On July 15, the Internet of Things advertising platform Yiyi Technology announced the completion of a 50 million A round of financing, led by Guangzhou Daily. This round of financing will be mainly used for technology research and development and offline point expansion.
In layman's terms, the change of clothes technology is the flexible IOT-LED screen in the form of wearable coverage of takeaway delivery workers, shopping mall employees, community fixed points and other scenes, focusing on third- and fourth-tier cities, attracting customers at a very low cost, creating an advertising platform for a sinking market.
"1 yuan a day" advertising fee is a very attractive word for changing technology. Whether it is a giant enterprise for business sinking, or a local store for business expansion, such a low offer is a great temptation for them. Although the technical threshold of flexible IOT-LED is not as high as that of flexible LCD, it still belongs to the category of high technology, and the secret of effective cost control of garment technology is curious. Recently, the Global Network Technology Channel interviewed Jiang Dongwei, the founder of Yiyi Technology, and deeply understood the secret of Changing Technology's successful entry into the sinking market.
"Sinking" has just caught fire, and sinking entrepreneurs have melted into the A round
"I do business in the sinking market", "I live in the sinking market for a month", "The real China behind the sinking market"... These recent hot topics make the word "sink" seem to suddenly break into people's vision. In fact, the huge commercial value of the people outside the fifth ring road and the third and fourth lines has long been targeted by Internet companies, and the rise of Qutoutiao and Pinduoduo is obvious to all, and the rural wall advertisements that have been brushed screens many times have long become the "old terrier" used by netizens to P charts. In addition, since Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, proposed the concept of new retail, offline traffic has been valued by all parties. However, the combination of "offline" and "sinking" seems to be destined to have a higher threshold for the market circled by the two.
What can catch fire is always because someone has taken the lead. In the sinking market, the first to land is the change of clothes technology.
At the technical level, Jiang Dongwei's encounter with the technical partner was in 2017. From product prototypes to mass-produced products with independent intellectual property rights, it took 17 months to achieve a flexible LED screen with a thickness of 1.8 mm, a weight of 75 grams, arbitrary bending and waterproofing. Therefore, in terms of products, changer technology has mastered the time window of one year earlier than the late entrants, and the technical barriers formed by independent research and development are difficult to overcome. Jiang Dongwei revealed that at present, the company has attracted the cooperation intention of Royole Technology.
At the capital level, before the 50 million A round of financing, Yiyi Technology has already had a Pre A round of financing of 25 million yuan, and the A round also has old shareholders Dtton Capital and sincere investment to continue to invest. The optimism of new and old shareholders comes from the powerful development of the market by changing technology.
At the market level, in August 2018 before the Pre A round, Yiyi Technology achieved coverage in 128 cities across the country, and as of November 2018, Yiyi Technology had more than 400 agents. In May this year, the number of screens of yiping technology reached 160,000.
160,000 screens is not a cut-out or trendy cake
The existence of the offline advertising market that cannot be ignored is Focus Media, which intends to cut away the Focus cake and invest 1 billion yuan in the market. Why did the change of clothes enter the offline advertising market with many giants?
According to reports, the 160,000 screens of the dressing technology are not all wearable advertisements, of which 100,000 are fixed points such as communities and convenience stores. However, Changer Technology does not compete head-on with Focus Media.
In the arrangement of fixed points, yiping technology sets the screen outside the elevator, exposes it when people are waiting for the elevator, and focuses on third- and fourth-tier cities. At the same time, 60,000 mobile points fully excavated scenes such as takeaway, and the actual display effect short video shot by UGC and PGC showed tens of millions of plays on the Douyin platform shows its high acceptance. It can be seen that from the time and space, the change of clothes technology is at the wrong peak with Focus Media, and it uses low prices and intelligence to explain the business model.
Jiang Dongwei introduced that the resolution of the LED screen itself limits the amount of information presented by the content, and the advertisers facing the change of clothes technology are not inclined to produce special promotional videos because of the cost expenditure, which are simple and straightforward information, such as a promotional message, an advertising slogan, a phone number, and even only a logo. This determines that the screen advertising of the dressing technology is very suitable for offline shops to do local marketing, from this point of view, the dressing technology is not cutting the cake of Focus Media, but doing the offline version of 58 city.
However, "offline advertising online investment" is the biggest difference between changing clothing technology and Focus Media. Jiang Dongwei pointed out that Focus Media has a considerable number of paper advertising points, and most of the personnel composition is inevitably operation and maintenance personnel, which pushes up the cost of delivery. Changing technology adds an Internet of Things control module to each screen, which can remotely switch on and off, locate, and change content, and the platform can effectively grasp the delivery effect, and advertisers can also directly select points in different geographical locations through the APP for delivery.
Sinking is not easy, and cost control is the key weapon
"1 yuan a day" advertising fees are the weapons of changing clothes technology to open the sinking market. This pricing strategy looks at the price sensitivity of users in the sinking market and forces the contraction of advertisers' budgets, and its cost control method is worth paying attention to.
Jiang Dongwei said that the cost of placing screens in communities in first- and second-tier cities is extremely high, in addition to the cost of the screen itself, the point rental cost is also difficult for the vast majority of late entrants to bear. He mentioned that the price of the LED flexible screen used by the dressing technology itself is not low, but through 17 months of research and development, after a difficult period of only about 50% of the initial product yield, the dressing technology finally controlled its cost at a very low level, the yield rate exceeded 95%, and the product life can reach more than 3 years.
According to reports, the reason why the change of clothes technology can quickly fission to 128 cities across the country in a short period of time, the number of screens is nearly 160,000, is through the "direct operation + agency" dual engine model, the traditional offline advertising companies unite to share the benefits, and jointly tap this new blue ocean of Internet of Things advertising.
In addition to controlling the cost of the product itself to a level that can recover the cost as quickly as possible, the solution of the smart community notification bar has been developed for the point cost change technology. Jiang Dongwei revealed that in the community scene, the screen outside the elevator adopts the method of cooperation with the property, and the opening advertising time is used for the property to display service information, empowering the property company, and reducing the point cost to only 100-200 yuan. More importantly, through the Internet of Things solution delivered online with one click, Yiyi Technology eliminates the cost of offline manual screen changes of focus and trendy thousands of people, which is also the reason why it can finally be presented to advertisers at a low price of "1 yuan a day".
Due to the unrivalled low cost of delivery, Jiang Dongwei revealed that some customers even said that where the point of the change technology is laid, his new store will open. Jiang Dongwei said that the advertisers who have cooperated so far have basically cooperated for the second time.
Imagination space for new products
Flexible screen is known because of the folding screen mobile phone, but the material of the folding screen mobile phone is LCD. LED screens are too low resolution, and they appear in offline shop sign positions all year round to display promotional information. The idea of making LEDs into flexible screens and letting people wear them on their bodies to become mobile advertisements is something special in itself, but there is still some room for improvement.
On the question of product iteration, Jiang Dongwei answered the question of the Global Network Technology reporter and said that the company has developed higher resolution products and is working hard to reduce its cost.
It can be seen in many product forms displayed at the entrance of the office of Changer Technology, and its LED flexible screen can not only display text, pictures, GIF GIFs, but also animation and video. With the improvement of the resolution of the next generation of products and the high-speed transmission brought about by the 5G era, the amount of information that flexible LED screens can carry will bring greater imagination space, such as film and television publicity on the mobile advertising space can become a reality.
After this financing, Yiyi Technology will also expand more points, and it is worth paying attention to whether it can play the same presence as Focus Media in first- and second-tier cities in the third- and fourth-tier markets.