「Core Tips」
As the regulatory rope tightened tighter and tighter last year, industries such as online education, Internet insurance, and games were affected to varying degrees, adjusting or reducing advertising budgets. Affected by the loss of large customers, the information flow advertising industry has also ushered in a cold winter. Business contraction, layoffs, closures, a big wave of adjustment period is coming...
Author | Liu Xia
Edited by | Liu Yang
Do you want to stay in the in-feed advertising industry?
During the months of unemployment, Ke Jie has been thinking about this problem.
Two years ago, online education has not yet shrunk on a large scale, Internet insurance advertising has not been rectified, relying on these two major customers, Ke Jie's information flow advertising agency has also stood on the industry outlet.
In these two industries when the "burning money" was the fiercest, Ke Jie also made a lot of money. In the first year of college, he worked as an information flow advertising optimizer in a small advertising agency, and his main job was to help customers invest in advertisements on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, "At that time, the monthly amount of customers in my hands was several million yuan, and the monthly commission could easily exceed 10,000." ”
Since last year, the rope of supervision has become tighter and tighter, online education, Internet insurance, games and other industries have been affected to varying degrees, and advertising agencies that have lost large customers have also begun to decline.
Under the turmoil, Ke Jie changed three companies in two years, and although he has been promoted from junior advertising optimizer to intermediate in 2021, he still can't escape the fate of being laid off.
Shi Ning, an information flow advertising director who has also changed two jobs in the past six months, told Leopard Change that her company last year was not good, "business contraction, layoffs, it seems that it is really going to winter."
1. The trap of inducing content
"I had a hunch that something would happen sooner or later when I put this content in." In Ke Jie's view, the Internet insurance advertisements before the rectification are exploiting the loopholes in the policy, and the routines of pit people are invincible.
The most common Internet insurance advertisements are the "first month 1 yuan", "free insurance" and "mobile phone lottery" that are often brushed on short video platforms.
Ke Jie told "Leopard Change" that the "first month 1 yuan", "free" and "send mobile phone" in the advertisement are all gimmicks, and the advertisers are actually looking at the premium of thousands of yuan in the later stage. And these ad interface settings are very vague, if you do not manually cancel the auto-renewal, you will quietly automatically charge. The interface of the "mobile lottery" in the advertisement, after clicking on it, has been jumped many times, so that many consumers have purchased insurance products in a vacuum.
Insurance ads on short video platforms
In response to the above problems, the Beijing Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau issued the Notice on Carrying out Special Rectification work on Internet insurance chaos in August last year, which rectified the prominent problems of misleading sales, compulsory tying, and inflated costs in Internet insurance sales.
The chaos of Internet insurance advertising is over, and the agency companies that undertake such advertisements are also seriously injured.
Ke Jie found that before the Internet insurance advertising was rectified, advertisers, Douyin and other platforms had already perceived, "the most direct feeling is that the customer's budget is reduced, and the platform's assessment of us has become more stringent." ”
In June last year, several accounts in Ke Jie's hands were closed for material violations, and it did not take long for the company's business to usher in a major adjustment. The insurance business that once occupied half of the company was cut in half, and many colleagues were transferred to other businesses, leaving colleagues who insisted on doing insurance business facing the dilemma of greatly reduced performance.
"After the rectification, many insurance companies either stopped voting or modified the creative." After the first month of 1 yuan became the real insurance price, the delivery effect was much less than before, and the commission in our hands was much less. Ke Jie said.
The confusion of in-feed advertising content is not only in the Internet insurance industry. Ke Jie told Leopard Change that the "express ticket lottery advertisement" recently named by the People's Daily, including the large carousel advertisement that we usually fill out the questionnaire on our mobile phones, are all information flow advertisements. Most of these ads are "fake lottery, real trap".
After the investigation of the Anhui Consumer Protection Commission, the two-dimensional code small advertisement that appears on the courier slip now reads "Don't throw it!" Scanning the code to extract 5.87 yuan, 1 yuan to draw mobile phones, free draw 3 pairs of warm socks" and so on, does not ensure authenticity and security, and may also be obtained personal information.
The so-called awards in the advertisement have a clear promotion purpose, and no award is really the "free" mentioned in the advertising text. Many advertising sweepstakes require detailed personal information, and even promotional content has been "suspended" due to suspected fraud.
2. "Earthy taste, dog blood" into a traffic password
External shocks such as the introduction of regulatory policies and the loss of large customers have made the information flow advertising industry face huge challenges. However, in addition to these external factors, the problems in the industry itself will sooner or later bring it to a crossroads.
The information flow advertising industry is an industry that speaks with data, and the earthy taste and dog blood are the best traffic passwords. Ke Jie told "Leopard Change": "We can do it without creativity in this line, everyone copying each other, as long as there is traffic, no one cares where the script comes from, and no one cares about the plot. ”
Shi Ning, an information flow advertising director, also expressed a similar view, saying that in this industry, there is very little creative and high-quality content, because high-prolific people tend to earn more than those who pursue content quality.
Open the short video platform, you can often brush up on embarrassing scalp numbing ads, the script is nothing more than to show contradictions and anxiety. The plots of husband and wife quarreling, children fooling around, and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law fighting are the best choices to stir up the audience's emotions. Different advertisers, the advertising content is surprisingly consistent, similar plot, exaggerated acting skills, sometimes even the actors are the same.
In 2021, the same "famous teacher" appeared in the ads of four online educational institutions
Shi Ning recalled that when the "burning money" of online education was the fiercest last year, various agency companies were competing for actors, and the salary of actors could reach 10,000 a day when the price of actors was the highest. "These actors are acting in the same content every day, the work is simple, and they can ask for no overtime, and our company does not dare to say anything, so we can only try to let these actors shoot more material in a limited time."
The crazy advertising behavior of the online education industry at that time made Shi Ning smell a little uneasy. "Money came too easily, at that time, the agency company with a high commission, employees could get tens of thousands of commissions a month, sometimes up to hundreds of thousands." However, people who do this business know that the conversion rate of such a water advertising content is not so high, and it is impossible to make any money by selling courses. ”
Ke Jie also confirmed that at that time, online education "burned money" to invest in advertising and strive for new users, which was more like an arms race. According to his understanding, when insurance was the hottest, the cost of customer acquisition was only one or two hundred yuan, and the cost of online education was like a rocket, rapidly breaking from tens of yuan to thousands.
No one cares about the advertising content that is getting more and more watery here, and the data mixing there is also challenging the bottom line of customers.
As an effect advertisement, information flow advertising has always been claimed to help advertisers seek targeted users and achieve targeted marketing, but the actual effect may not be as good as imagined.
"Customers generally give a targeted crowd label, hoping to convert very accurately, in fact, it is impossible to achieve, at this time can only start from the data." Ke Jie said that some data can be changed, such as the insurance customers he has served, and attach great importance to the in-depth assessment index of "piece average", but this data can be cheated.
"The average score of the piece that the customer wants is 9 points, which is very difficult, and when the score is not enough, I will occasionally change the age and other data in the system to improve the average number of pieces." Coggie said.
The declining effectiveness of advertising is also reflected in the lending advertising business. According to Ke Jie, the growth of the ROI (return on investment) of lending advertising is also gradually slowing down. Traffic is getting more and more expensive, it is more and more difficult to pull new, customers are not satisfied, the most direct way is to reduce the budget. "When I first joined the company in May last year, the company's daily turnover could exceed 10 million, and by the time I left in November, the daily turnover had dropped to more than two million.
According to Ke Jie's observation, after losing the two major "financial owners" of online education and insurance, the current information flow advertising industry mainly relies on customer support in the fields of e-commerce, social networking, liquor, and operators.
3. The tide of Internet advertising is in decline
Information flow ads first appeared on Facebook in 2006, and then domestic Platforms such as Sina Weibo, Today's Headlines, NetEase, and Baidu followed suit.
With personalized recommendations and the characteristics of thousands of faces, information flow advertising soon entered a period of rapid development. Taking today's headlines as an example, after the official launch of information flow advertising in 2014, its advertising revenue reached more than one billion yuan in 2015, and in 2016 this figure became more than 6 billion.
According to iResearch data, the size of China's online advertising market reached 766.6 billion yuan in 2020, with a year-on-year growth rate of 18.6%. Among them, the proportion of e-commerce advertising and information flow advertising continued to rise, ranking in the top two with 39.9% and 32.9% respectively.
From the perspective of the main business of Internet manufacturers, most of the advertising business accounts for half of the company's revenue. In 2020, Alibaba's annual advertising revenue accounted for 49.7%, Baidu was 68%, and Pinduoduo and Weibo reached more than 80%.
However, with the "boots landing" of various regulatory policies in 2021, the Internet advertising market has also been affected.
In June 2021, the Ministry of Education held the kick-off meeting of the establishment of the Department of Extramural Education and Training Supervision to carry out special management of off-campus education and training. The era of K12 online education barbaric growth is over.
Previously, according to the "Late Post" report, good future, high way and other head online education companies, in May 2021 on the ByteDance advertising platform advertising platform a total of 3 million-4 million a day. At the peak of June 2020, a leading online education company cast more than 30 million yuan of ads in ByteDance in one day.
September 2020, online educational advertising near the Beijing subway/Visual China
An in-feed advertising agency that Ke Jie worked for in 2021, with a client focused on online education. As soon as the regulatory policy came out, the company's main business was directly shut down, experienced optimizers also heard the wind and moved, and found the next home in advance, while the rest of the people were dismissed and returned home after a month of the company's "idleness".
During the same period, Shi Ning's company also began to drastically lay off advertising directors responsible for online education.
At the end of August 2021, the state issued the strictest game supervision order in history, which strictly restricted the time for online game companies to provide services to minors, and implemented the real-name account system. Coupled with the tightening of the previous game version number, the advertising of the entire game industry has also entered a low tide period.
In October, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) issued the Notice on Further Regulating matters related to the Internet life insurance business of insurance institutions, which further clarifies the entry threshold for Internet life insurance business and improves regulatory rules. Ke Jie, who had just recovered from the aftershocks of online education, lost his job again not long after because the Internet insurance industry was regulated.
A month later, the Personal Information Protection Law came into effect, stipulating that mobile apps and other services that users may not use their basic functions because they do not agree to provide non-essential personal information. This means that the information flow advertising market with higher requirements for personal information collection will face new problems.
From the data point of view, the ebb and flow of the industry has begun. QuestMobile data shows that the overall growth rate of Internet advertising in the third quarter of 2021 slowed down, with a year-on-year growth rate of 9.5%.
The financial reports of the internet giants in the third quarter of last year intuitively reflect this trend, Baidu's search and information flow advertising revenue growth rate fell to 6%; Tencent's Q3 advertising revenue increased by 5% year-on-year to 22.5 billion yuan, down 1% month-on-month; Alibaba's customer management revenue (mainly advertising fees and commissions) grew by only 3%; and iQiyi's advertising revenue fell 9.8% year-on-year to 1.66 billion yuan.
ByteDance, a major advertiser, is also blocked. In November 2021, according to media reports, ByteDance's domestic advertising revenue stopped growing in the past six months, which was the first time since ByteDance's commercialization in 2013. According to Reuters, ByteDance's full-year revenue in 2021 is about $58 billion, an increase of 70% year-on-year. In 2020, ByteDance's revenue growth rate remained above three digits.
Despite changing jobs three times in two years, Cogley is not so pessimistic about the downside of the industry. He still intends to continue. "In the short term, regulatory policies will definitely shrink the entire industry, and many small advertising agencies can't bear the risk and can only fail, but in the long run, this is not a big wave of sand and sand, and the companies that persist may have better development."
(At the request of the interviewee, all names in this article are pseudonyms)