Advertising material design guide!

Advertising materials should be designed according to the characteristics of different channels. The author of this article analyzes the characteristics of four types of advertising: information flow, search, brand and video, and summarizes the important factors that need to be paid attention to and shares them with everyone.

01 Background

With the fierce competition in the market, rapid product iterations of major companies, threats from multiple competitors and other severe situations, companies are investing more and more in channel placement, and the demand for advertising images is increasing, which requires constant changes. So, how do we do it?

02 Channel

First of all, we need to understand what channels we have, what their specific proportion is, and figure out the key directions before we can make full use of them. As shown in the figure, it can be roughly divided into five categories: information flow advertising, search advertising, application market, brand advertising and video advertising. Information flow advertising accounts for the largest proportion and is also the focus of our discussion today.

03 Information flow advertising

There are many information flow advertising media, the most important ones are Tencent, Toutiao, Baidu information flow, UC information flow, etc.

Information flow advertising-features

Information flow advertising has two main characteristics. One is the large volume, and the other is the sinking market. The large volume is mainly due to the fast update speed, short cycle, wide variety, hundreds of types, huge number, various locations, and a large amount of material produced every week. The main reason for the market penetration is that our user group is mainly males aged 20-40, with low educational level (below bachelor's degree), and most of them are blue-collar workers.

Based on the above characteristics, we can make some advertising pictures. Looking at these pictures as a whole, they are real-life pictures with prominent texts that can clearly convey information.

When these ads are delivered, we will get some data. With the increase of resources, the current working form can no longer meet our large-scale delivery needs. We now have some product libraries and template libraries that require a large amount of materials to replace. Therefore, we are now facing some problems, such as insufficient volume, slow update frequency, and single form. These will all affect our click-through rate.

How should the above problems be solved? Let's first analyze what parts a piece of material with good data consists of.

As can be seen from the figure, the layout, pictures, copy, colors and graphic elements of an advertisement are all important factors affecting the click-through rate.

Let's analyze it in detail below:

Layout Analysis - Increased Volume

As shown in the picture, let's look at some of the pictures we have made before with good results and summarize some rules. There are several classic layouts, including text on the left and picture on the right/left picture and text on the right/text above and picture below/picture above and text below, which are also the ones we use most in daily life. We make the background's quadrilateral into bevel/rounded/arc shapes, etc., which creates a fresh layout for users. We can use this method to come up with a lot of layouts, which can increase the quantity and solve some problems of single form.

Picture principles

Pictures are crucial for information flow ads! The impact on click-through rate is huge. Therefore, we have summarized three points: 1. Fit 2. Originality 3. Scenario-based.

Fit: For example, in the case of moving, the picture must first reflect the moving vehicle. There are definitely different large, medium and small moving vehicles. There are large vans, ordinary vans, etc. Secondly, the moving boxes, whether the packaging is complete, whether there are simulated scratches, falls, etc., and finally, whether the movers' clothes in the picture are uniform. These details can reflect the professionalism and warmth of the moving service, and will affect the user's click. This is what we call picture fit.

The original ecology and scenario-based design are related to our user groups, which tend to be blue-collar workers. The market is relatively low-end, so the choice of pictures must be in line with the consumption of blue-collar users and must not make users feel that they cannot afford it. So these three points are more important, and we must ensure that users can understand the pictures.

Copywriting focus

First of all, the font should not be too fancy. Just choose a font that is highly recognizable in daily life. Currently, we use the permanent copyright Founder Lanting more often. Secondly, in terms of layout, it is necessary to highlight the key points, highlight what the business does, magnify the interest points, and convey the information very intuitively and clearly. Finally, the entire text should be gathered together to form a text block, which will be more prominent and focused.

As shown in the picture, these are some simple text layouts we have summarized.

Color matching key

We currently have two color schemes, ambient and complementary. The ambient color is the color of the image environment, which is used as the background color. The color of the text is determined by the background color. If the background is highly saturated, the text color should be white or light. It can not only ensure that the color tone of the picture is not blurred, but also highlight the text. Complementary colors are when the background color complements the main color in the image. Such as: yellow-purple, blue-orange, etc., which stand out overall, have strong contrast and can convey information better.

Applicable graphic elements

Graphic elements, which we use a lot. Almost every picture will have it, and we can extract some elements from the advertising pictures with good data. By slightly changing these elements and placing them on the material, the problem of single form can be solved.

Finally, I put together these important elements that affect the click-through rate and can come up with a lot of advertising images. These advertising images can be placed in our product library and template library.

The above method can greatly increase the number of advertising images, the update frequency will become faster, and the increase in click-through rate can be accelerated.

04 Search Ads

Search advertising also accounts for a relatively large proportion, and the main media are the five major SEM searches, Baidu, Shenma, Sogou, 360, and Toutiao.

Search Ads-Features

Search ads have two main characteristics: first, user needs are clear. Users actively search using keywords, and the search content can well reflect user needs; second, they are mainly influenced by bidding rankings, so higher quality materials are required.

Based on the above characteristics, we can make some advertising pictures.

As shown in the picture, this is a series of advertising pictures made for the search window. The showcase is when we click on the search button and some entries appear. The entries will have pictures like windows to attract users to click on them, so these pictures are required to be in series, with bright colors and a sense of design.

The delivery of these materials will yield some data. (The specific data is not convenient to disclose) From the data, we can see that the effect of real-life pictures is not as good as that of vector pictures.

Therefore, in search ads, we should use more brightly colored, design-oriented, and vector illustrations to attract more users to click on them.

05 Brand Advertising

Brand advertising focuses on emotions. It is mainly used to create some holiday splash screens, which are used to post on WeChat (official accounts, Moments), Weibo, etc. One purpose is to expose the brand, and the other is to divert some business traffic to 58APP and tap into some private domain traffic.

06 Video Ads

In order to adapt to the market and with the arrival of 5G, short video advertising will definitely be the focus of work in 2020. In 2019, we also launched some video advertisements, mainly poster-type and template-type videos. However, the data shows that our users prefer videos shot in real scenes, which will also be the focus of our future work.

Information flow advertising, which currently accounts for the largest proportion, can already be processed in batches, which not only saves human resources, but also can produce large quantities of advertising images, speed up the update frequency, increase the click-through rate, and increase revenue. The above are some of our daily practices for various advertisements.

Author: He Fang

Source: 58 User Experience Design Center