Image source @ Visual China
Wen | parity
It was another night of overtime until nine o'clock.
Wang Wei, who has made three consecutive versions of PPT, is already very tired, the wind at the mouth of the subway whistles in her ears, and her falling eyelids remind that her body is approaching the critical point, and she has sped up the pace of going home when she leaves the station. Finally, the elevator door opened slowly, and at this moment, she seemed to be only a minute away from the gentle countryside where she could carry all the exhaustion in her home.
"Sister, the work is hard, we mean, love yourself well, membrane fa family dolphin skin bionic mask, paste..."
"Ulike hair removal device, take off fast, advanced! No pain, premium! Sapphire, Premium! Stripped, advanced! ”
The shrill sound of dolphins and advertisements broke the tranquility that should have been at this last distance.
And such "annoying" scenes have been seen frequently in elevators across the country. The pervasive and fully video-based elevator advertisement constantly disturbs one ordinary person after another who should enjoy a moment of peace.
In the past Three months alone, two companies, Film Law Family and Ulike, have caused widespread controversy over elevator advertisements. Further ahead, elevator advertisements of well-known companies such as Easy Car, Boss Direct Hire, and Self-Hi Pot cannot escape the fate of "being scolded".
However, under the dislike of countless people, elevator advertising still seems to be favored by many advertisers, whether it is the elevator entrance or the elevator, the carousel video advertising is often continuous, and even the static poster position is only occasionally vacant.
Why is the elevator advertisement, which can be called mental pollution, so divided? Is this really a good business that can be done sustainably? This article attempts to analyze the chaotic and fragmented elevator advertising industry from the following three issues:
1. From the perspective of the advertisement itself, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the elevator advertising form?
2. Domestic elevator advertising has experienced many years of development, what is the industry situation?
3. In the long run, what changes will elevator advertising face, and how long can it be annoying to make money?
Annoying, but really effective?
Zhong Yan also remembers that the community he was in was installed with an elevator advertising video player in the spring of 2018.
That was the year of the previous World Cup, which attracted worldwide attention and there was no obvious time difference with the country. Major companies are pouring out their nests and want to get a piece of the pie at this key launch node. Therefore, before and after the World Cup, Zhong Yan and the residents of the community felt the all-round bombardment of elevator advertisements.
According to Zhong Yan's incomplete recollection, the advertisements broadcast in the elevator at that time included "Why do you want to travel to the horse honeycomb" and "find a job and talk to the boss!" Find a job on Boss Direct Hire! ", "There is a problem, the upper knows", etc., almost all of them are typical of the advertising at that time.
Brainwashing elevator advertisement Figure @ Focus Media
After that, the elevator advertisement of the building where Zhong Yan's family was located was also rotated by "Platinum Jue Travel Shooting, where you want to shoot where you want to shoot", "Self-hi pot, a person will eat self-hi pot", "Sing it K song treasure, the head is loud and good". This kind of brainwashing advertising largely represents the ecology of elevator advertising in recent years, and is also one of the reasons why elevator advertising attracts group disgust.
When people see such ads on TV and mobile phones, people can still use the remote control or open a membership to skip it, but in the closed elevator, people can only accept the visual and auditory bombardment of noisy advertisements. Noisy, repeated brainwashing is enough, but also forced to lose the right to choose advertising, elevator advertising is not surprising.
However, from the principle of advertising, the elevator advertisement is quite reasonable for the favor of brainwashing advertising.
In addition to some super high-rise office buildings, most of the elevator advertising points are located on the floor of the building is difficult to exceed the 50th floor, and the average time of each person staying in the elevator is less than 1 minute, which means that if the advertisement wants to be successful, it must strengthen the audience's memory point for the brand as much as possible in a short period of time.
The repeated brainwashing advertisements clearly lay a solid foundation for this.
According to Kantar Research's survey of different media advertising types, in terms of advertising arrival rate, the data of elevator advertising is only 79%, which lags behind the 95% arrival rate of Internet advertising; but in terms of average memory quantity, the per capita memory of elevator advertising reaches 3.29, compared with social media, short and long videos and other Internet advertisements With an average memory of 2-2.5, the average memory advantage is obvious.
The number of advertising memories in various media Figure @ Kantar research
Zhong Yan also told me that under the repeated bombardment of elevator advertisements in the building, he did think of and use Boss direct employment when he later looked for a job. I also saw the product page of K Gebao on the e-commerce platform, but in the end I did not place an order to buy.
This memory advantage is also related to the "lost choice" of people in elevators mentioned earlier.
Due to the problem of a large number of elevators in China in the laying of mobile signals, when they are in the elevator, people's attention is difficult to disperse, and they often passively focus on the screen where the advertisement is played, which makes people's memory of the advertisement in the elevator more deep.
With the development of big data, elevator advertising has gradually derived a model of accurate delivery for customers in the area, and for brand owners, it has a higher cost performance than common Internet advertising.
In the office buildings around Hongshan District of Wuhan City, where the odd couple is located, we observed the advertisements played in turn by elevator billboards.
Elevator advertising according to local conditions Parity filming
During the observation, we found an advertisement for a crayfish restaurant with two shops within 3km of the neighborhood and an advertisement for a milk tea shop 1km away. On the same brand elevator billboard in an office building in Jiang'an District, we saw an advertisement for a Chinese restaurant within 500m and an advertisement for a cake shop within 3 kilometers. The precise push for different areas can be seen.
According to the key indicator CPM (cost of thousands of impressions) of multi-type advertising statistics compiled by Caitong Securities Research Report, the APP advertising CPM of many Internet companies ranges from 100-300 yuan. Focus Media, the representative of domestic elevator advertising, has a CPM of only 40-50 yuan, which is less than half of the cost of the above-mentioned Internet advertising.
Comparison of CPM of different advertisements Figure @ Caitong Securities
Mandatory audio-visual and memory, more accurate delivery rate to the target group than traditional outdoor advertising, and higher cost performance, these are the advantages of elevator advertising.
However, the defects of elevator advertising are also obvious, because it is located in an enclosed space and the display time is short, the brainwashing advertisement chosen by advertisers in order to strengthen memory can indeed strengthen the consumer's memory of the brand, but the cognition it forms is often biased towards the negative.
In addition, the short display time and the problem of signal laying in the elevator also make it difficult for elevator advertising to form real-time conversion. Even if interest is generated by advertising, most people do not search and buy in real time in the elevator, and although advertisers bring attention, it is difficult to translate into immediate sales.
Of course, elevator advertising can use enhanced brand effect to whitewash this problem, but this also makes many advertisers lack an exact data standard when finally measuring the effectiveness of elevator advertising.
How much of the final product sales growth is due to the brand recognition strengthened by elevator advertising? Unless specifically surveyed, it is difficult to have a number and proportion to measure accurately.
Overall, as a form of advertising, elevator advertising has greater advantages than disadvantages for advertisers. Although it is very likely to bring about an immediate sales conversion, it is also easy to accumulate negative impacts of the brand. But for many advertisers, it is more urgent and priority to let people know and remember themselves.
In this regard, the many characteristics of elevator advertising determine that it can complete this type of advertising task well. No matter how disgusted consumers like Zhong Yan and Wang Wei are with these "noises", elevator advertising is really effective for advertisers who intend to build cognition.
However, such "effectiveness" cannot cover the full link link of advertisers from establishing cognition - sales conversion - realizing brand premium, which is one of the shortest shortcomings in the development of elevator advertising.
More importantly, after more than a decade of development and a scuffle, elevator advertising has hit the ceiling.
The "Melee" elevator hit the ceiling
People who understand the elevator advertising industry, it is difficult to forget the ladder media war around 2018.
On the one hand, focus media is to create an industry, sit on 70% of the country's share, and firmly occupy high-end office buildings and buildings in first- and second-tier cities, and on the other hand, it is a new wave of media that has successively obtained the blessing of Chengdu State-owned Assets and Baidu and is ready to go. The two sides attacked each other, raced horses, and fought a price war.
New Wave Media Vs Focus Media Photo @ Surging News
Around 2017, Zhang Jixue, chairman of Xinchao Media, opened a dark war, quietly rented buildings in multiple urban communities but did not install ladder screens, and waited until the point of each city exceeded 10,000, and then started collective installation, which caught Focus off guard with a surprise attack.
In the same year, New Wave Media further entered first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and penetrated into the hinterland of Focus Media, and in this year, New Wave Media launched multiple rounds of financing and greatly expanded the building points. In 2018, it issued the "Notice of Comprehensively Grabbing Focus's Billion-dollar Customers" to seize the Focus Media market in the form of advertising subsidies and 50% discount on prices.
In the two years from 2017 to 2019, Xinchao Media has raised 6 billion yuan, of which the two rounds of financing from Baidu and JD.com have reached 3.1 billion yuan.
With the help of capital power, Xinchao Media has seized the advertising spot in a big way, and the elevator advertising space laid has grown rapidly from 70,000 in the second half of 2017 to 700,000 in June 2019.
Under the powerful money-burning offensive of New Wave Media, Focus Media had to face the battle.
Chairman Jiang Nanchun responded to the new wave in the circle of friends that "no company has succeeded by salivating and touching porcelain", while seeking a new round of financing. In July 2018, Alibaba invested a strategic stake in Focus Media for 15 billion yuan.
Focus Media, which has the help of Ali, has also begun to expand its position significantly. Focus Media's financial report data shows that in 2018 alone, the number of focus elevator TVs in China soared from 288,000 to 701,000, and the number of elevator posters also increased significantly from 1.21 million to 1.938 million.
In order to seize the point, Focus, the new wave has made efforts in second- and third-tier cities. According to the financial report, most of the growth of Focus Media in 2018 came from second- and third-tier cities, of which second-tier cities are the main battlefield.
In addition to the comprehensive coverage of the city, the two also accelerated the capture of the elevator wall, and the elevator advertisement that used to only put one screen extended the tentacles to almost all the spaces in the elevator. The walls on the left and right sides of the elevator, and the narrow space without buttons on the left-hand side, have become the battlefield for the two companies to lay advertisements.
Therefore, The country has ushered in the "all-round coverage" of elevator advertising, when a person enters the elevator, the left and right looks at the front are all advertisements, which also means that the two companies have fought the war to seize space to the extreme.
But after this "expansion war", the problem of elevator ads hitting the ceiling soon became prominent.
On the value of advertising audiences, the highest is undoubtedly the office buildings and community groups in first- and second-tier cities, but in the context of the two burning money to grab the market, the existing high-value points have basically been opened up and divided, and it is difficult to bring new growth space. In this context, in the elevator advertisements owned by the two companies, it is difficult to get a significant increase in both the flow of people and the number of views per capita.
The three most important walls of the elevator, the three most valuable advertising points, have also been occupied. The left and right sides are laid with elevator posters, and the left front is laid with narrow elevator TVs, so the advertising display rate is already very high, and it is difficult to have further improvement space.
In terms of accurate conversion, after Focus and Xinchao cooperated with Ali, Baidu and Jingdong respectively, with the help of big data, elevator advertising can indeed be pushed in different areas, but it is necessary to get accurate user portraits like mobile phone advertising, and on this basis, it is more accurate, and it is basically impossible in terms of the current form of elevator advertising.
In 2019, Focus Media, which withstood the money-burning offensive of the new wave media, began to shrink after experiencing a significant expansion, and the number of domestic elevator TVs in that year was reduced from 701,000 to 668,000, and the number of elevator posters was also reduced to 1.78 million.
With the full arrival of the epidemic in 2020, the two elevator advertising frontrunners who once frantically threw money became more and more cautious.
At the beginning of 2020, Xinchao Media was caught in the storm of laying off 500 employees. According to its released revenue data, the annual revenue of New Wave Media in 2019 was only 2 billion yuan, which was far from the 3 billion yuan target it had previously announced at the launch conference. In the same year, Focus Media, which still has a solid foundation, also maintained a contraction trend, and the number of elevator TVs in China was further reduced to 610,000 units.
Focus Media domestic elevator advertising equipment number changes Odd and even watchmaking
In the first half of 2021, focus media's elevator TV number rebounded slightly to 672,000 units, but the growth mainly came from first- and second-tier cities, which continued to shrink. According to Dolphin Investment Research, in the first half of 2021, building media rents fell by 8.2%, which may be one of the reasons why Focus Media has re-expanded its position.
However, whether it is the number of elevator TVs or elevator posters, Focus Media's figures in 2021 are still far from the "ceiling" in 2018, the industry's first is still so, and the number of points of the second new wave media is not difficult to predict.
In addition, according to the figures revealed by Zhang Jixue, chairman of Xinchao Media, in an interview with the media, as of November 2021, among the TOP100 advertisers, 87 have cooperated with Focus Media, and 74 have cooperated with Xinchao Media, leaving the elevator advertising companies with few high-quality advertisers.
Or is it "good business"?
Despite the looming ceiling, focus media, the boss of the elevator industry, still handed over a good financial data in the first three quarters of 2021, with a gross profit margin of more than 68%, a net profit of 4.422 billion yuan in the first three quarters, and a full-year profit is expected to hit the 6 billion yuan mark.
Although the profit target is comparable to the actual profit in 2017 and 2018, its recovering gross margin and high profit seem to indicate that elevator advertising, although the lack of large room for growth, it still looks like a good business.
But this seemingly okay "good business", even if it does not seek further substantial growth, the many changes in the situation it faces, it is difficult to ensure that Focus will always be able to make a smooth profit.
After experiencing the devastation of the elevator's all-round mandatory advertising, the public has begun to "rebel" against the annoying elevator advertisement.
Zhong Yan told me that at the end of last year, at the request of the industry committee, the building demolished the video play advertising screen placed in the elevator, leaving only the elevator posters on the left and right sides.
The Civil Code, which has been implemented since last year, has made clear requirements for the income of elevator advertisements given by property sales points, indicating that the income brought by elevator advertisements belongs to the owners. Combined with Article 70 of the Property Law, the owners have the right to manage the common parts of the owners such as elevators, and the owners are beginning to regain the right to speak about elevator advertisements.
It is worth noting that there is also the action of real estate developers, in August 2020, Country Garden acquired the advertising company City Vertical and Horizontal, and announced that it will independently manage the elevator advertising points of the Country Garden project, which means that the high gross profit margin and good money of the elevator advertising entrance are being targeted by real estate developers.
So, can existing customers ensure the stable profitability of elevator advertising companies? Not necessarily, either.
Focus Media once relied on the three major real estate partners Vanke, Evergrande and Sunac, two of which have thundered this year. The homework gang and ape tutoring, which had been frequently brainwashed in the elevator room, also withdrew from the stage of elevator advertising with the indiscriminate blow of the "double reduction policy" on the K12 business.
Homework help elevator advertising has become a thing of the past Figure @ Network
Although Focus Media began to improve its customer structure that relies too much on Internet companies in 2020, and the trend of embracing consumer goods such as Miaoke Lando and Yuanqi Forest is very obvious, on the whole, Focus Media's dependence on Internet customers still exists.
The scene where the elevator advertisement is located determines that it is bound to be deeply bound with real estate companies, and under the overall downward trend of the real estate industry, the risk faced by elevator advertising is also not small.
In addition, the form innovation of the advertising industry will also have a certain impact on the future development and delivery rate of elevator advertising. With the development of VR, AR, 3D and other technologies, there are currently a large number of Internet advertising in the form of AR, many outdoor advertising should also change from time to time, in Wuhan Jianghan Road, naked-eye 3D billboards frequently provoke people to stop, as if it is a weapon to attract attention.
Naked-eye 3D billboard on Jianghan Road in Wuhan Picture @ Network
However, although elevator advertising has developed in recent years, it still maintains the three major forms of posters, videos, and flat stickers, and there is no more obvious innovation, and it is still using the "no choice" in the enclosed space to attract attention.
Elevator advertising, which lacks the blessing of new technologies, once it loses the biggest advantage of "attraction" under the impact of new forms, the industry, which is not stable, may collapse more obviously.
Write at the end
Elevator advertising has its unique advantages in the environment. It is precisely because of this that elevator advertising has been able to flourish in more than ten years, with the process of urbanization, and the real estate industry has been running wild.
However, the "forced audio-visual" advantages of the enclosed space and the good reach effect behind it are not the reasons for elevator advertising companies and advertisers to lay "spiritual pollution" advertising. At a time when the industry encounters "ceiling" growth anxiety, it continues to strengthen the aggression of advertising on public space, but it is more like drinking and quenching thirst.
If the elevator advertisement is still what people see today in the future, then when it is completely destroyed, it is actually not worth too many people's pity.
Resources:
Elevator Advertising Dark War, Southern Weekend;
Focus: Looks good? In fact, "Thunderstorm", Longbridge Dolphin Research;
"Rob customers, dig up employees, throw money hard, hide in the elevator business war", new business to participate;
"Tencent, Ali and other giants blessing, elevator advertising this business is really so fragrant? , a new engine of growth.
*Zhong Yan and Wang Wei are pseudonyms in the text