The commercialization of Sina Weibo

Recent period. There are very interesting things, on the one hand there are many people who brush Weibo, on the other hand, the commercial prospects of micro-blog talk. Of course, in the commercialization of microblogging, still want to see how Sina Weibo, but its every move is a concern.

Last year, it looked like Sina Weibo in this year is relatively low, but the product still showed a 72% growth, the daily release number from 100 million to 50 million, at the end of a strong rebound to 100 million. Up to now, Sina Weibo existing user 500 million, active user is about 50 million. The product's mobile gene is the most important, three-fourths of users from mobile phone landing Sina Weibo, no longer need to move the trouble, this is a huge advantage. Sina Weibo in 2012 was only slower than the previous year, far from the decline, no matter from which point of view, the product still has a huge market value, commercialization is imperative.

Commercial First War

will be on March 18 officially on-line information flow advertising system "Fan Tong", will be Sina Weibo commercialization of the overall situation is an important step. The specific form of the product is similar to Facebook's information flow ads, which are inserted into the user's Twitter stream to promote Twitter. From the user's point of view, Facebook's new information flow ads more eye-catching, and Sina Weibo ads in the initial period is only ordinary microblogging, will disappear with the flow of information, if users do not like this ad, you can choose to hide. Of course, such as Baidu bidding ads, information flow ads will be in the lower left corner of the micro-blog marked "Promotion" words to facilitate the distinction.

From The Advertiser's point of view, this product provides CPM and CPE two kinds of bid way, to exposure and interactive amount of billing, customers can set the budget limit, as for the price, according to the auction situation. For example, advertisers chose to put the 25-35-year-old female, exposure 300,000, the system price of 1000 yuan, if someone bids to 1500 yuan, the advertisers must be higher than the prices to win. This is a self-help type of advertising system, similar to Baidu's bidding rankings, but the degree of personalized refinement requirements higher. This is the "exact match" that people have talked about before, just don't know whether Sina Weibo is ready in the aspect of technology system.

This is the case, talk about the right thing, this product is not reliable? First we need to see what the core value of Sina Weibo is. is forwarding and commenting? No, it must be the flow of information. The survey data released by the Hong Kong Research institute two days ago showed that more than 80% of the users on Weibo were never original, and that the content of the microblog was made by a few people, most of whom were on lookers. This is in line with the 28 principle, Sina Weibo at this stage is social media rather than social network, perhaps in China, the timing of the emergence of real social network is not mature, it is not realistic to ask Weibo must make this.

Facebook and Twitter have been doing this for a couple of years, starting with the commercialization of the flow of information, and Facebook has recently even launched a new version of the information stream to embed the exquisite images of branded ads. What Sina Weibo is doing now is simply following, acting in a way that is less risky. Therefore, given the media attributes of Sina Weibo, the first step in commercialization must start with the flow of information, and in the general direction, it can be optimistic.

User factors

In the user experience aspect, the information flow inserts the advertisement, naturally can incur some dissatisfaction, but this does not seem to be the key, the advertisement experience is the key. People in Shanghai but to push the ads in Beijing, nature is not to arouse the user's resonance, and even incur disgust, can be completely through the technical improvement gradually to solve. In addition, the commercialization of information flow is not an overnight thing, micro-blog ads in the initial impact on users will be very small, some people even feel. Very simple proposition, is the use of limited resources to sell the right price, or the unlimited space to mark the price of cabbage, and then greatly affect the user experience? believe that as long as the IQ of the normal team, can make the right decision, do not worry about it.

Look at two examples, Facebook launched the flow of information in 2006 years, product managers were scolded as demons, the 2009 launch of Twitter-like real-time information flow, this time people do not scold, the 2010 information flow began to commercialize, and at the beginning of this year, the information flow advertising brand. Sina and Sohu respectively in 2006 launched a large screen advertising, when broadband is not universal, the user experience is poor, to attract a curse sound. However, after so many years of development, this large screen advertising on the Internet browsing behavior of the adverse impact of basic can be ignored, in these two examples, there is a habit of cultivating and marketing process to play a role.

Main factors of advertising

On the other end, what is The advertiser's situation? Cao Accounting in Q3 has said that the micro-blog and the portal around the situation, its 2000 long-term large customer budget is relatively fixed, cast a micro-bo on the portal less, vice versa. This time the upcoming advertising system, seems to avoid this problem, because the system aimed at the small and medium-sized customers, a single promotional consumption limit of 10,000 yuan below the portion, can be as low as hundreds of yuan or even dozens of yuan.

Small and medium-sized enterprises are in China's advertising market to dig an endless gold mine, Baidu Revenue is the foundation of this, to serve the small and medium-sized enterprises, to earn some money is not worry. The characteristics of SME advertising, obviously and Sina portal brand Gene does not coincide, they need not large-scale display, more like precision and personalized delivery, in pursuit of practical results. It is said that information flow advertising in effect than the right-hand side of the display of advertising effect 10 times times, if so, there is a very great hope of success.

Sina in the copy to advertisers show that advertisers in the launch can be based on social relations, relevance and popularity of conditions such as free collocation, from the system to calculate the number of active users in line with the conditions, covering the number of users and other elements, and then by the advertisers jointly bid to determine the final price. In essence, this is the social version of the Baidu Phoenix Nest, but the system's exact matching ability and ease of use is still questionable, yet to be observed after the on-line.

Two core factors

Sina Weibo can create commercial value, this is no problem, the prophase is only fragmented, that is, money let others earn away, Sina did not touch. Since the Chinese arts media, micro-chih, micro-bo, micro-blog, and micro-blog marketing large can make money, sina no reason to make money. The success of Sina Weibo's first commercialization attempt depends on two core factors, technology and channel.

Sina is a weak technology gene company, good at building platform, in the product is a weakness. In the past two years in the micro-Bo commercial demand driven by the technical strength of Sina has a certain degree of accumulation. At the beginning of the year, Sina invited the former Cisco Global Vice President Xu Liangje, can be regarded as Sina Weibo will be determined to choose to follow the technical route of the logo. Of course, I do not think that Sina in the precise matching of advertising systems will soon be satisfactory, more complex than the search engine social media advertising system, but as long as this business model can be initially successful, technical problems can be gradually improved with the process of market cultivation, Now it's time to see if the new system, which has been repeatedly tested, can exceed user expectations. In addition to Sina Weibo, Renren will also be introduced in the recent information flow advertising system, in terms of system performance, the early start of Sina Weibo will not be lost to everyone.

Another factor, the channel. SME advertisers are far less than service customers so worry, small advertisers not only pay attention to the effect, but also concerned about the ease of use of self-service systems. Another very arduous task, is the market cultivation and channel construction. Do the big business of Sina, in the SME market is still a novice, also do not have a strong channel, the front still has a long way to go. However, at the end of last year, Sina recruited a group of talented people from Baidu, including former Baidu business operations director Wang Yajuan, former Baidu Alliance general manager Shanda, respectively, as vice president of business Cooperation and Strategic Planning Department vice president. These two people in the channel construction and pioneering aspects have many years of experience, is to complement Sina Weibo commercial channel short.

Possible situation

Information flow advertising is likely to have a fatal impact on marketing accounts, the future of Sina Weibo will be more and less hard, whether it is Sina itself, or marketing large, will strive to improve the quality of advertising release. In addition, for advertisers, the two types of advertising billing will make customers difficult to choose, but also pay attention to.

March 15, Sina Weibo will be for enterprise customers to promote the flow of information, Sina's action is more deft, in the country layout has been long channels will be wenfengerdong. On the March 18, information flow ads will appear on the pages of ordinary users of Weibo.