How to place, operate and optimize Toutiao ads?

The first step in Toutiao advertising: understanding the basic algorithm of the robot

There are thousands of channels in China, and there are neither too many nor too few mainstream advertising platforms. The biggest difference between Toutiao and other platforms lies in personalized recommendations and intelligent distribution. It can be simply understood that Toutiao's advertising is filtered through the "robot code" and then distributed. Therefore, understanding the rules followed by the "robot" during the distribution process will undoubtedly increase advertisers' control over the advertising.

After a new advertising plan is created in Toutiao's AD system, the plan will go through four steps: pre-allocation of exposure, estimated CTR, advertising sorting, and frequency filtering before it is displayed to users. This article mainly shares the main algorithm logic that affects the delivery in these four steps.

Methods/Steps

1. Pre-allocated exposure

The system pre-allocates traffic exposure based on the planned daily budget. For example, if the overall traffic of Toutiao is compared to a playground, then the high-budget traffic can theoretically cover the entire playground, and the low-budget traffic of several thousand or a few hundred can theoretically only cover a small area. On platforms such as Baidu, a budget of 100 yuan may theoretically cover the user base of the entire Baidu platform.

In addition, the pre-allocated exposure traffic and the traffic allocated after the plan is implemented are both segmented. Think of the advertising system as an intelligent robot. The robot constantly observes the returns a plan brings to the platform. When the CTR of the traffic allocated in a certain stage is very low, the robot will think that the user does not like the advertising plan, which will make it difficult to consume the advertising in the next stage.

Don’t ask: It seems so confusing and useless? +

Question: Although it may not be clear, what impact will the above factors have?

Answer: 1. Advertising plans are suitable for high budgets (due to the segmented nature of Toutiao's power allocation, the actual consumption will be much lower than the daily budget. For example, an NBA live broadcast lasts 2 to 4 hours, but the actual game time is only 48 minutes excluding overtime), because just like a questionnaire survey, the smaller the theoretical population, the greater the fluctuation in data feedback. Only when the population is larger, the data feedback will be closer to the true value. This is especially true for industries such as games where advertising competitiveness is relatively weak.

2. It is more important for an advertising plan to have quantity first than to have effect first. The behavioral logic of a "robot" is very complicated, but as long as it is a code, there must be rules to follow. Therefore, when the quantity is large enough, on the one hand, the most realistic effect can be obtained and the real return and feedback of the plan can be grasped. On the other hand, the quantity can be used to suppress the fluctuation of the machine code. If we have to set a quantitative standard, I think only plans that cost at least 5,000 to 10,000 are worth preliminary discussion and optimization. Plans that cost a few hundred dollars are inaccurate regardless of whether the return is good or bad. To optimize the delivery, we must first understand the actual situation of the product on the platform, and then optimize and operate based on the actual situation.

2. Estimated CTR

Toutiao’s advertising system mainly estimates the CTR of advertising plans through the following two aspects: historical account performance (money spent, overall performance of historical plans), and industry advertising delivery data. Individual advertisers cannot control the industry data here, so the core lies in the former, among which the continuity of spending is more important than the amount, and the account plan performance in the past week is more important than that in the past month.

The specific process of estimating CTR is as follows: Based on the large or small picture, industry attributes, copy content, image content, audience user characteristics, etc., and with money as weighting, the new advertisement is matched with the display and click situation of historical advertisements to output an estimated CTR value. At the same time, the estimated CTR is adjusted according to the actual performance of the advertisement in the subsequent segmented delivery.

Among them, because the system is worried that the estimated CTR is inaccurate, which will cause losses to advertisers, it will deliberately slow down the exposure of new plans at the beginning. Therefore, every new plan created on Toutiao must have a time buffer before it can start to grow.

Don’t ask: What type of material has a high click-through rate? Because in a big market, every material has had good and bad performances. This is a typical problem that looks useful but is not helpful in practice.

You should ask: What is the average CTR in your industry? Because as long as I ensure that my plan is higher than the average, the chances of making a profit will be greater.

Answer: The average CTR of all industry materials in Toutiao’s information flow is 2.3~2.5%; among them, the CTR of the gaming industry is 1.5%, e-commerce is 2.5%, and APP is 2.2%.

3. Ad ranking

When the advertising plan is loaded by the APP, it is not displayed immediately, but sorted by ECPM. ECPM≈quality*bid. The most important quality factor is click-through rate (CTR), which represents the degree of acceptance of the advertisement by users. Bid represents the maximum fee that the advertiser is willing to pay for a click. Therefore, if the CTR is higher, the actual ACP click price of the advertising plan will be lower than the Bid.

Don’t ask: A more detailed ad ranking algorithm? Because it's useless to understand

The question is: What impact does this have on delivery?

Answer: The biggest impact is that the ads are not exposed and clicked immediately. After the ads are queued on the user's APP, the timing of being swiped is random. It may be exposed in the next second, a few minutes, half a day or even a day. Therefore, there is a time difference between the CPC (Cost per Click) deduction on Toutiao and the time when the ads are placed, which means it is not immediate. The biggest impact of this non-instantaneous nature is that the real-time statistical data in the background will be buffered and delayed. Therefore, when placing ads on Toutiao, there is no need to adjust prices as frequently as Baidu Guangdiantong. Instead, you should be patient and make adjustments based on the performance of the overall market data to avoid losing more than you gain. Adjusting prices 2 to 5 times a day is sufficient.

In addition, as an important basis for optimization, the factors affecting quality are ranked in order of importance as follows: CTR>creative relevance of materials>correlation between landing page and materials>historical performance of advertising account≈account credit≈user’s stay time on landing page≈loading speed of landing page.

4. Frequency Filtering

Toutiao’s advertising system has many frequency filtering algorithms. The ones with the greatest impact on advertising are as follows:

1. In the past: New users had no ads within 7 days (IPAD version, IOS paid version was ad-free for life). Now: No ads will be shown to new users within 3 days, only information flow ads will be shown from 3 to 7 days, and after 7 days, information flow ads, splash screen ads, and detail page ads will be shown normally.

2. A user can see large-image ads up to 7 times a day, so there is a reason why large images sometimes do not run. You can either increase the price, find a way to increase the CTR, or wait. There are only these three solutions.

3. A user can see app download ads up to 20 times a day. However, if the download link is placed on the landing page, it will not be affected by this frequency control. Therefore, if you are in great need of volume, you might as well invest more in landing page ads.

4. When a user dislikes one of the advertiser's plans, all plans of the advertiser will no longer be displayed to the user within one week.

5. Each advertising plan will only be displayed to one user once within 12 hours

6. Ads with too low ECPM will not be displayed and will not even have the chance to queue. The specific threshold is not disclosed, but in March 2016, Toutiao's system slightly lowered the ECPM threshold to allow more ads to be displayed.

Don’t ask: Large pictures and application downloads are frequently controlled, so should I invest less?

Question: Large images and app downloads are frequently controlled, so sometimes if we do the opposite, can we get a surprise?

Answer: Yes. The page formats of Toutiao's information flow ads are divided into download pages and landing pages. The difference is that the download page is built on the Toutiao server, and there is an "Download Now" ICON on the material; the material format is divided into large pictures, small pictures, and picture sets; the bidding advertising positions are divided into: Toutiao information flow, Douyin, Pipixia, Xigua Video information flow, and the banner at the bottom of Toutiao article details page. It can be said that each of the above forms has good and bad cases, so when placing, remember that water has no fixed state, the plate is constantly changing, it depends on how you play, but in the process of playing, you must remember the various algorithms above, that is, the rules of the game.

1. Account balance. Based on the author's experience of observing more than 20,000 plans, don't wait until you are almost out of money to recharge. Keeping an account balance of more than five digits will definitely help your traffic in a positive way. The smaller the balance is and the closer the advertising plan's consumption is to the budget, the rate at which the "robot" increases in volume tends to slow down, but the specific critical point and related values ​​cannot be revealed.

2. Don’t blindly trust the experience of other platforms. The diversity of mobile terminals is reflected in all aspects, including the field of advertising. Therefore, the experience and habits of different platforms should not be copied lightly, especially the experience of "traditional" platforms such as Baidu Guangdiantong will not be suitable for new advertising systems such as Toutiao, which may make some new marketing personnel feel confused and hesitant in advertising. You know, if "old" employees like me don't keep learning every day, they will be left behind by Toutiao's own pace. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain an "adventurous" and "learning" attitude.