When placing Tik Tok ads, should you choose FEED stream or DOU+? Pure dry goods!

In May, ByteDance launched the FEED direct live broadcast product.

With the popularity of Douyin live broadcast, the gameplay of FEED direct investment live broadcast room has become very popular, and various paid courses have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. Those institutions that once made a lot of money from "Doujia" courses immediately abandoned DOU+, and relied on gimmicks such as "11 million sales in 30 days" and "Are you still using DOU+?" to plunge into the tide of FEED flow to cut leeks. Some courses were even sold at a sky-high price of more than 100,000.

But are these so-called courses really worth it? Can the FEED gameplay really kill DOU+ instantly?

The answer is no. Douyin has been intentionally strengthening the distinction between commercial customers and individual users, self-employed individuals and corporate households, in order to strengthen the construction of the Douyin ecosystem.

The ultimate goal of Douyin is to enable content influencers to create good content, merchants to sell good products, and brands to build their brands. When each role performs its respective duties, corresponding tool products are provided to achieve the connection between roles and the co-prosperity of the platform ecology.

This is the case with the FEED flow product and DOU+, both of which are paid traffic products provided for different roles at different stages of operations. From the original design intention to the purpose of launch, entry threshold, operation method, application scenario, and even the suitable user groups, everything is different and there is no absolute strong or weak relationship.

We should understand the essence of the two ways of playing so that we can effectively utilize the two products in subsequent work.

This article will deeply analyze the differences in the delivery logic, delivery goals and costs, applicable groups, etc. of the two paid traffic methods, hoping to be helpful to practitioners.

1. FEED direct broadcast room products

The FEED direct broadcast room product is a type of Douyin e-commerce live broadcast advertising. It is also Douyin’s latest low-threshold gameplay that does not require uploading video materials and directly displays real-time live content in the recommended information flow.

The official definition of e-commerce live streaming advertising is [ a commercial approach that helps merchants improve their ability to acquire and convert traffic in their live streaming rooms ]. In addition to the FEED direct broadcast room, there is also the approach of using short videos to attract traffic to the live broadcast room.

From the definition, it can be seen that the FEED direct broadcast room is a paid traffic product launched for merchants to help them improve the conversion of the live broadcast room.

1. Limitation of entry threshold

Currently, e-commerce live streaming advertising is only open to advertisers with small store identities.

Official information of Luban

In the latest rules for small shop entry, individual entry has been suspended and only corporate/individual business owners are allowed to enter.

Conditions for entering Douyin Store

In other words, general creators are not eligible to place FEED stream ads.

If individual users want to conduct FEED direct broadcasts, they must bind/authorize with a qualified advertising account, and the products promoted in the live broadcast must also belong to the store.

2. Feed flow delivery logic

In FEED stream delivery, creating a delivery plan is the first step.

In the process of creating a plan, you must first set a budget for the plan, then clearly define the conversion goals and target audience, and then bid for the goals and audience. After all settings are completed, upload the creative materials (there is no need to set materials for the live broadcast room FEED).

Here, the planned budget is like the fuel tank, the conversion goal and the target audience are the route, and the conversion bid is the accelerator.

Whether the car is running in the right direction is determined by the route, while how fast and how long the car can run is determined by the depth of the accelerator and the size of the fuel tank.

When the plan is successfully established and the advertisement enters the delivery phase, it will enter the advertisement matching process.

When users naturally browse the video content on the video recommendation page, an ad request will be triggered.

After receiving an ad request, the system will first sort the candidate ads in the ad warehouse based on user characteristics, etc., and then call out ads that meet the needs.

Then, the ads that meet the needs are sorted by eCPM, and the highest-ranked ads are retrieved and delivered to the users.

After users browse an ad, they will give corresponding conversion behaviors. The system collects a large amount of conversion data, identifies the user characteristics of high-conversion users, and then optimizes and matches them to find people with higher conversion rates for the ad, thereby improving the ad effect.

The entire massive delivery system will strictly pursue the principle of maximizing eCPM. In the eCPM ranking process, there are three main factors: the estimated click-through rate of the material, the estimated conversion rate of the conversion target, and the system bid. In addition to the advertiser's original bid, the system bid also includes a correction factor.

To put it simply, for a delivery plan, the process is divided into three steps: " running volume - system learning - optimizing delivery" . Among them, during the running volume period, the system needs a large amount of conversion data to allow the system to learn the characteristics of high-conversion target users, so as to ensure stable volume in subsequent delivery. In other words, feed flow delivery requires a certain budget to support the system operation. If the budget is too low, it will face the embarrassment of not being able to release the volume.

3. FEED flow delivery cost

The data comes from "Jiuliangxuetang"

The above picture is a cost reference for the six conversion goals given in the relevant article of "FEED Direct Stream Live Broadcast Room" of Juleliang Academy. Among them, "entering the live broadcast room" and "clicking on products in the live broadcast room" are the most common conversion goals of FEED stream direct broadcast room advertising.

The data comes from "Jiuliangxuetang"

According to official data, the cost of entering the live broadcast room through the FEED stream is approximately 0.5-1.5 yuan, and the cost of clicking on products in the live broadcast room is approximately 1-3 yuan.

Taking a friend of mine who makes clothing as an example, in actual operation, the actual cost of watching broadcasts and clicking on products will be lower, about 0.6 for watching broadcasts and less than 1 for clicking on products. On the contrary, the costs of attention and retention are higher than this range. Of course, this is just an individual case. What I want to say is that if optimized properly, the current FEED flow gameplay can indeed bring certain benefits to friends who have product sales needs.

However, it is hard to say how long the dividends can last, because the cost of investment will definitely become higher and higher, and the possibility of the same plan failing is not low.

On the one hand, Douyin’s DAU will definitely have a ceiling. Under the condition that the user base remains unchanged, the increase in live broadcast entities will inevitably lead to intensified competition.

Data source: Juliangxuetang

The above picture shows the consumption trend of two types of materials: short videos and direct broadcast rooms on Douyin from April 20 to June 20.

It can be clearly seen that since May, the market has become more dependent on the FEED direct broadcast room. As of October, a friend in the industry shared that the cost of watching a single broadcast has increased by 3 times compared to April.

On the other hand, the time period for merchants' live broadcasts will be concentrated on weekends or the prime time from 18:00 to 22:00. When there are major customers or top or celebrity anchors and platform activities, competition will intensify further due to the low priority of FEED streams. Many conservative advertisers will face the situation of not being able to increase sales or rapidly increasing costs.

4. Factors Affecting ROI

The ultimate goal of information flow advertising is ROI, that is, the return on investment.

But please note that the live broadcast environment is different from the traditional landing page display.

For traditional information flow delivery, we focus more on material optimization, selecting materials with the highest conversion rate, and increasing delivery budgets to obtain more ROI.

However, the material is dead, but the live broadcast is alive. During live streaming, almost all secondary conversion goals must be completed in the live streaming room.

The FEED flow gameplay is the process of spending money to quickly gather the target users of the live broadcast room to the live broadcast room. Whether conversion can actually be achieved is closely related to the live broadcast room environment, the host's ability, and the words that guide the conversion .

I can say responsibly that those so-called ROI cases of 30:1 or even 70:1 are difficult to replicate. Anyone who only talks about delivery without considering the carrying capacity of the live broadcast room itself and the host's ability to guide conversions is being a rogue.

For businesses, instead of being brainwashed by false ROI and blindly spending money, it is better to first invest energy in developing live streaming capabilities, and then consider placement and obtaining traffic.

To sum up, under the premise of pursuing ROI, the gameplay of FEED direct broadcast room is indeed an effective means to achieve commercial monetization, but its threshold is not low.

It seems that not having to produce video materials lowers the creative threshold, but in fact, it transfers the risk of the materials to the anchor team. Therefore, it is difficult for advertisers to fully control the effect like traditional information flow advertising.

At the same time, while the oCPM format improves advertising conversion rates, it also increases the unit cost of advertising, which is not friendly to low-budget advertisers.

Summary: What kind of people are suitable for FEED flow?

1. Merchants with conversion as their goal (including low-fan accounts);

2. Have a certain budget and basic information flow product operation capabilities;

3. The product is suitable for Douyin live broadcast, which can effectively control costs and ROI;

4. More mature live broadcast rooms and anchors, with the ability to professionally take over traffic and guide conversions.

2. DOU+ content heating tool

This is not the first time we have talked about DOU+. The specific gameplay of DOU+ has been mentioned in previous articles. This time, let’s emphasize the DOU+ core again.

For accounts that want to operate on Douyin for a long time, DOU+ is a delivery tool that must be considered, and the status of DOU+ cannot be replaced by feed flow.

Let’s first look at the official definition of DOU+ [DOU+ is a content heating tool provided for Douyin creators , which can recommend videos to more interested users, increase video playback and interaction, and help creators better conduct content operations and brand building. 】

DOU+ is different from FEED. There is no threshold. As long as you are a content creator of Douyin, you can participate in DOU+ delivery.

1. Two types of DOU+ delivery logic

Generally speaking, after an account publishes a new short video, the system will match a certain amount of traffic for the video on the video recommendation page. The amount of matching traffic is determined by the characteristics of the account that published the video (tags, number of fans, etc.), the content characteristics of the video (keywords, etc.), and the characteristics of the current online user (interests, tags).

After matching the corresponding users, the video will display the content to these target users and record the user's feedback, including: whether they have finished watching the video, whether they have followed or liked the video, etc.

The system will then score and rank the video content based on the feedback data and decide how many views to continue providing to the video content.

In this process, the behavior of DOU+ placement is to purchase playback volume and increase video exposure. However, this exposure does not directly affect the scoring process of the system.

Taking the interaction rate as an example, if Video A has 5,000 views and 1,000 people liked it, then the like rate of Video A is 20%. If we buy 100 yuan of DOU+ at this time, we can clearly know that we will get about 5,000 views, but we don’t know how many of the 5,000 people who watch the video will like it.

If the like rate is low, it may reduce the amount of playback we will get next, and if the like rate is high, it will also increase the amount of playback we will get.

However, the most powerful aspect of DOU+ is that DOU+ delivery will not bring the video into the advertising pool. The video will still compete in the native content pool and is still eligible to become popular and obtain massive natural recommendations.

At the same time, DOU+ has the function of selecting the purpose of delivery. Assuming that the delivery purpose is interaction, the system will give priority to online users who are more inclined to like, comment, etc. to watch your video based on feature and interest matching. In theory, excellent videos can indeed increase their chances of becoming popular through the delivery of DOU+.

Let’s look at the delivery logic of DOU+ in the live broadcast room

After the account starts live streaming, the natural traffic pool of the live streaming room is no longer the short video recommendation page, but the live streaming square. The rank process is also completed in the live streaming square. The short video recommendation page, follow-up and same-city pages are all channels for diverting traffic to the live streaming room .

Although we can choose two ways to heat the live broadcast room during DOU+ delivery: short video heating and direct heating of the live broadcast room .

However, no matter which method is used, the traffic-generating content (short videos or content synchronized in the live broadcast room) is placed on the short video recommendation page. After users see the content on the video recommendation page, they can enter the live broadcast room after clicking. When the user completes the action of entering the live broadcast room, DOU+'s task is completed.

What will happen next is the process of "exposure - rating - recommendation" of the live broadcast room in the live broadcast square. This process is the same as the principle of short videos obtaining natural traffic. Among similar content, the better the interactive indicators of the live broadcast room, the higher the ranking in the live broadcast square, and the easier it is to get more recommendations in the live broadcast square.

Ps: The currently more popular "continuous attack" method is to earn the basic traffic allocated by the system by frequently posting low-quality videos to conduct stacked traffic diversion for the live broadcast room. This method can attract a lot of traffic in a short period of time, but it is not a long-term solution for three reasons: First, such low-quality videos affect the account score and are not conducive to the long-term growth of the account; second, Douyin will punish; third, continuously posting low-quality videos is a disturbance to fans and affects the natural growth of fans.

Whether it is video DOU+ or live broadcast DOU+, from the perspective of delivery logic, they are actually based on respecting the natural ranking and recommendation of content/live broadcast. Different from the feed flow that pursues ROI, DOU+ pays more attention to whether it can obtain more natural referral traffic through delivery. Therefore, the requirements for the content itself will be higher.

2. Product function differences between DOU+ and Feed Stream

Conversion goal differences:

During the DOU+ delivery process, users can also actively set conversion goals.

The principle of setting conversion goals for DOU+ is the same as the principle of FEED flow. The system will find a target group that is easier to achieve based on feature matching according to the conversion goal.

However, compared with the FEED flow, there are significant differences in the conversion goals that can be set in DOU+.

Among them, DOU+ short videos only have two options: follow and interact. Following brings an increase in the number of fans, while interaction affects the ranking of the video in subsequent assessments.

Compared with the DOU+ direct broadcast room and the FEED direct broadcast room, there is more interaction in the live broadcast room, but less stay in the live broadcast room, clicks on live broadcast room components, and orders in the live broadcast room.

Through the comparison in the above table, we can clearly feel that DOU+ is more content-oriented, and its purpose is to help live broadcast/short video content increase the interaction rate and obtain more recommended traffic. FEED is more focused on results, helping live broadcast rooms to achieve commercial conversions more effectively.

User targeting differences:

Compared with the FEED flow, the directional options of DOU+ are simply terrible.

Currently, short video DOU+ supports user gender, age, region and interest targeting in customized targeting; live broadcast DOU+ only supports gender and age targeting.

The FEED flow product supports 19 types of targeting in 6 dimensions, including the extremely powerful "Leica" targeting, which is targeting based on user behavior and interests.

So why doesn’t DOU+ set up more targeted features to help creators accurately direct target users?

On the one hand, in order to lower the threshold for DOU+ delivery, the vast majority of individual users will not check their own user portraits. It is easy to make the wrong choice if there are too many targeting options, resulting in disordered labels.

On the other hand, there is no need for it at present. DOU+ is a content heating tool prepared for creators. It does not require targeted options such as occupations with "strong conversion attributes" , mobile phone prices, and user identities on the platform. At the same time, as creators continue to publish content and operate their accounts, account tags and content tags will be automatically generated. When the system distributes content, it will automatically match users based on tags.

For new creators who have not yet formed a label, DOU+ provides interest targeting and similar expert targeting, which can meet the needs of accelerating label formation.

In the live broadcast DOU+, the latest revision has also added new targeting to the user groups who have interacted with the target influencer, including the three options of planting grass, watching broadcasts, and following.

This type of targeting is more beneficial for newly launched influencers who, under the conditions of similar live broadcast quality and tone, can quickly identify a group of target users through competing influencers and form a live broadcast room label.

3. DOU+ launch cost

For short video DOU+, if you want to get 100,000 views, you need to invest about ￥2,000.

In the DOU+ live broadcast, the same cost of ￥2,000 is expected to bring in 1,000-6,000 people. Note that the 1,000-6,000 people here are determined based on the click-through rate from the short video recommendation page to the live broadcast room.

Assuming that the click-through rate is between the normal range of 1%-6%, the exposure it brings is also approximately 100,000.

Let’s take a look at the FEED direct broadcast room. Unlike DOU+, different user groups and different conversion goals in the FEED stream have different prices. According to colleagues in the industry, the cost of obtaining 100,000 exposures with the goal of viewership and shopping cart clicks is approximately between 2,000 and 5,000 yuan. 

If we ignore the targeting accuracy and only look at the cost, the CPM cost difference between the FEED direct broadcast room and the DOU+ direct broadcast room is not that big, especially for vertical accounts. The users brought by DOU+ delivery are both accurate and cheap.

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, excellent content delivered through DOU+ can effectively increase the interaction rate, help the content obtain more natural recommendations, and even become a hit video or a popular live broadcast room.

To sum up, under the premise of increasing followers and creating popular content, DOU+ is not inferior to feed flow at all. Moreover, the threshold for launching DOU+ is lower, the cost of trial and error is lower, and it can often achieve a multiplier effect. Moreover, DOU+ is also the most suitable paid traffic product for quickly establishing tags for new accounts.

TikTok has been, is and will always be a content-based product. If the feed is well managed, high ROI will make us happy for a while, but if the content is well done and there are many and sticky fans, it will bring us constant happiness.

Summary: What kind of people are suitable for DOU+?

1. Creators (including merchants and Blue Vs) who aim to increase followers and produce popular videos, plan to operate for a long time, and have stable content production capabilities;

2. Creators who need to quickly create or adjust account tags;

3. Non-commercial anchors with certain live broadcasting skills;

4. Experts/anchors or celebrities with a certain number of fans.

Finally, it needs to be emphasized again that DOU+ is a tool for heating content. The purpose of launching DOU+ is definitely to obtain more natural referral traffic. In the process of launching DOU+, we must constantly observe the content data and only invest in excellent content.

The FEED stream gameplay is an information flow bidding product, in which ROI is the core assessment target, and the live broadcast room environment and the anchor's ability to undertake the event are the final materials. In addition to having "final materials" that can be converted stably, the delivery process requires sufficient budget and minimum ability to operate information flow-related products.

FEED flow or DOU+, have you learned it after reading this article?

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata6