Fake traffic? How to be careful when placing advertisements?

Fake traffic is already a well-known problem in the Internet market. If advertisers pay too much attention to traffic values ​​when placing advertisements, they have already stepped into the traffic pit.

The short video triggered another "bloody case".

On October 16, an article titled "A "Zombie Stage Play" directed by a new media giant, truly restoring the scene. The fuse: a video that became popular overnight, but our traffic was 0! 》The hot article swept the screen and quickly gained popularity.

This article tells a common "tragic story" about a company that hired a celebrity to place short video ads but failed to achieve "brand and effect integration".

In order to promote the new product, the author of the article (Party A) approached Sina Weibo MCN agency Fengqun Media (Party B). Fengqun Media arranged for a beauty blogger with more than 3 million fans to release a short video Vlog. The data showed that the effect was very good. It generated hundreds of thousands of views within two hours of its release, and 3 million views overnight, including nearly a thousand reposts and thousands of comments. Many fans said in the comments that they had already "arranged" (placed an order).

The data is very good, but Party A is not satisfied.

The reason is that the short video had a very poor effect in attracting traffic to the product during the promotion period, with almost no traffic to the store and no product transactions. This was in stark contrast to the high number of views, reposts and comments (especially many fans left messages saying they had bought the product), which made him feel that he had been defrauded.

So when Party A failed to obtain a satisfactory response during the communication, and after consulting a lawyer and believing that Party B had not violated the contract, Party A, in anger, wrote the above-mentioned explosive article, which triggered heated comments from netizens, prompted a statement on Weibo, and successfully got Party B to call the police and send a lawyer's letter to Party B.

I spent money on promotion but received a lawyer's letter from Party B. This may be one of the most "miserable" Party A I have ever seen.

Putting aside the issue of inflating the number of views, from a commercial perspective, as a short video content creator, it is actually Party A who "gets what it deserves" (this does not mean that data falsification is encouraged); after all, even Party A's lawyer believes that Party B has nothing to complain about, and as an advertiser he has made some mistakes, which is worth everyone's reflection.

1. Under the influence of the “Veblen Effect”, the illusion that short videos can bring goods cannot be ignored

American economist Veblen once discovered a very interesting phenomenon, that is, the degree of consumer demand for a commodity increases due to its higher price. It reflects people's psychological desire to engage in consummate consumption. The higher the price of a commodity, the more popular it is. This is the famous Veblen effect.

In fact, many advertisers have this "dangerous" idea when it comes to selling products through short videos, that is, they only buy expensive ones instead of the right ones. Not only do they have to choose a large platform and a high-ranking MCN agency, but they also have to choose expensive big Vs.

Taking the author of the above-mentioned popular article as an example, the author’s promotion selection tendency is very consistent with the Veblen effect. He found a large platform (Sina Weibo) and a leading agency, Fengqun Media (ranked first in the Weibo video agency original list in July). He also used the high price as one of the criteria when choosing bloggers, and only referred to data such as the number of views and comments - these were all his mistakes, but the mistakes he made happened to be the "false fire" of this track.

1. If you want to sell products, you can’t just focus on the top mature platforms, the cost-effectiveness is the yardstick

In the field of short video sales, the content production chains of leading platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu are relatively mature. Everything from content production to data maintenance (brushing) has been industrialized, and the content on the platforms is a mixed bag. For small and medium-sized advertisers, the cost of monitoring and screening is high, and they can easily fall into a trap if they are not careful.

In addition, due to the large number of MCN agencies, various middlemen are "making a profit from the difference", and bloggers are asking for sharply higher prices, which is not friendly to small and medium-sized advertisers.

On the contrary, for less mature platforms such as Haokan Video and Weishi, since their focus is still on content, there are relatively few MCN agencies, which makes them easier to screen, with smaller price differences and higher cost-effectiveness.

2. To promote products, you can’t just look at the surface data. Screening indicators often become black holes.

The author of the article chose Weibo celebrity @张雨涵YuHan. The root cause of the error is not that the advertiser did not do preliminary data screening, but only focused on surface data indicators: number of views, number of reposts, number of comments, etc., but it is obvious that this is only exposure and can only evaluate the brand promotion effect.

If Party A considers the effect of bringing goods from the beginning, then he should actually pay more attention to the data indicators of bringing goods, such as past transaction volume, conversion ratio, store entry rate, number of good reviews, product types recommended in the past, the consistency between the blogger and his own products, etc.

3. You don’t have to work with the top MCN agencies to bring goods. The long tail may have more surprises.

According to the theory of cognitive closure needs, most users just want to get answers without having to think. Many advertisers are like this, and choosing a top MCN agency is one of their common ways of being lazy because they don’t need to compare.

In fact, one of the important significances of the existence of MCN agencies is to make bloggers' data more beautiful; and the so-called top MCN agencies are those with the most beautiful data. If advertisers are lazy and only focus on data, it is easy to fall into the trap. After all, the top MCNs are the best at data.

4. Product promotion or selling products? It’s hard to have both, so advertisers should think clearly beforehand

Chen Rui, CEO of Bilibili, once said that the most important thing for Internet products is efficiency. When the efficiency is particularly high in one area, it will be particularly low in other areas.

Taking short video promotion as an example, advertisers generally want to achieve two effects: brand promotion and e-commerce conversion, but it is difficult to achieve both.

Because each blogger has a different personality, not all bloggers can have both. Most bloggers are only good at one of them. Advertisers should think clearly before placing advertisements, write them into the contract, and don't regret it later.

Although "Photon Cure for Dysmenorrhea" did not sell any products this time, it did achieve brand exposure (it's a pity that the brand's reputation was not high this time), and the contract did not mention any agreements related to bringing goods, so even if they wanted to sue later, they would not be able to do so.

2. How can advertisers develop a keen eye for short videos?

Fake traffic is to the Internet what counterfeit goods are to the manufacturing industry; it will never be avoided and will never be completely eliminated.

As an entrepreneur in the short video content track, I would like to remind advertisers that they cannot pray for no fake traffic in the market, but they need to develop a pair of sharp eyes. To develop a sharp eye requires these three steps.

1. Several signals to find more potential delivery platforms

When advertisers choose a short video platform for advertising, it is like making an investment. They should choose a potential platform with great room for growth, rather than a mature platform that allows them to stand on top. Because mature platforms are not only expensive, but also have messy data, a mixed bag of good and bad, and many tricks, the choice of potential delivery platforms mainly depends on whether the platform has these signals.

1) Platforms with rapidly increasing user, content, and other data

At this time, the platform ecology has not yet solidified, the content traffic pool has not yet stabilized, and the Matthew effect is not obvious. Advertisers select potential anchors for long-term cooperation, which is not only cost-effective, but also may have unexpected surprises. After all, no one knows whether he will be the next Sanda Ge, Li Jiaqi or Viya.

Nowadays, the quotes for finding well-known bloggers on Douyin, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu are very high, but if you go to platforms like Haokan Video and Weishi where there are many high-quality potential anchors, the price-performance ratio will be much higher.

2) Platforms whose commercialization systems are not yet mature

As we all know, the development of any content platform is the same. In the early stage, subsidies are provided to support high-quality content, and then commercialization is carried out after it matures.

When the platform was still receiving subsidies, it attached great importance to the content on the platform, with high-quality content accounting for a higher proportion; but when the platform became more commercialized, various black industries became more developed, which inevitably led to the inclusion of both good and bad industries.

For example, Xiaohongshu, which has just been restored to the shelves, has seen various black industries emerge along with its growth in size and deepening commercialization. There is an endless stream of people who write notes for others, inflate the number of views, sell counterfeit goods and pornographic materials, and it was eventually taken off the shelves for rectification.

Platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have also been regulated and rectified. On the contrary, Weishi, Haokan Video, and Quanmin Short Video are relatively "cleaner".

3) There is no platform that “specially cares for” the inflated volume tools

Nowadays, various types of traffic-boosting software are popular on the Internet. If the mainstream traffic-boosting software does not take care of these platforms, the current ecology of these platforms is relatively healthy; and top platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin have long been the focus of traffic-boosting software.

As a content creator (we are doing both pictures, texts and short videos), I would also like to say that among the many content platforms currently available, the most strictly regulated are the Baidu-based platforms, followed by the ByteDance-based platforms.

Baijiahao has strict content supervision. The same title and similar content will be rejected by Baijiahao with the reason that "similar content has already been published". The number of views and fans of Haokan videos is absolutely real. Baidu's own AI technology can still pass the test and has established a relatively strict anti-cheating mechanism to prevent brushing.

The same is true for Toutiao. Similar content has basically no traffic and is even refused to be included. The same is true for Douyin. The traffic of similar content is greatly reduced. Then there is NetEase, which also has strict supervision.

4) The platforms that continue to subsidize content providers

To put it bluntly, the platform is still accumulating content. Just look at which platform is still subsidizing content creators.

5) Platforms where super Vs have not yet appeared

The reason is very simple. There is no super V. That is because the content system is still under construction and the myth of making wealth has not yet appeared. Everything has just begun and is still very healthy.

2. A few actions can make the campaign more valuable

1) It is better to choose by yourself than to let others recommend it

It is best for advertisers to find big Vs that they are familiar with. Time is the best verification tool. Don’t trust too much the institutional internet celebrities recommended by MCN. Long-term understanding is definitely better than recommendations from others.

2) It is better to trust the platform than the third party MCN

After all, the third party MCN makes recommendations for the purpose of profit, and making money is the first priority; the platform makes recommendations based on the principle of a win-win platform ecology, and will inevitably find truly suitable bloggers for advertisers.

For example, after the explosive article incident happened yesterday, Weibo user @来去之间 said that advertisers should place ads on the site, with data monitoring and reporting, and should not pay based on the number of existing fans.

Weibo CEO @王云飞 also said that the advertiser only paid 3,000 yuan for the ad through Weibo's official advertising platform, but ended up spending more than 40,000 yuan.

3) When the advertising budget is limited, it is better to invest in several small and medium-sized Vs instead of one big V.

It is said that you should not put all your eggs in one basket. Since investing in big Vs is risky, investing in more small Vs will always increase the chances of making it a hit.

In addition, less mature platforms are also worth considering.

In fact, we have been working on Kuaishou, and although the fan base is not large, the effect is good. In April, Kuaishou launched the product promotion function. After the product promotion videos could be distributed to Baidu APP in July, the traffic began to surge. Here I only need to compete for traffic with nearly 10,000 authors (think about how many competitors Douyin and Kuaishou have), and grassroots accounts like us are more likely to get opportunities.

At present, the daily sales volume of our Kuaishou account has increased from dozens of yuan at the beginning to a recent peak of 60,000 yuan. In categories such as digital hardware and household daily necessities, there have been more than 1,000 orders of hot-selling products sold in a single day. This long-tail effect is still worth looking forward to.

4) It’s better to buy it yourself than to look at it yourself

If an advertisement has no effect after being launched, it may not necessarily be the problem of the big V, but may also be a problem with the product conversion path. For example, the chain is too long, resulting in low order conversion; for example, the price is too high, the store rating is low, and there are no positive reviews; or it is a dead link that cannot be purchased at all; advertisers have to try placing an order themselves and experience the process.

3. Don’t think traffic is too expensive, think about how to turn traffic into retention

Asking bloggers to advertise has always been a way to buy traffic, but it does not retain users. Advertisers need to build their own traffic pool to retain users.

Many small businesses and small brands join the platform before it matures. When the platform matures, these businesses and brands also grow as the platform's influence grows.

For example, Taobao anchor Wei Ya has been rooted in Taobao live streaming very early. In the early days of Taobao live streaming, she certainly did not expect that one day she would be able to become a big anchor with sales of hundreds of millions of yuan and become the envied number one anchor of Taobao live streaming. Another example is Simba, Wawa and others on Kuaishou. They are also brand owners and store owners, that is, advertisers, but they have successfully made themselves Internet celebrities on the Kuaishou platform, thus having a steady stream of traffic.

In this age where everyone can become an Internet celebrity, many individuals can become Internet celebrities and gain good traffic, let alone advertisers with more resources. If you are willing to invest and build your own brand position on the short video platform, that will bring long-term traffic. However, the difficulty of success on mature short video platforms has greatly increased. If you go to the next level such as Weishi, Haokan Video, etc., your chances may be greater.

At present, the "bloody case" caused by the short video advertisement of "Photons Cure Dysmenorrhea" is still fermenting, and there are always different opinions on who is right and who is wrong.

However, to use a common saying, only children care about right and wrong, while adults only care about profits. If advertisers want to sell products through short videos without being cheated, they have to develop a keen eye.

Author: Zeng Xiangling

Source: Science and Technology