The wechat official account defections are not groundless

According to a survey released by IMedia in 2016, 65.2% of netizens unsubscribe from wechat public accounts due to lack of push content, and 57.9% of netizens unsubscribe from wechat public accounts due to low update frequency. The lack of content has become the biggest killer of wechat public accounts. On the one hand, we see that many large accounts keep pushing frequency at least once a day or even higher. On the other hand, we see that many familiar faces lying in the list of public accounts have gradually been forgotten.

The content ecology of wechat public accounts is showing the difference of echelon. The 2016 wechat Public Account Data Insight Report shows that leisure and entertainment content is worthy of the first tier, while fashion, medical, automobile and other content is in the second tier or not. Moreover, the increasingly strong head effect further widened the difference in fan activity between public accounts, leading to the formation of psychological reading barriers for users, often only pay attention to the top of the public account.

Therefore, there are plenty of reasons for wechat to launch the information flow model. On the one hand, it can alleviate the Matthew effect and reshape a fairer ecology. On the other hand, it is conducive to enhancing the active degree of the main body of the public account, which is expected to return to the original era of “a hundred schools of thought contend”. On the other hand, it can provide users with high-frequency article content and have the opportunity to retain users for more time.

Of course, from an enterprise perspective, it is more accurate to say that wechat sees great commercial value in this area, such as news flow advertising. However, wechat has tried some things before, such as changing the history of wechat official accounts into an information flow mode, and inserting some “secretly observed” advertisements in the moments of friends, or inserting advertisements of other official accounts between articles and comments of wechat official accounts, or the news flow of having a look.

Although wechat is not the pioneer of the information flow model, the huge commercial value of the information flow model has been told to it by Toutiao and Weibo. Therefore, wechat has reason to believe that it will become the next beneficiary of news stream advertising.

Information flow advertising captive users by psychological tactics

According to iResearch “China information flow advertising user insight report”, it is expected that in 2017 information flow advertising market scale will reach 55.7 billion yuan, the next three years will still maintain a rate of more than 50% growth.

This has to do with the upgrading of users’ reading and watching habits. Although the network is the information world, but the network advertising model has always been rigid, direct, blunt, so that users are not interested, the nature of advertising is undoubtedly revealed. As a result, users reject advertisements and form an antagonistic relationship with advertisements, which makes advertising promotion inefficient.

Info-stream advertising breaks this psychological barrier. Take Weibo for example, because it is a way of browsing information flow, whether it is advertising, news or news, they are all in a time line. In this way of reading, users are more tolerant, and the hard promotion effect of advertisement itself is weakened, and even becomes valuable content. Therefore, users are more tolerant of advertisement, which is the fundamental reason why “star + advertisement” or “story + advertisement” mode can run smoothly.

Even advertisers, to this set of models is also well – known. Previously, jingyi Plan launched by JINGdong and netease and Jingtiao Plan launched by Toutiao take advantage of the user flow advantage of news clients to push information flow advertisements, analyze user needs by using big data technology, and further understand the purchasing psychology of users.

In short, the implicit need for users to read or watch valuable content is what allows news feed advertising to flourish. In other words, if users don’t like the model, news stream advertising may die long ago.

Three hatcheries of info-flow advertising

As early as 2006, there were news feed ads on Facebook, according to public records. In other words, the earliest news stream ads were created within social apps. Since 2013, Tencent News and Toutiao have introduced information flow advertising to form a news ecology different from social networking. And last year, Baidu also online information flow advertising, become a representative of the search ecosystem.

The difference between these three ecosystems lies in the difference in the way information flow advertising is generated. Moreover, under these three ecosystems, information flow advertising is incubated in different directions.

The first is the social ecology of wechat and Weibo. In the social ecology, wechat and Weibo can be said to go in two directions. And that depends on the ability to access user data. Wechat has clashed with Huawei in the past over rights to collect user data. However, in this case, wechat also made it clear that it would not collect user data.

This also proves the abruptness of wechat circle of friends advertising. Because it does not collect user data, such as dynamic comments or chat records, wechat cannot push specified advertisements in the moments of friends according to users’ recent activities or needs. This also shows that information flow advertising needs to be well integrated with user needs to play a better effect. Of course, if wechat deliberately collects user data, then news stream ads will also be more acceptable to users.

However, microblog is different. Microblog can push some highly relevant advertisements according to the content users click or browse. However, this does not mean that Weibo is randomly collecting user data. It just means that weibo can enhance users’ browsing experience based on their usage habits, such as content optimization, so as to achieve accurate advertising targeting.

However, in general, in the social model, news flow advertising is based on users’ social habits, and in the future, news flow advertising in this model will develop towards interactive form.

Secondly, the news ecology of Toutiao and netease news. In the distribution of information flow advertising, Toutiao, netease News, Tencent News, etc., have been quite skilled. They usually adopt the way of intelligent content distribution to treat the information flow advertisement. With the support of user portrait big data, the clickability of the information flow advertisement content itself is easy to arouse the desire of users to read the advertisement.

In the final analysis, the information flow advertisement within the news ecology can also be counted as a kind of news. When users read the headlines with a time-wasting attitude, creative ads tend to gain users’ trust, while commodity ads can well meet users’ needs.

However, traditional advertising itself is separated from the news content, even if the purpose is clear, users will actively shift their attention to the news content. In the news ecosystem, information flow advertising itself has the same exposure rate as news content. In addition, through relevant technological means, information flow advertising can be placed in the nearest position of the key news, so as to get greater exposure. Therefore, it can be read that its future direction will be closer to readable advertising, become a part of the news content.

There is a kind of baidu, 360 search ecology. Pertinent to say, search results are a way of presenting information flow. Therefore, after the user conducts the search, he gets the information flow result, and the homepage bidding advertisement in this result can also be counted as the information flow advertisement. However, this kind of information flow advertising is very short, the location itself is also fixed.

After starting the information flow advertisement, baidu’s search data can be said to be used to produce qualitative changes, and commercial liquidity ability has also been vigorously promoted. Baidu’s Q2 earnings report this year showed that advertising revenue from information flow increased 200%. According to the search algorithm, the user’s click, view and stay in the search will become the reference factor to locate user needs. To put it simply, when a user searches for a certain product, relevant product recommendations will appear in baidu news information stream on the home page.

This is why JD is cooperating with Baidu and Qihoo. The advantage of the search ecosystem is that users largely expose the details of their needs to Baidu and Qihoo, and baidu and Qihoo can embed historical goods in the way of information flow the next time a user opens a search engine or checks baidu news based on the user’s help from the search engine.

The search ecosystem undoubtedly has great advantages in capturing the needs of users. It can even be said that it is a dual active information transaction mode. One party seeks products and the other party recommends products. In the future, this kind of news stream advertising is likely to be presented to users in a more dense and precise way.

Of course, regardless of the ecosystem, the development of information flow advertising will move towards the needs of users. Because, it is possible for the information flow advertisement that meets the needs of users to be truly regarded as a considerate housekeeper recommendation by users and gain wider recognition.

Will infomercials go nowhere with news?

Iresearch’s report also pointed out that 82.7 percent of users on Chinese news media platforms saw news stream ads for new brands in 2017, and 40.6 percent of them not only watched ads but also bought products, a higher conversion rate than social media, video and search platforms. This is enough to show that, on the one hand, the current information flow advertising has begun to take effect, and is shifting people’s attention to the advertising itself; On the other hand, the high conversion rate of news media may come from the high integration of advertising and news.

The so-called high integration can be understood as consistency in content. For example, news media usually have clear classification, which naturally sets the tone for advertising classification. For example, technology news, the information flow involved in advertising will not break out of the scope of technology. In other words, when users and news media establish a certain degree of familiarity, product recommendation is closer to the fan economy, and the conversion rate of products will be surprisingly high under a specific news topic.

There is a phenomenon that all kinds of information on the Internet are gradually possessing the attributes of news. For example, friends circle is the channel for us to get the latest situation of friends, and video website is the venue for us to get entertainment and valuable information. It can be seen that the Internet is equal to a big container of news, and this container is where all our needs are placed.

Information flow advertising is discovered, applied and then become a guest, which is to some extent inseparable from the whole news ecosystem built by the Internet. Our needs are many and complex, and the advent of information flow advertising has further enhanced the satisfaction of Internet users. When advertising is aligned with our values, the information flow model is really in the realm of no one.

Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110