Sina Micro-blog Independent prequel: Small micro-advertising test water

There is a cross historical novel called "New Song". There is a plot in the book, the emperor's younger brother forces, due to decency and can not be directly removed. Go back to the protagonist do not want to see the power struggle caused by the big vendetta, think of the United States, Australia's founding history, Brainwave, advised the emperor to his brother and other a gang of royal clan to the South China Sea Island as king. This avoids tongshicaoge, political unrest, and secondly, the Royal children occupy the South China Sea, for the Future Seizure Supremacy Reserve initiative. This policy is called "The Feudal South China Sea" in the book, take is feudal most originally meaning "Fief nation". In other words, the feudal meaning is to open up new Territories and to implement New Deal in the neo-soil, with the central government to maintain relatively independent. Compared to the traditional exile and even clan punishment, this kind of "feudal" at that time is like a penalty, in today's can be seen as giving a broader space.

One: The Internet "feudal" wind

The reason why so much space has been spent on the early-stigmatized word "feudal" is that, in today's internet companies, "feudalism" is in fact becoming an increasingly common means of encouraging innovation. We know that companies have genes, their genes determine the enterprise's rich business occupies the largest right to speak, in the maintenance of market dominance, but also to stifle the space for the innovation of different genes. However, if the emphasis on innovation and weaken the main business, it is faced with innovation, the main business is also lagging behind the greater crisis.

The solution is "feudal", that is, to separate a piece of business, by a small team "fief", in which the implementation of the relative isolation with the parent company's development and market system, into solid readily, failure is not moving at all. Google in its own research and development system to allow employees to do their own things in 1/5 of the time to implement the "feudal time", but also with a wild-style x laboratory "business feudal" to maintain the company's continuous innovation. At home, Alibaba first practiced feudal system, Ma Yun from the earliest business-to-business in successively feudal Taobao, pay treasure, cat, poly cost-effective business, the formation of different temperament but to business series of several major plate; Tencent's advantage business QQ become the core of the company, MA will Zhangxiaolong feudalism to the Guangzhou Research and Development Department, By his attempt completely different from the QQ nature of the business, mailbox, micro-letter is.

Based on these examples, Tiger sniffing is more willing to see Sina's imminent launch of a move as a "feudal". According to Sina insiders revealed that the feudal protagonist, that is, Sina Weibo, feudal scepter products, called Fan Tong, and micro-Bo is the territory of the vast small and medium-sized enterprises advertising market-although this piece of land has been entrenched large and small princes, of which the largest two, one called Baidu, a call 360.

Second, micro-bo cut the umbilical cord

Sina is the first Chinese Internet to establish its own main revenue company. Its core lifeline is nearly 2000 brand advertisers, through their launch on the portal page (to display ads as the main body), Sina to obtain its main income.

But after Weibo, the profit model was tested internally. The popularity of Wall Street's favorite microblog has increasingly shouldered the burden of profitability, in the context of the relative lack of liquidity, Sina can only cut the traditional advertising business out of a piece, or the microblog and the portal ads packaged together, sales to advertisers-which means that Weibo began to share income with the corporate gene-level portal. In the case of a small change in the main advertising tray, Weibo and the portal appeared to be a disadvantage.

In Cao Chao early in the beginning of the door, micro-bo two large chunks, Xu Liangje Airborne Sina is responsible for micro-blogging business, is to stop this micro-blog and the door to fight for the benefit of the situation. This is not just to maintain the main revenue of the portal, but more importantly, the brand advertising this kind of saber-like Iron Horse, is really not suitable for small fast-ling microblogging platform.

Sina insiders are deeply aware of this. Sina's traditional brand advertising business, in essence, is a personalized business: For the large advertising master customized display form, artificial consultation to determine the advertising position, display time, and in the marketing, content to be customized to cooperate.

From Sina to start the commercialization of micro-blogging, we know that this approach is not suitable for the needs of the SME owners, Sina's sales team can not make the corresponding matching-tens of thousands of small and medium advertisers if all use this way to serve, Sina's sales force has to expand to million people, each person earns advertising fees may not be able to pay their own wages.

The advertisement of small and medium-sized enterprises needs standardization, autonomy, location determination, key words to determine, advertisers decide whether to launch, put the amount, with a high degree of automation characteristics. This content-sensitive form of advertising has been carried forward by Google for more than 10 years. and display ads are affected by the total number of pages, micro-blog page with the content of the endless number of changes, is to make up for small business advertising amount of small deficiencies, the formation of the long tail of internet advertising effect.

The product that carries this pioneering goal is "fan Tong". The system will be based on the user's social relations and interest map of the excavation and grasp, randomly put the advertising information in the target audience of the micro-blog time line information flow.

If this attempt succeeds, then the brand advertising revenue returned to the portal, the "feudal" micro-blog to obtain small and medium enterprises advertising the new territory, not only to avoid internal conflict of the turbulence, but also to allow the microblogging has a real hematopoietic function.

Third, Sina Weibo's ambition

Sina Weibo in May 2012, the formation of small and medium-sized Customer Sales department, began to carry out the development of small and medium-sized customers. Sina has actually had this product prototype, called "Smart vote". is in the portal page of some small block area, by the advertisers to decide the frequency and number of ownership. The annual turnover of intellectual investment products is between 30 million and 40 million RMB, which can only be considered as a tentative business.

This time the action is much bigger. According to the insiders, the team has developed 29 agents over the past year, covering 17 provincial districts in China and plans to cover 24-25 provinces in the next six months. For such small and medium advertising, the network of agents is very important, because they have to open up the market, maintain relations, but also to carry out the operation of advertising account, to assume a part of the technical services and the concept of universal work. Early 3721 and now Baidu, that is, have established a successful network of agents. According to Sina insiders, Sina's agent network, "There are also services for Baidu."

Sina is also rumoured to have tested the willingness of small business owners to buy. They selected more than 1000 small businesses in Zhejiang and Shanghai, and opened Weibo advertising accounts. Throughout the testing process, more than six hundred or seven hundred advertisers have produced the actual launch.

There are two ways to offer "fan Tong", one is CPM, that is, every active fan sees ad Weibo, every 1000 times charge 5 yuan; the other is CPE, which is billed according to the number of effective interactions of the fans (effective interactions include clicking on short chains, collecting, forwarding, commenting), Each time the starting point for the bid is 0.5 yuan, the current official price increase is not yet authoritative news release.

In the actual test, some business owners are more than expected to put in. This is probably because the bidding effect was not obvious during the test, and the company felt that the interaction with the money was higher than expected, so the investment was more positive.

In the launch of such ads on the most "forthright" there are two types of enterprises, one is expected to the electric business enterprises, the other is a wedding, studio enterprises. Sina's sales staff analysis, inquiries came to the conclusion, this is probably related to the form of micro-bo, illustrated advertising microblogging for the audience to accept and spread.

Another such advertisement in the large pharmaceutical ads, is clearly excluded from Sina. "More formalities, strict supervision, the controversy is big." These nine words sum up the reason why Sina Weibo has a wide berth in such advertisements.

And in the scale of advertising, micro-BO sales team conducted testing shows that in the northeast, northwest underdeveloped areas, 3000 yuan is a threshold, east China, South China and other economically developed areas, the upper limit is 10000 yuan. Business owners want to see the effect within this limit, or they will suspend the launch. This is also sina to this kind of advertisement and brand advertising of the difference: Advertisers attach great importance to ROI (input rate of return). In other words, the entire fan-team is within this limit to complete the potential microblogging fans and ads match.

We do not have a specific revenue target plan for this new system. But the tiger sniff to find Baidu just introduced the system when the income growth as a reference, the above Sina insiders do not deny this contrast.

According to Baidu's first earnings after the listing, in the second quarter of 2006, its net marketing revenue was 189.1 million yuan, an increase of 43.2% from the previous quarter. This growth is mainly due to the increasing number of customers. In the second quarter, Baidu provided services to more than 90,000 customers, up 21.6% from the previous quarter. Household income from the first quarter of the 1774 Yuan rose to 2081 yuan in the second quarter, an increase of 19.3%.

Plus the accumulation before the IPO, Baidu first disclosed such data with 90,000 customers, each household income of 2000 yuan. We can basically this data as Sina Weibo new business of the initial target limit, that is, in micro-blogging advertising system "running-in" maturity of the six months to a year, to achieve tens of thousands of customers, 2.3 billion yuan revenue target. These revenues will be distinguished from Sina's previous brand advertising revenue and become a pure new increment. To the annual income of 300 million yuan ceiling, this will be Sina's previous annual income of about one-eighth, that is, 12.5% of the increase.

After six years of development, Baidu in 2012 has nearly 600,000 customers, more than 9,000 yuan per quarter income, the entire 2012 from the market to obtain 22.2 billion yuan in income. With this analogy, the huge development potential does not act Sina Weibo not to be tempted.

Iv. on the feudal success or failure

The challenges facing Sina are clear.

The most obvious is the user experience. Users of Sina Weibo have complained that advertisements appearing in the information stream disrupt the reading experience. Sina insiders are not too concerned about this: "Advertising is always the media important means of change, it does not appear here, it appears." Information Flow Advertising Twitter is also trying, it seems to be the most suitable for such products in the form of advertising products. "They hope that after six months to a year of running-in, the flow of information ads and users of the use of the habit of reading habits" running-in "success, with the user's attitude towards advertising gradually accumulated as data, the system of user interest and the timing of the grasp will be more and more accurate. "Watercress guess you like the word of mouth is very good, not also after a burst of data running-in stage." This technology is used for a long time, the better the running-in.

Solve this problem, the relevance of the problem with the surface: technology can be reached as soon as possible "running-in"? This is also Sina has been criticized by the short board.

However, after Micro Bo three years of high investment, Sina has accumulated a large number of data analysis, cloud Platform management technicians, and fans of this product-related product technology team has reached three hundred or four hundred people, in the intelligent matching has accumulated a lot of experience. Although the best in this area is Taobao, it even sparked a speculation that Ali had invested in Sina Weibo, but the Sina people were very confident in the technical team, "as long as they have enough user behavior data, they should be able to match the ads to a satisfactory level within a year."

Outside competition is mainly from Baidu and 360. Search engines naturally rely on small and medium-sized enterprises to eat, now micro bleomycin a piece, launched from the advertisers to the agent team competition, the original giants will not be indifferent. According to various statistical methods, the number of SMEs in China between 40 million to 100 million households, in 2010, the creation of the final output value of products and services accounted for about 60% of the gross domestic product, or 24 trillion yuan. Market space originally enough, but small and medium-sized advertising competition will first in the agent network, whether it is eyeing the 360, or the target of Baidu, all in this field invested heavily in the deployment. Sina also early in the product team before the start of the targeted executive reserves, Shanda, Wang Yajuan and other former Baidu executives have joined, for this team building provides timely help.

Will soon launch the intention of the "fan Tong" and the entire micro-blog advertising business, Sina's microblog business is officially "feudal" overture. In the previous series of commercial attempts to achieve a lack of success, this looks most consistent with the characteristics of micro-BO products, market capacity is also large enough new areas, whether to meet the micro-Bo's self-hematopoietic function, as soon as the income independent of the Matrix? This will be one of the most striking explorations in China's new media field.