Tik Tok trending searches challenge Weibo's "advertising board"

Tik Tok’s trending searches are becoming more and more like Weibo’s trending searches.

Nowadays, Douyin’s hot searches overlap to a certain extent with Weibo’s hot searches on some hot events. At the beginning of this month, a piece of news that Zhang Danfeng was suspected of cheating quickly became a hot search on Weibo. At the same time, this hot search also once rushed to the top of the Douyin hot search list, with more than 4 million views at that time.

For Douyin, which has a strong desire for monetization, hot searches are becoming an important tool for converting traffic. It is worth noting that Douyin is also vigorously building and improving its own entertainment marketing team, and hot searches are a powerful item in the entertainment marketing toolbox.

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Move closer to Weibo

In essence, the hot search function is to further refine the operation of the platform content. With the guidance of data and algorithms, hot searches will once again expose content that is already popular on the platform to users in a concentrated manner, making popular content even more popular.

One benefit of doing this for TikTok is that trending searches have become a supplement to the operating mechanism of TikTok's algorithm-recommended content. By using the hot search entrance, the platform has strengthened its ability to set the agenda for popular content and can attract a large amount of traffic to this function page in a short period of time.

Having a mature hot search function has high monetization value for Douyin. The success of Weibo hot searches has verified this. Nowadays, every adjustment to Douyin’s hot searches makes it more like Weibo’s hot searches.

After going online in July last year, Douyin's hot search page has also gradually changed. It is still ranked first in the trending search list. Nearly half of the content on this real-time updated list is entertainment news. The music chart has been integrated into the video chart. The hot search content in this part is mostly original user content, but celebrities often appear in the higher-ranked videos.

A person familiar with Weibo once revealed to New Business Intelligence NBT that one of the biggest features of Weibo is that it has a large number of celebrities, and gossip about many celebrities will explode on the hot searches, which has made many users form the habit of checking the hot searches first instead of checking the followers on Weibo. This gives Weibo the benefit of gathering traffic. Whenever a hot event occurs, especially entertainment news, Weibo becomes the information distribution market where users “watch” and discuss.

This also makes Weibo hot searches very important to advertisers.

Previously, a practitioner from an advertising agency that specializes in Weibo hot searches provided New Business Intelligence NBT with a quote for Weibo hot searches. The top three on Weibo hot searches would be charged 100,000 yuan, the top five would be charged 80,000 yuan, the top 20 would be charged 60,000 yuan, and the top 50 would be charged 50,000 yuan. In actual operation, the cost required is often much higher. This also shows that the success of Weibo hot searches has verified its monetization capabilities in entertainment marketing.

As users have formed inherent search habits, coupled with the platform's own powerful traffic entry effect, hot searches have evolved into a mature commercial tool. After the hot search on Weibo, Toutiao and Zhihu also launched the hot search function.

Tik Tok’s hot search list is now trying to create such an atmosphere.

Compared to about 30% of entertainment content on Weibo's hot searches, nearly 50% of the content on Douyin's hot searches are related to currently popular variety shows, idol stars, etc. In some popular entertainment events, it has appeared synchronously with the hot searches on Weibo. For example, after the variety show "Creation Camp 2019" was launched, a video of an interview with Su Youpeng became a hot search on Weibo, and this content also appeared on the Douyin hot search list on the same day.

In addition, Tik Tok is also improving its entertainment value through operational means. Currently, Douyin has specially designed a celebrity list under the hot search area. The list shows that the number of celebrities who have settled in has reached 1,227, and this number continues to grow every day. Among them, nearly 80% of the top 30 celebrities on Weibo’s celebrity power list have joined Douyin.

In early April, Tik Tok launched a nearly two-week celebrity ranking campaign on the celebrity list. On the celebrity ranking event page of "TikTok Love DOU List", fans can vote for their favorite celebrities by watching videos, forwarding, commenting and liking, completing specific tasks, inviting friends, etc. This ranking model is similar to Weibo’s celebrity power ranking. Chen He, the star with the most votes on the list, has received 7.887 million votes from fans.

Previously, an industry insider revealed to us that "hot searches can bring a lot of traffic to a certain type of content, especially when the content's tone is in line with the platform's own tone, such as celebrities and entertainment content on Weibo. These contents can bring a lot of interaction to the platform, and the platform will also welcome this kind of gameplay. Moreover, due to the large amount of traffic and higher precision, hot searches will also be more effective in advertising marketing and event marketing, which is good for the platform."

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Tik Tok needs an entertaining trending search

Entering 2019, ByteDance's desire to monetize has become more urgent. According to Jiemian News, several ByteDance insiders have revealed that ByteDance's full-year revenue target for 2019 is at least 100 billion yuan. As a core product of ByteDance, Douyin's monetization level is particularly significant.

To this end, Douyin has been active in e-commerce, social networking, and mini-games this year. Recently, Douyin officially launched a number of e-commerce mini-programs such as Xiaomi Mall and JD Goods Street to accelerate the monetization of its own e-commerce.

Douyin is also consolidating social relationships on the platform and launched the video social app Duoshan. In February this year, Douyin launched a mini-game called "Sound Jump Balls" and set up distribution channels and profit-making models for the mini-game. In March, ByteDance acquired or invested in two gaming companies.

However, Douyin’s gaming and social businesses are currently in their infancy, and advertising remains its most mature monetization method.

While launching new hard-advertising products such as TopView, entertainment marketing is also an important way for Douyin to monetize.

In January this year, Zhi Ying, general manager of Douyin's marketing, mentioned in a speech that in 2018, Douyin made many attempts in entertainment marketing. Now more and more partners such as TV stations and online platforms regard Douyin as an important battlefield for entertainment marketing. Among the top 50 movies at the box office in 2018, 41 were officially operated on Douyin, most of which were operated spontaneously by the film producers. The average number of views for the top 10 videos is 135 million. For example, the theme song "Calories" from the TV series "The Richest Man in Xihong City" has 2.03 million related videos on Douyin.

"Next year and this year, overall entertainment promotion will be a very important component on Douyin," Zhi Ying said at the time.

Zhi Ying mentioned that in 2019, Douyin will continue to explore content ecology and product evolution. The rankings launched on Douyin allow more good content, good topics and good products to be viewed and shared at any time. For example, Douyin’s hot search list shows the hot searches for keywords, and the idol list gives a clear ranking of celebrities through fans’ likes, comments, and interaction data. “This may also help our advertisers better choose spokesperson partners on Douyin.”

The music charts are also designed to help users and brands better choose music when posting content or conducting marketing on Douyin. These are all attempts by Douyin to explore hot topics.

Currently, Douyin’s hot search list includes paid hot search topics with the word “recommended”. This shows that Douyin hot searches have officially entered the stage of commercial monetization.

The main focus of Douyin’s hot searches is entertainment, which caters to the preferences of the platform’s young users, and also because entertainment marketing is closely related to monetization. Currently, the views of videos related to popular stars on Douyin's hot search list can reach more than 5 million, which is often higher than other types of hot search content. But Douyin's hot searches are also radiating to topics outside the site. On April 11, Shenzhen was hit by a sudden rainstorm. The next afternoon, this hot event topped the Douyin hot search list, with 7.78 million views.

Douyin itself is a centralized product dominated by algorithms. Popular content can easily reach millions or even tens of millions of traffic. Douyin's hot searches provide opportunities for popular content to be exposed again. The combination of the two can further amplify the marketing effect.

This has led to an increase in the centralization of Douyin products, which may affect the development logic of Douyin's long-term content ecology. At a time when monetization requirements are increasing, Douyin hot searches and the entertainment marketing behind them are an indispensable tool.

Author: Zhu Ruomiao

Source: New Business Intelligence NBT