With so many content distribution giants competing, who will give up information flow advertising?

Information flow advertising is favored by advertisers because of its native nature and precise reach. ByteDance, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba are the main players in the information flow battlefield. They cover various content consumption segments such as information, short videos, long videos, live broadcasts, etc., and are constantly competing for the "total national time". Each company has its own strengths.

In terms of scene distribution, news information has become a high-frequency embedded scene for information flow advertising due to its huge traffic advantage. The delivery of information flow advertising relies on AdTech such as tags, user portraits, and LBS. It has a unique advantage to be an online media for regional service industry life circles. After all, the entire market is now talking about entering the sinking market.

(Example of information flow advertising, picture from the Internet)

After all, WeChat Moments ads and WeChat public account ads have relatively simple product forms, and too fast commercialization is likely to be resisted by users. Therefore, "information flow ads" are a "big cake" that Tencent cannot and will not give up. Let's first recall Tencent's efforts in the battle of information flow:

• In 2015, in order to counter the encroachment of Toutiao on user scale and time usage, “Tiantian Kuaibao” was launched, which focused on intelligent and accurate recommendations. Ma Huateng named it himself.
• In 2018, WeChat official accounts changed to an information flow mode, and the "Take a Look" function was launched in WeChat version 7.0, which changed the "Like" of WeChat official accounts to "Good-looking" and then to "Reading", creating an information flow in a "social recommendation" mode.
• In November 2019, Tencent launched a new "Tencent Kandian" brand, which brings together six products including the original QQ Kandian, QQ Browser Kandian, Tiantian Kuaibao and the new WeChat Kandian applet, Kandian Video App, and Kandian Live, and will enter the market with the "recommendation + social + search" model.

(Source: Hedgehog Commune)

Tencent's "Aspect" products:

1. Historical integration business:

a. QQ News (mainly games, ACG, celebrities and other content that people born after 1995 and 2000 like)

b. QQ Browser Highlights (focused more on general life information)

c. News (focused more on general life information)

2. New integrated business:

a. View Mini Program

b. Watch some videos

c. Watch live broadcast

The unsatisfactory content ecology in the past caused the original authors to suffer double losses in terms of accounts and revenue resources, and the social traffic wasted due to lack of integration, all of which show that these products still lack the ability to operate in a unified manner.

Let me give you two simple examples.

Kandian Express and QQ Kandian have obviously borrowed the user behavior and user portraits of matrix apps such as Tencent Video and Tencent News. When you open it for the first time, they can quickly recommend content that you are interested in, recommend film and television content based on recent long video searches, and recommend local advertisements based on geographic location and interests. Looking at the Kandian series of products in WeChat, they are constantly exploring recommendations after opening them, and interest is slowly aroused. Everything just expresses that it is very unfamiliar to the user in front of it.

For example, when the content of the creator platform "Penguin" is distributed simultaneously on platforms such as QQ Kandian and QQ Browser, sometimes there will be formatting errors. The experience on the main pages is mixed.

(From left to right: Kandian Express, QQ Kandian, Tencent Kandian)

Therefore, Tencent's consolidation of the advertising business nurtured by its information flow business is both a tough nut to crack and a road that must be fought for. We hope to integrate shared content and product capabilities through the information flow business of "unified content middle platform, distribution in multiple scenarios", bring about underlying capability improvements, multiple content forms and user entrances, and "stick" information to users' usage scenarios.

The main purpose of ByteDance’s current APP matrix strategy is to explore the best way to monetize traffic within the system, and it can be said that it is "ahead of the curve." It advocates the middle-office mechanism and emphasizes internal collaboration and resource allocation. Tencent’s most famous internal mechanism is the horse racing mechanism, and the success of WeChat is the most typical example of the horse racing mechanism. This mechanism is prone to lead to internal conflicts and complex interest groups, which will hinder the integration of information flow business to a certain extent. The integration effect can only rely on Tencent’s openness and tactical execution. After all, “team battle” has been elevated to a more important position.

Tencent also has its strong advantages. Social networking and content copyright are its two major moats. The former can guarantee the scale of the platform, and the latter is of great help to it in producing high-quality content. If "concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks" is implemented in place, it may become Tencent's killer feature.

In the year 2019 that is about to pass, the proportion of graphic and text ads in information flow ads has further increased, the growth rate of short video ads is expected, and linkage ads and AI interactive ads are on the rise. It is not difficult to see that 2020 will be another year of competing in ecology and synergy.

Author: XO Meow

Source: XO Meow