How to make users like watching your ads?

Today, a colleague asked me: Why should users follow a company’s official account if it cannot provide certain services?

This colleague was thinking: No one likes to watch advertisements, but the content of an enterprise’s official account is definitely advertising, so users have no motivation to follow an enterprise’s official account.

Of course, this was also the current situation of most corporate public accounts at the time. Although looking back now, the content provided by corporate public accounts can also be regarded as an information service, which can still motivate users to pay attention to it, he undoubtedly also stated a truth: no one likes to watch advertisements.

In modern commercial society, most of the information about goods and services is delivered through advertising. Print advertising accurately expresses information through text, color, and graphics, while two-dimensional advertising expresses information through sound and dynamic effects. Only through the above methods can goods and services be accepted and recognized by consumers.

1. Why do we hate advertising?

Advertising and marketing have never had a very good image in the minds of users. If you are watching the World Cup on TV, the appearance of advertisements means that you can go to the toilet or do something else. Even when advertisements are inserted in the program, the host will tell you to "take a break and be back soon."

But the irony is that advertising supports the operation of various business logics, and that is why there are so many good programs on TV. However, this most annoying thing is actually the cornerstone of business existence.

Why do we hate advertising so much? There are mainly two reasons:

1. Interrupting user goals

Users watch TV not to see advertisements, but to watch various programs. The appearance of advertisements interrupts users' goals. Only by making every second count while watching advertisements can users continue to watch the programs they want to watch.

This is true for advertisements on all media. People don’t open Weibo or Moments just to see advertisements.

It is precisely because of the destruction of this continuous and wonderful experience that advertisements become a hatred in the hearts of users, just like when you want to sleep in but are woken up early in the morning and feel grumpy.

Advertising interrupts the user's pleasant behavioral experience. Once the pleasant experience is interrupted, it will take the user more effort to return to the pleasant experience just now. People hate this feeling and also hate advertising.

2. The advertisement has exaggerated expectations

In ancient my country, Confucianists have always had the custom of looking down on merchants. An important reason for this may be that merchants are somewhat deceptive when promoting their business.

Not to mention that deception is so extreme, exaggerated expressions in advertising and marketing are inevitable - users naturally have a sense of distrust towards advertisements.

In fact, overly exaggerated advertisements are still everywhere today. Typical examples include the micro-business advertisements in many people’s WeChat Moments, as well as advertisements for weight loss and aphrodisiac products commonly known as the “five black categories”, all of which feature overly exaggerated advertising performances.

Users have "exaggerated expectations" about the marketing of various products, believing that merchants are often not honest and brag about their products. This is also an important reason why users are disgusted with various advertisements.

Of course, in specific cases, there are other reasons why users hate ads, such as excessive interruptions, aesthetic fatigue, poor quality of ad content, mismatch of advertising needs, etc., but the main reasons are the two above.

2. How to make users willing to watch your ads?

For brands, even if users are naturally disgusted by ads, they certainly cannot just sit back and wait for their ads to come true.

Based on the above two reasons, we can actually optimize advertising marketing to make users more willing to watch your advertising content.

1. Stand with users

Doing marketing from the user's perspective is already a cliché. I believe you have heard a lot of methodologies elsewhere. Below I will explain it in detail based on my personal understanding.

(1) Gaining user empathy

The success of the fancy advertisements in "The Debaters" has triggered imitations in many variety shows, but many people only see the jokes and content of the advertisements, but do not know that Ma Dong's greatest strength is "making the advertisements honest enough."

As the host of the show, Ma Dong naturally has the obligation to advertise for the sponsors, but the clever thing is that he did not set advertising against users. Instead, he advertised from the user's perspective and put the issue of advertising on the table.

In this way, the host's role is reversed and empathy is generated with the users.

That’s why there are expressions from users’ perspectives such as “Is that enough, brothers? Do you think your money is worth spending?” and “Without the sponsorship and support of these advertising sponsors, there would be no such wonderful show as theirs today.”

After listening to these fancy ads from the user's perspective, you will naturally feel fresh and unworldly, and you will not be so disgusted with ads.

（2）Provide valuable content

Regardless of whether the ad interrupts the user's goals or exaggerates expectations, as long as you provide valuable content to the user, the user will be less disgusted by your ad.

For example: if an air conditioner advertisement is inserted in the middle of a TV series, and the user happens to have the need to buy an air conditioner recently, then the user will not be particularly resistant to your advertisement - because your advertisement eliminates the information asymmetry between product and demand to a certain extent.

This is also why it is important for brands to find the right people and output useful content, rather than forcefully selling products, because useful content can make users more receptive to your advertising information. As for what is valuable dry content?

Generally speaking, any content that helps users make decisions or use products is called dry goods, and the specific analysis should be based on the media and audience.

2. Adaptation scenario expectations

When users consume media content, they have corresponding content expectations. For example, they open a newspaper to read news information, turn on the TV to watch TV programs, and open Weibo to see celebrities and jokes.

The insertion of advertisements can easily distract users from the entire usage scenario. Of course, this is also why users are more likely to recognize advertisements and skip them.

Adapting advertising content to user usage scenarios will make users more receptive to advertising content, which is actually what we call "native advertising".

For example, advertisements on Zhihu usually have questions as titles, which not only makes people more willing to read and increases click-through rates, but also outputs the product's value selling points through asking questions. If it is paired with heavy, informative content, it will be even more popular.

On the other hand, the LBS advertising pictures of some local small stores in the Moments ads are incompatible with the overall "high-end" atmosphere of the Moments, appearing very stiff and easily skipped by users.

The content and form of the advertisements must be adapted to the scenarios in which users consume content. For example, on Weibo it is suitable to create entertaining content, on Zhihu it is suitable to use question-style copywriting, and on Baidu it is suitable to use conclusion-style copywriting.

3. Create a sense of value

In addition to improving the sense of value in the quality of advertising content, there are also some operational tips that can make users more willing to consume your advertising content. The main idea is to create a sense of scarcity, thereby attracting users' spontaneous attention. Here are a few tips:

(1) Gift advertisement

Many times, users pay much more attention to gifts than the products themselves. Gifts/prizes are all unexpected surprises, which exceed users' expectations and make them more memorable.

Based on our daily experience, we can also find that no matter what the merchant’s gifts are, we will always take a few more glances at them when we get them. Therefore, in giveaway activities, smart merchants will use the gift packaging to advertise.

This can actually be considered an exchange of interests between the brand and the user. The brand is giving you things for free, so it’s hard for the user to say that the brand is a profiteer just by watching ads…

(2) Privilege threshold

Only certain designated users, or users who have completed certain thresholds, can enjoy certain rights and interests. This will increase the sense of value of the rights and interests. This is also a commonly used user operation method. As long as the activity mechanism is set up properly, it will increase user participation and dissemination.

From the perspective of advertising and marketing, this is both a means of arousing user curiosity and a form of circle marketing.

For example: In the past, Diaoye Beef Brisket’s celebrity internal testing was open to invited guests only. In addition to attracting a lot of attention, it also made the general public more accepting of the brand.

(3) Limit expression

Another common method is to set time limits and quotas. But it is worth noting that this limited-time and limited-amount operation idea can also be applied to the promotional copy of advertising products, and can also make the products more valuable. For example: "Only one person in a lifetime", "One cow only serves six guests".

This type of limited advertising content can arouse users' curiosity. Once curiosity is aroused, users will not look at the advertisement from the perspective of sales information, but from the perspective of knowledge acquisition and curiosity satisfaction. In this way, users will be more receptive to your advertisement.

Comments:

No one likes to watch ads, but everyone needs to consume information. If you want users to accept your advertising, you need to change your mindset and transform the advertising content from sales talk into valuable and expected information. In this way, the brand value can reach users more efficiently.

There is a well-known saying that has been repeated many times: "I know that half of my advertising expenses are wasted, but I don't know which half."

The emergence of RTB has answered the question in the famous saying. In the RTB model based on big data, advertisements are pushed instantly to consumers who may be interested in them. Advertisers know to whom their advertisements are sent and can adjust their delivery strategies in a timely manner.

Therefore, compared with previous Internet advertising, advertising under the RTB model has two outstanding advantages: first, it changes from selling advertisements to selling target users, and the advertisements are directly delivered to potential consumers who may have purchasing intentions, which greatly improves the accuracy; second, advertising delivery bypasses the cumbersome agency links and is delivered instantly on the advertising trading platform, and advertising is also transformed from a futures product into a spot product that is invested and displayed immediately.

Being both targeted and controllable, advertisers are once again turning their attention to this “backward” form of advertising. At the beginning of Internet advertising, the main form of advertising output was display advertising. However, because the effectiveness of display advertising could not be accurately measured, display advertising was once considered to be weaker than search, click and other advertising methods whose effects were easily quantified. After the rapid development of Google search advertising, the core of Internet advertising has shifted to search advertising, and display advertising has become a declining aristocrat. The best example is that Yahoo, once the leader in display advertising, was quickly overtaken by Google in search advertising.

In 2007, Google, which started out as a search advertising company, acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. DoubleClick excels in brand advertising, and Google has openly declared to the media that the trend of display advertising will come again. Google is not the only one with a keen vision. In 2007, Yahoo acquired RightMedia and Microsoft acquired Ad ECN. The intervention and practice of multiple forces have made each link in this ecological chain take on a fairly mature form.

Technology is the key. Before RTB was widely used, the most common form of Internet advertising in China was sold by location or day, which did not have many outstanding Internet features compared to traditional advertising. This can't even be called an Internet advertising method, because it doesn't have the ability to do a lot of optimization. "People often say that Chinese advertising is expensive, and that Internet advertising media has high advertising fees and low efficiency. In fact, there is not much room for optimization."

Source: Ma Haixiang