore, optimizers need to put more effort into the design and production of materials, especially the expression of lens language, not only to attract users' attention, but also to keep them watching within a limited time.

How to attract the user's attention in an instant involves what we often call the video completion rate, or to be more specific, the completion rate of the first 3 seconds of the video. These 3 seconds are crucial, so we also call it the golden 3 seconds. Through the coordination of pictures, dubbing and copywriting, we can attract the attention of target users in a short time.

For optimizers:

The first golden second: getting users to stop

The golden second: Keep users reading

The golden third second: getting users to click in

80% of users will not decide whether to stop within 1 second, which is why everyone emphasizes the theory of the golden 3 seconds. In practical applications, it is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:

· Outer creative, including the first impression of the video (especially the first 3 seconds of the video ad), pictures, copy (title), etc.

The inner landing page mainly focuses on the design of the elements of the header image and the first screen.

So, how do we design creative materials that conform to the golden three seconds theory?

If you are not a creative genius like me, then there is only one way: learn from and summarize honestly~

Regarding reference, there are many third-party creative integration tools on the market, such as AG. They are really easy to use, but also really expensive. For a poor person like me, the first thing that comes to my mind is some creative tools that come with the delivery platform. Regardless of whether they are easy to use or not, they are really free, and the delivery data and situation of this platform are also real, so there is no reason to refuse!

Taking Tencent Advertising as an example, the backend [Creative Center] - [Creative Ranking] organizes together the video ideas, graphic ideas, text titles and landing pages that have performed well recently. If you are facing serious creative homogeneity and lack of inspiration, then use it as a reference. It is much more practical to read and review more than to think blindly by yourself.

1) Popular Video List:

In addition to the popular video list, the video creativity ranking also includes the golden 3-second list and the e-commerce promotion list. You see, whatever you say comes true, the golden 3-second list has all the statistics for you, which is simply the optimizer's heart.

The list can be sorted according to your own needs. For example, when the completion rate of the video I invested in is low, I need to watch more videos of the same category that are performing well to get creative inspiration. Then I can search the industry, such as [Game] - [Arrange in descending order of 3-second completion rate], and then analyze the advantages of the video one by one to get support and inspiration for video creation.

Every frame of a popular video can be disassembled, especially the first 3 seconds of the video. What we need to do is to disassemble it first and then combine it:

What elements does each frame contain?

What are the hot words in each frame?

How to design the style of each frame

How each lens language is expressed

How to interpret dramatic conflict

In addition, the attribute distribution of different behavioral groups can also help us analyze the similarities and differences between the viewing, clicking, conversion and completion groups, and design golden 3-second creative ideas based on the differences in group attributes and the preferences of different groups. As the saying goes, "Those who know me know that I am worried, and those who understand me only know my information flow."

2) Popular copywriting list:

Copywriting, which we often call advertising titles, is also very important. Often, a piece of material that captures the "golden 3 seconds" must have a good title. The user's understanding threshold for text is always lower than that for video animation.

In the copywriting rankings, you can view the copywriting with higher click-through rates and their associated creative materials. This is very effective when creative production inspiration is exhausted.

3) Popular landing page list:

The model of landing pages has become relatively fixed. There is also a "LP's golden 3 seconds" theory about landing pages, namely "header image + strong conversion gimmick". Therefore, the current industry competition is mainly focused on the design of header images and conversion windows. Therefore, when checking the list of popular landing pages of your peers in the creative rankings, you should mainly look at the conversion gimmicks of the header image and the first screen. Look more, compare more, and make more summaries. For example, from the TOP5 game landing pages, we can see that celebrity endorsements and display in the header image are very effective.

So when most of us don’t have the luck to “use one set of materials for three years”, we still need to be down-to-earth to learn, think and summarize, so as to come up with creative ideas that meet the golden 3 seconds.

In addition to referring to the popular ideas of our peers, we also need to think about: Why are users attracted to video ads?

Ultimately, it’s still the visual impact and information transmission we mentioned above.

So how do we apply these two points to our advertising materials, especially the production of the golden 3 seconds at the beginning?

To put it simply, visual impact means that the audience loves to watch it and never gets tired of it. We summarize it into the following six words:

“Beautiful, luxurious, new, hot, true, simple”

1) Beauty

All beautiful things, such as beautiful women, delicious food, beautiful scenery, etc., are the eternal traffic passwords. The most typical example among these is beautiful women. There are many possibilities for the camera language of beautiful women, and some borderline materials can easily become popular, but be careful not to test the edge of the law.

2) Luxury

Anything related to money will irritate the user's nerves, and this is an eternal law. Targeting different audiences, the withdrawal can be as small as 1 dollar, or as large as various luxury cars, mansions, helicopters, etc.

3) New

Everything beyond the user's cognition is new to him. Just like we like to watch foreigners committing suicide, foreigners like to treat Chinese spittoons as treasures.

4) Heat

The current popular styles, events, scenes and music are the so-called hot spot effect.

5) True

Real shots are more likely to give users a sense of picture and immersion. For example, the real process of tooth extraction and eyebrow tattooing, etc., don’t deny it. Many people are actually mentally masochistic, and you are not excluded.

6) Jane

Simple to understand and easy to operate. This is the core purpose of our advertising and also the value of advertising volume. A wasted advertisement is meaningless to us. Our goal is to allow users to simply and mindlessly follow the instructions in the advertisement.

At the information transmission level, the commonly used methods are:

1. Portray conflicts and contradictions. In other words, who doesn’t like watching people quarreling? Especially those programs about conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and family disputes, can you refuse them?

2. The desire to voyeurize from a third-person perspective. I can’t say it’s absolutely true, but most people like to hunt for curiosities and voyeurism, there’s no getting around it.

3. Subtitles, dubbing, and barrage. As we said above, text is often more intuitive than plot. If you want users to do something, just keep giving them input to brainwash them into doing it.

Summarize:

Therefore, when it comes to creative ideas in material design, we cannot do without reference from many parties, especially the official creative center. It is very necessary to study why others can achieve explosive growth and what highlights of these materials I can learn from.

Like the friend mentioned at the beginning of the article, the opportunity to come across explosive material right away is like winning the lottery, so don’t touch it blindly, but refer to and summarize more. All the tools provided by the media have undergone countless surveys, and one of the core abilities of our optimizers is to learn how to use these tools to improve work efficiency and delivery effectiveness.