Opportunities and growth space for vertical media advertising monetization in 2020

In the mobile Internet era dominated by giants, some vertical media (i.e. media focusing on a certain field, such as automotive media, maternal and child media, etc.) have quickly gained momentum and occupied one vertical track after another and developed vigorously by virtue of their segmented and precise characteristics.

However, while these media in different segments are rapidly expanding their market share, they also have to face a pain point: they are still in the early stages of commercialization; they want to increase their commercial monetization revenue through advertising, but they have limited experience and resources, and they are also afraid of an imbalance between advertising revenue and user experience...

In the face of the "pain points" of vertical media, Meishujun proposes the following ideas and suggestions for you, hoping to help vertical media successfully find business opportunities and growth space in 2020.

Suggestion 1: Support multiple sales methods of "brand + effect"

When many vertical media start to realize advertising monetization , the first thing they naturally think of is to put the traffic on third-party public ADX and DSP for bidding and selling.

However, there are two "hidden dangers" - one is that it may lead to the serious underestimation of the value of media resources, thus compressing profit margins; the other is that the quality of online materials cannot be controlled by oneself, which may affect user experience and media image.

As we all know, vertical media may not be able to match the comprehensive HERO-level media in terms of user scale. But its characteristics and advantages lie in the fact that the target audience is specific, precise and concentrated. Therefore, in addition to third-party custodial sales, Meishujun recommends that vertical media commercialization and monetization start with connecting with brand advertisers.

This is because it can not only improve the utilization rate of media resources and premium space, but also ensure the high quality of advertisers and their materials (brand advertisers' advertising materials are generally not too bad). Of course, there are two prerequisites: 1) Vertical media must have its own advertising monetization platform and be able to flexibly meet advertisers’ diverse advertising demands.

For example: supporting multi-dimensional targeted delivery (population, region, time period, device, network environment, ad space, etc.), supporting multiple sales methods (by exposure CPM, click CPC, download CPD, retention CPA/CPL, etc.), etc., so as to enhance the media's competitive advantage and attract more advertisers' budgets; 2) vertical media attributes, population, etc. are highly matched with the needs of brand owners. In addition, the media must engage in some marketing activities.

For example: publishing user behavior reports, delivery strategy reports, advertising commercialization cooperation plans (media basic volume information, industry status and influence, advertising resource status, etc.) for related advertiser industries, and providing third-party endorsements, etc., to prove the value of their own vertical media, thereby expanding the media's market voice and enhancing the media's competitiveness in competing for brand budgets in strongly related categories.

In addition to selling brand advertising, refined selling of performance advertising can further improve the resource utilization and monetization revenue of vertical media. For example, take the AdMate traffic monetization platform.

It can help vertical media build their own advertising monetization platform in as fast as 30 minutes. At the same time, through the refined layer-by-layer sales mechanism of traffic, it supports vertical media to distribute and sell all resources in layers, grades and prices intelligently - golden resources are sold to brand advertisers in the form of PDB.

High-quality resources are sold to channel agents or consumed in a self-service mode (self-built DSP delivery platform); the remaining long-tail resources are open to third-party ADX and DSP for bidding and bottoming.

This will expand the value of every traffic in vertical media and maximize resource exposure and revenue.

Suggestion 2: Rationally explore more monetization scenarios and forms

Although vertical apps are diverse, the main advertising formats are splash screen ads, information flow ads, and banner ads. In the face of advertisers' increasingly diverse marketing demands and high-effectiveness demands, and in order to more effectively cultivate the existing market and tap into new growth points, it is recommended that vertical APPs reasonably tap into more monetization scenarios and advertising formats based on user behavior preferences, as well as the content layout and display environment of different platforms, in order to explore the maximization of traffic monetization value.

For example, a sports and fitness APP that cooperated with Meishu, combined with users' fitness scenarios and usage habits, innovatively launched pre-course patch ads (videos) and audio patch ads, with outstanding exposure and click effects; an education APP tried to implant interactive ads and incentivized video ads in the personal center section, which to a certain extent expanded the media monetization revenue and fill.

In addition, according to industry data and Meishu monetization data, video purchases showed a rapid growth trend in 2019, especially in the second half of 2019. Therefore, it is recommended that all vertical media consider reasonably developing more new video advertising formats in 2020: such as information flow video ads, splash screen video ads, banner video ads, etc., in order to meet the advertising demands of more brand owners while increasing their own profit margins.

In addition, among the many forms of video advertising, immersive vertical full-screen video advertising is a major trend. It not only caters to users' current mobile phone usage habits and can bring excellent viewing experience, but also has more outstanding monetization effects - compared with horizontal ads, the conversion rate of vertical ads is increased by 20-60%. Therefore, it is recommended that vertical media develop and support this type of advertising format.

Of course, in the 5G era, in addition to conventional styles, innovative advertising forms such as trial play, live broadcast, panorama, AR, VR, etc. can also be used reasonably to make advertisements full of infinite imagination while greatly increasing the monetization profits of media advertising.

Suggestion 3: Focus on user experience to make the path to monetization smoother

Vertical traffic owners are eager to fully stimulate the value of media traffic, and the premise for expanding the commercial value of traffic is to fully tap the value of users. Because when the media penetrates the minds of users and gains high user stickiness, the value of traffic will come naturally and be greatly improved.

However, fully realizing user value must be based on ensuring user experience.

According to Meishu’s monetization experience: During the advertising monetization process, factors such as the quality of advertising materials, the matching degree of advertising scenarios and content affect the monetization effect, and more profoundly affect the user experience and the favorability towards the media. Therefore, vertical media are first recommended to master and improve technologies such as big data analysis, multi-dimensional precision targeting, and intelligent engine recommendation, so as to deliver the right advertisements to the right people at the right time and place, and achieve efficient connection between consumers and brands;

In addition, while carrying out advertising monetization, vertical media must exercise full control over advertising materials from two aspects: material review and material blocking. That is, based on the particularity of the positioning of vertical APPs, industry advertisers and their creative materials that are inconsistent with or seriously contrary to their tone should generally be subject to restrictions. This ensures that the user experience and media image are protected in all dimensions, while also making the advertising more targeted and effective. For example, in educational apps, advertisements for games and medical beauty should be avoided.

Suggestion 4: Expand incremental markets to create ample monetization opportunities

Finally, it should be emphasized that vertical media partners must not neglect the development of incremental markets due to excessive pursuit of rapid monetization. After all, only when the volume of traffic is large can the media's competitive advantage be expanded and further feed back into the smooth development of advertising monetization. In order to expand the incremental market, Meisujun has two suggestions: First, it is necessary to continuously increase the quality of platform content.

Because only by introducing and expanding high-quality content and innovating the form of content presentation can we bring in more and better quality traffic; secondly, we can consider deploying a global market, or actively expanding the "downstream market" in third- and fourth-tier cities and towns, so as to expand the size and competitive advantage of vertical media, and ultimately make the path to advertising monetization smoother.

In the mobile world, a monopoly by giants has already taken shape. However, if vertical media can create better user products while improving its own commercial hematopoietic capabilities and commercial monetization levels, it can also stand out among the giants and reap dividends.

Author: SaaS Cloud Platform

Source: AdxData ( meishukeji )