Inserting advertisements in WeChat Moments: a bad move or a good one?

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In the WeChat Moments of 1 household, 6 pictures and links were posted as advertisements. In a previous event called “WeChat Global MBA Innovation Competition – Creative China 2015”, Tencent Vice President Zhang Ying said that WeChat Moments advertisements will be launched soon, which will be an exploration of the innovation of WeChat Moments commercialization.

In the WeChat advertisement, WeChat officials said in a particularly literary and stylish tone: Advertising is a part of life. It’s not that advertising is hateful, but that advertising doesn’t understand users. We are trying to make some changes.

I got an "Introduction to WeChat Advertising System" from a Tencent employee. It contains three core contents:

First, WeChat is really a gold mine. After three years of operation, it has accumulated 1.12 billion registered users and 440 million monthly active users. Moments is a platform for information sharing and original creation, with an average of 3 billion shares per day, covering high-quality users aged 20-29.

Second: The WeChat advertising system is first of all the public account part, at the bottom of the public account article, mainly with a large coverage of more than 400 million active users. The advertising method is CPC advertising - the base price is 0.5 yuan/click, free bidding. And CPM advertising - the base price is 15 yuan/thousand impressions, free pricing. I personally think that this part is very average.

Third: WeChat’s Moments advertising system. This part is mainly about feeds advertising, where CPM is calculated based on exposure. 50 brand advertisers are carefully selected, and the key is that the cooperation budget is more than 10 million.

After reading the above introduction, I realized that Moments advertising is a big game. Some people say that it may reach 10 billion a year, which is a bit exaggerated. Objectively speaking, the commercialization of WeChat is imperative, and the WeChat team's actions in advertising are also very innovative.

I conducted a small survey in the Micro-Innovation President Camp and the Practical Commune group: Do you hate it when WeChat officially posts advertisements in Moments?

I was surprised by the votes, as half of the people said “I don’t hate it”. The reason given was: if it is done in a cool way, it is worth learning.

Others say: This is a trend and it cannot be stopped, so just accept and use it.

Half of the people "hate" it, with the reason being: WeChat has started to advertise, so how can they still use WeChat seriously?

WeChat’s first big move in 2015 was Moments advertising. Will this become a turning point in WeChat’s rise and fall?

At least, I think this matter has great turning point significance, and if not handled properly it may be a bad move:

1. The reason why WeChat has such high stickiness is that users believe in Zhang Xiaolong's value of "user experience first". In the APP world full of advertisements, Zhang Xiaolong and WeChat are like a breeze, representing more advanced product concepts and higher design dimensions. I think Moments ads conflict with this value because it is a forced insertion behavior, which is different from your friends posting junk ads in Moments.

2. The reason why WeChat Moments is so popular is because of its low information noise. If WeChat officially starts posting ads in Moments, it will only increase the information noise and may be abandoned by users. The words of a micro-innovation practice commune are very representative:

@易胜兰: It’s actually annoying. I originally thought that the circle of friends could be my own closed loop, but then I found out that the owner behind the scenes was WeChat. I thought there would be new tools to replace it. QQ is the predecessor.

3. Some people would say that the benefits of the Moments have been taken by micro-businesses, and WeChat officials are at a disadvantage. In fact, this is not the case. WeChat’s biggest benefit is traffic, and it is high-quality, sustainable, and mobile traffic. Advertising is the simplest and crudest way, and the best way is to make the best use of the money. In fact, WeChat’s games are already very powerful and have occupied most of the mobile game market.

What do you think? Is the WeChat Moments ad a good move or a bad one?