Source: Uncle Almighty
Looking back at the first quarter of 2024, an industry consensus is:
Advertisers are more cautious about how they spend their advertising budgets.
In the current period of cyclical turmoil, even large advertisers who have accepted the "marketing fault tolerance" in the past have more or less begun to pursue the overall balance of "both want and want".
According to iResearch's "2023 China Online Advertising Market Research Report", in the 2024 marketing plan, 66.7% of advertisers choose to invest half of their marketing budget online, while 41.7% of enterprises choose to invest 70% of their budget. From the perspective of appeal, the goal of advertisers is surprisingly consistent - "promoting new products and explosive products", which is the first absolute demand.
In other words, "performance advertising" has been put at the top of the list, and brand-related content has to take a back seat. After all, in the cold winter, reducing costs and improving efficiency is more important than anything else.
The question that arises is: where to advertise?
China's mobile advertising market has entered a stage of steady development, and the penetration rate has stabilized. However, there are always new advertising forces entering the market at every stage, allowing the market to see new growth potential, just like Byte and Pinduoduo, which are currently growing rapidly in advertising revenue.
The urgency of finding a new blue ocean has made the movements of every new entrant become touching-whether it is Xiaohongshu, which has been hot in the past two years, or Alipay, which started the road to commercialization last year. Platforms are groping to define their own business prospects, and advertisers are waiting to assess whether they want to get on the bus. The future is unknown, and the answer is only known in time.
Half a year after the commercial traffic gate was opened, Alipay handed over an answer sheet. As a response to the advertising market, it is also trying to attract more partners for itself. Through this answer sheet, we can see a little more clearly the more specific value details of this national APP in addition to the huge number of 1 billion users.
Who advertises on Alipay?
The change began in August 2023, when Alipay released its commercial promotion platform "Lights" and three public domain promotion products, announcing the official opening of its commercialization.
It is understood that the automotive industry and the fast-moving consumer goods industry accounted for most of the first batch of customers after Alipay's commercialization, and many cosmetics brands also entered the game.
In the automotive industry, Mercedes-Benz, FAW Toyota, Lynk & Co, Changan Automobile, and smart are the first wave of crab eaters.
Why do car advertisers come to Alipay?
Judging from Alipay's "payment tool" attributes, "close to money" is the first answer that naturally emerges. This means that when portraying a portrait of a crowd, Alipay can provide brands with more accurate insights and references based on their spending habits and purchasing power, so that advertisers can spend their money more accurately.
This feeling is like today's consumers when they see the recommendations of Hermes and Rolex in the WeChat circle of friends, they always love to be proud that they are marked as high-net-worth users by WeChat, and at the same time like and comment "I really look up to my WeChat". The difference is only that other platforms push Mercedes-Benz advertisements to you, not necessarily because you can afford it, but Alipay thinks that you can afford Mercedes-Benz, and you are likely to be able to afford it.
Because Alipay's traffic is accumulated from the consumption of "real money". Compared with the traffic data from social content platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu from "hobbies", Alipay's traffic is closer to consumption and transaction, and it is naturally closer to the conversion effect that the brand hopes to achieve. The brand's accuracy in obtaining crowd anchoring on Alipay.
Looking deeper, the second answer lies in the fact that Alipay's traffic is "service-oriented traffic", which comes from the provision of 8,000 life services. The automotive industry is not so much a strong marketing industry as a strong operation industry. User decisions don't depend on momentary moments, but on long-term experiences.
Especially in the context of the acceleration of the digital transformation of car companies and the outbreak of new car-making forces serving the whole life cycle of products, Alipay has also become an important platform for customer service of automobile brands. According to the "Alipay Platform Business Vitality Report", at present, 30 new energy vehicle models have been fully connected to Alipay's vehicle products, and the platform has 300 million active new energy vehicle owners, covering 90% of the country's charging piles.
This kind of marketing content extended from the service traffic, in the user's perception, means the brand promise that runs through the whole life cycle of product sales and customer service. As a result, the Alipay platform has become a channel for advertisers to manage the whole life cycle of users, and car companies can achieve one-stop integration from advertising to sales to service, and the brand self-closed loop is achieved in Alipay.
Take, for example, the collaboration between smart and Alipay in February this year #Huantianxidi Wufujie. During the Five Blessings Festival, users can use Alipay AR to scan the smart logo or browse the smart Alipay mini program to get Fu Cards, and users will also randomly drop smart exclusive Fu cards during their daily scanning process. Further scratch the Fu card, users can receive in-store gifts, car purchase surprises, online shopping surprises, etc.
Through such interactive design and welfare distribution, Alipay will attract more users to the mini program, so that users can initially form a sense of reach and goodwill towards the brand. In the future, users will be guided to offline experience and test drive, so as to achieve coverage and conversion of high-intent users.
The entry of FMCG brands is also based on the importance of Alipay's "service-oriented traffic". Because service means scene and crowd, it is the basic premise for advertisers to communicate with each other. Coca-Cola Sugar-Free, McDonald's, RIO, Stinky Treasure, Herb Flavor...... All of them are in the "service-oriented traffic", and they also find their own new opportunities.
Take, for example, the cooperation between Coca-Cola Sugar Free and Alipay. With the campus as the main communication scene and young people as the key group, Alipay assisted Coca-Cola Sugar-free, through a "student special" marketing campaign, in the Alipay member channel, student channel, payment channel three major traffic positions, to create a variety of ways to play such as punch-in and receive discounts, sign-in lucky draws, etc., and finally successfully attracted 7 million new users to participate within one month of the event's launch. Alipay helps brands cultivate the consumption habits of young users.
Leverage the market with "service-oriented traffic".
From cases to data, Alipay fully demonstrates its commercialization potential to the market. At the Alipay Digital Intelligence Marketing Summit on April 11, Alipay disclosed a set of data:
Active customers 400%+
Active Agents 900%+
The traffic scale is 100%+
Customer Mini Program GMV200%+
……
Reading between the lines, it is a hot growth.
In the Internet advertising market of stock competition, Alipay has relied on its unique "service-oriented traffic" to play a good card of differentiation.
In the past, in the commercialization of Alipay, one of the most frequently mentioned negative points was: "There is total amount but no traffic." "To put it another way: there are 1 billion users, but they are all used up and gone, and the stay time is short.
There is actually a misunderstanding in this. In the past few years, content-based Internet products have been in full swing, so that everyone has become accustomed to talking about heroes by "user time". However, judging from the real performance data, e-commerce advertising still ranks first with a share of more than 40% of the market.
Investment and income constitute two sides of the same coin, because this actually means that advertisers get real benefits from it. Performance advertising that can bring direct conversions is still the focus of advertisers, and its weight is positively correlated with distance from the market, but not with length of stay. This is also the foundation of the traffic value of Taobao, Pinduoduo and other platforms.
Returning to Alipay, Alipay's story may not be exactly similar to the above sample, and Alipay's help to advertisers may not be exactly the same as the existing angle.
After all, in terms of user volume, the billion-level user volume is only Alipay and WeChat in China. Alipay, a crowd portrait and traffic division derived from real money consumption behavior, is unique in the entire commercial society;
From the perspective of marketing value, Alipay is a huge service app. 4 million merchant mini programs go deep into all aspects of life, covering more than 150 vertical service scenarios such as travel, medical care, and campuses. The "service-oriented traffic" provided by Alipay to advertisers can more accurately serve the different marketing demands of enterprises at different stages of time through high-exposure traffic positions such as Alipay's homepage, search, recommendation, waist seal, payment page, etc., as well as activity IPs such as Wufu, red envelopes, and Alipay members.
At a time when the market is moving towards vertical segmentation, such traffic characteristics bring new marketing options to merchant brands that are more flexible and flexible, and may even be industry disruption. For example, by taking advantage of the user and trust precipitation of "Sesame Credit", Alipay has a natural advantage when providing "enjoy first, pay later" related services. In the past year, the number of gyms in the country that have adopted the "enjoy now, pay later" scheme has doubled, and the service providers in related industries have increased by nearly eighty percent year-on-year.
As the catfish that entered the game late, "service-oriented traffic" is the difference point where Alipay stirs up the situation. Advertisers need this kind of differentiated supply to help them solve the differentiated demands in the brand marketing process. Just as Xiaohongshu has found a solution to "planting grass" for the market, it may be expected that Alipay will bring new opportunities to brands in the future in more "service-oriented traffic" applications.
During the commercialization window period of Alipay, who is more suitable to enter the game?
1. Strong service attribute brand
Compared with the major Internet platforms that have become large-scale at present, Alipay can be called the first platform for service traffic. Not only eating, drinking and having fun, Alipay has almost covered services such as eating, drinking and playing, government communication, financial management and finance, etc., to meet people's service needs anytime and anywhere. This is traffic that other platforms don't have.
For a long time, the marketing of non-standard products represented by the service industry has been difficult to reach and difficult to achieve user trust. Alipay's maturity in service mentality and sophistication in technology provision allow users to establish the inertia of using the services they need from Alipay. This is undoubtedly where the biggest opportunity lies. For example, recycling and other industries, based on Alipay's trust attributes, have developed into a strong industry of the platform, and have recently been used by tens of millions of people in Alipay.
Alipay is also actively engaged in content construction. From previous attempts in the field of video and live broadcast, to interest communities, etc., Alipay uses content to help brands with strong service attributes and test the possibility of diversified traffic monetization.
2. High customer unit price brand
Alipay has high-net-worth individuals that can be identified. Among the 1 billion Alipay users, there are more than 900 million member users, of which tens of millions of people have membership levels above platinum and diamond. And from the perspective of age, half of the platinum diamond members are young people aged 18-35, with high net worth, good purchasing power, and strong ability to accept new things, which are the common characteristics of this group.
This gives high-priced brands an opportunity to talk to high-net-worth consumers. In the past year, brands such as lululemon, Shiseido, Sisley, and Honor have also stepped into the game, using direct reach channels such as membership channels to achieve direct transactions or direct target customers to brand mini programs. In Alipay, the dual effect of product promotion and promotion of new users is obtained, bringing stronger growth certainty to the brand.
3. FMCG brands
According to the data revealed by Liu Zheng, marketing director of Alipay's advertising division, at present, automobile and fast-moving consumer goods brands are industries that cooperate more with the "Alipay Lights" digital promotion platform. This is also closely related to Alipay's commercialization model.
In addition to more effective insight into consumption trends, consumption connections can be embedded in every payment. According to Liu Zheng's sharing, in the user's payment process, by setting up a guidance link such as "one-yuan plus purchase", it has a good effect on the transaction of goods, and Alipay, such as the issuance of coupons and external jumps on the payment completion page, Alipay can effectively help brands achieve self-closed loop and realize the reconversion of users from one purchase to multiple purchases.
Such a link setting is also more in line with the marketing logic of the FMCG industry, which emphasizes high exposure and high repurchase. With the help of Alipay, FMCG brands can complete the purchase reminders to consumers in a high-intent consumer psychology scenario, so as to make the effect happen.
For most brands, the core of market competition is the in-depth operation of users. Just like the Internet advertising market in full swing, now with the addition of Alipay, the catfish, it will undoubtedly increase the highlights. Uncle will continue to pay attention to the performance of many traditional big platforms and new advertising forces.