Why are advertisements in 2020 becoming more and more addictive?

The lyrics say, "The only thing that never changes is constant change." The advertising industry always seems to be at the forefront of the times and is one of the most active in keeping up with trends.

In today's new media era, the ever-changing market environment, corporate marketing and advertising media have caused advertising forms to become diverse - traditional media advertising, Internet advertising, offline advertising, etc. Looking back at the changes in advertising formats this year, you will find that live e-commerce advertising, short videos, and inserted advertising in film and television small theaters are dominating the main channels for brands to place advertisements.

However, what type of advertising is more popular in the market in 2020? What types of advertising have become the favorites of sponsors this year? What are the future development trends of advertising?

01 2020 is the “year of going viral”, why are this year’s advertisements even more addictive?

2020 is the "birth year" for many industries, and the advertising industry is no exception.

In the first half of this year, the advertising industry experienced an emergency decline in growth rate due to the impact of the epidemic, but with the growing trend of online consumption, the advertising expenditures of many brands showed an upward trend in the second half of this year.

It was also from the second quarter of this year that various brands began to make efforts in an attempt to create popular advertisements that would "go viral". This has also led to more and more "addictive" advertisements appearing in the public eye, such as the "Crooked Mouth War God" short video online article advertisement, the "Fanmilin" small theater embedded advertisement in "Sisters Riding the Wind and Waves", and the magical weight loss product effect advertisements in WeChat Moments.

Various types of advertisements, all of which can reach more people in a hot, magical, resonant and addictive way, and make everyone shout that the advertisements are so addictive.

In fact, compared with last year, the more popular forms of advertising this year are: small theater product placement and performance advertising.

• Small theater product placements are gradually replacing the "Band-Aid" celebrity recommendation advertising format.
• Performance advertising is gradually replacing product display brand advertising.

First, display advertising represented by video platforms began to focus on the "creativity" of content, and small theater embedded advertising began to become popular in the market.

Product placement in movies and TV series is no longer just "Band-Aids" and celebrity recommendation ads, but has transformed into "small theater" product placement ads. At the same time, plot-based ads in short videos have gradually become the "favorite" of the online literature industry. The popularity of the "Crooked Mouth War God" series of online literature ads is the best proof of this.

The main features of this type of small theater product placement are: compared with previous video advertisements, its duration is longer, the content is more in line with the plot or more creative, novel, and brainwashing.

Secondly, performance advertising plays an increasingly important role in the market. For example, live streaming e-commerce advertising and social e-commerce advertising are becoming popular in the market. What is revealed behind the wave of performance advertising in WeChat Moments is that brands are paying more attention to conversion rates in advertising and marketing , with the direct goal of doing business based on social traffic.

Therefore, under the ever-changing market environment and advertising media, advertising forms have become more and more diversified. So, as advertising has developed to this day, why are skit-style advertising and performance advertising so popular in today's market? Why are these changes happening in Internet advertising? What are the advantages of this new gameplay?

02 What are advertisers’ favorites? Effect and content are king

According to data from the State Administration for Market Regulation, my country's advertising scale continued to grow from 2008 to 2019. The year with the highest increase was 2012, with a year-on-year increase of 50.3%; the year with the lowest increase was 2017, with a year-on-year increase of 6.3%; in 2019, the scale of China's advertising market was 867.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.6% compared with 2018.

According to QuestMbile data, video and short video advertising are still important advertising channels for major brands, and the concentration of short video advertising has also increased further.

It can be seen that although the market size of China's advertising industry has shown an increasing trend year by year, the growth rate is not high. So, why can the advertising industry still grow against the trend this year and why can short video advertising and other delivery channels become the main channels for advertisers?

The reason is that this year's epidemic has accelerated the domestic digitalization process, and online platforms such as short videos and live streaming platforms have become popular. This has also pushed videos and short video advertisements to remain the main delivery channels for major brands. The above also reviewed the content formats of advertisements that are popular this year. Why are they favored by the current market?

At present, "content" and "effect" are king in the advertising industry.

First of all, for the "financial backers" in the advertising industry, in the new consumption era they need more "certain" marketing results, that is, performance advertising.

As market traffic competition intensifies, traffic anxiety has caused content marketing to experience conversion anxiety, so advertisers have begun to focus on performance advertising. At this time, performance advertising, which has greater advantages in conversion rate, is becoming the only choice for everyone.

Performance advertising must first be based on scenarios with high traffic, and secondly, on scenarios with higher user concentration. Therefore, media such as live streaming e-commerce and social platforms have gradually become scenarios for performance advertising. More and more brands have done business on short video live streaming platforms, WeChat Moments, and Weibo.

In addition, Internet giants have maintained or increased their investment in performance advertising during the epidemic, which shows the importance of performance advertising to advertisers. It is reported that in the first quarter of this year, the advertising revenues of Meituan, Alibaba and JD.com increased by 45%, 31% and 27% respectively.

Secondly, as the Internet becomes more popular, users’ tolerance for ordinary product ads is obviously insufficient, so content has become the focus of advertisers.

At present, although the forms of advertising have become more diverse, they cannot attract users' attention, so most advertisers have begun to work hard on time and content. As a result, the content of advertisements began to become novel, curious and even brainwashing; the duration became longer and longer, and the way of implantation became more and more unexpected. As a result, small theater implanted advertisements are gradually becoming everyone's favorite.

To sum up, with the trend of short videos and live streaming, small theater embedded advertising and performance-based advertising are gradually becoming the favorites of advertisers. In today's world where content and effectiveness are king, what will be the future trends in the advertising industry?

03 The market size is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan. Is Internet advertising really "attractive"?

According to the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, the advertising industry market size will be close to 920 billion yuan in 2020, and will grow steadily year by year. By 2022, the advertising industry market size is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan.

It can be seen that the advertising industry still has huge potential in the future. So, as 2020 is coming to an end and the epidemic has become a thing of the past, where will the advertising industry go in the future?

According to iResearch Consulting, the development of technologies such as 5G, AI, and big data will further promote the production of high-quality advertising content and the precise delivery of advertisements. It can be seen that the wave of digitalization will further promote the advancement of the Internet market, and traditional media will also accelerate the process of online migration.

So, is Internet advertising really that good? Will the future trend still focus on content and effects?

Although Internet advertising plays an increasingly important role in the advertising market and has many advantages such as fast dissemination speed, strong timeliness, multiple platforms, and good marketing effects, there are still problems, such as problems with advertisers and media.

First, as mentioned above, advertisers pay more attention to the results of deterministic marketing. Therefore, rather than casting a wide net to catch online traffic, they actually hope to obtain accurate traffic; rather than higher ad exposure, they are more willing to pay for the final conversion effect; rather than simply placing an advertisement, they need a solution to solve marketing problems.

Secondly, for the media, whether large or small, they all hope to sell as much traffic as possible and improve the monetization efficiency of single traffic; in addition, they all hope to reduce the transaction costs of the chain.

However, the many problems faced by advertisers and media in the course of development are also driving the continuous iteration and upgrading of the Internet advertising industry.

It can be seen that the future development of Internet advertising will still focus on advertisers and media parties. However, it is foreseeable that in today's world where more and more attention is paid to advertising content and conversion rates, the future trend of Internet advertising will be to focus on the coordinated progress of content and effects in the context of solving problems for advertisers and media parties.

In addition, it is worth noting that the biggest challenge for the entire advertising industry is actually the problem of big integration. Because the advertising industry of all media is not independent or single, the future trend will still be the integration and integrated development of the advertising industry. Only by using combination marketing can we cover the audience to the greatest extent and enhance brand influence.

To sum up, the general trend of the entire advertising industry is the shift to online, and great integration may be the undefeated rule of the market.

Author: Ye Xiaoan

Source: Ye Xiaoan