ByteDance products can be regarded as smooth sailing, with a double harvest of traffic and status, but it is difficult to conceal the pressure brought by commercialization.
With the globalization process hindered, BYTE is desperate for a "change" word. Recently, the launch of its headline "Search Ads" under its headline, how can it "change"?
Before the search market has changed, Toutiao has set its sights on the search advertising market. Is it a bit hasty?
Do search ads before searching?
In August last year, ByteDance's Toutiao today officially announced its entry into the search market. For a year, Toutiao search has not achieved much, and the domestic market has been dominated by Baidu, Sogou and more than 320 Internet giants.
When everyone's attention is still focused on how Toutiao is a search engine and whether it can break the market structure.
Toutiao search has quietly launched search bidding ads recently. According to the company's intelligence expert "Financial Tuya", Toutiao recently launched "Search Ads". In its commercial advertising program, in addition to information flow, a new search advertising category has been added.
Source: deep dive atomer
As a "back wave" in the search industry, Toutiao used search advertising as a monetization axe before the search business was scaled up. Is it a bit hasty?
Anxious for commercial realization
ByteDance currently has only three "mythical" products: Toutiao, Douyin and Tiktok. Speaking of these three products in detail, they all encounter different problems: Tiktok's business process in the United States is blocked; Douyin traffic growth meets the ceiling; headline growth space also meets the ceiling.
According to many media reports, Douyin has over 600 million monthly livelihoods, while the number of Chinese Internet users is only 900 million! Similarly, according to statistics, Toutiao’s advertising revenue in 2019 ranked second in the domestic Internet, while Baidu ranked third. However, byte traffic is significantly higher than Baidu. In this comparison, Toutiao traffic monetization ability is not high.
It can be confirmed that bytedance's products may all have the same anxiety, that is, realization anxiety. And where should the anxiety about commercial realization be transferred?
That is to relieve stress by developing new businesses and creating "phenomenal" products. And because search is a model with a very "cash flow" attribute and a powerful tool for monetizing ads, the next phenomenon-level product will be headline search.
According to statistics, in 2019, Baidu’s total revenue was 107.4 billion yuan, of which advertising revenue reached 78.1 billion yuan; Bytedance’s total revenue was 140 billion yuan, of which advertising business revenue was 120 billion yuan, accounting for more than 85%.
Regarding the fact that Toutiao quietly launched "search ads", it was naturally not sudden. ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming once said at an internal communication meeting, "If there is no expansion of the search scene and high-quality content, there may only be 40 million DAU in the growth space of Toutiao today."
In search advertising, Toutiao has actually used the "golden gun" of bidding for a long time, and the realization speed has surpassed that of Baidu.
To sum up, for the ByteDance, which is hindered by the globalization process and is in the stage of commercialization, it is necessary to take down the sword of search advertising to monetize.
Finally, in the search engine market, ByteDance has directly become a rival company’s "wall digging machine". Although it is a bit cheeky and hooligans, there is no shortage of moves that kill two birds with one stone.
For example, before Toutiao became a search engine, Baidu’s core executives were dug over. This could not only copy and innovate Baidu’s search technology and resources for its own use, but also weaken Baidu’s accumulated advantages in manpower and combat rival brands. reputation.
And just by "digging the wall", can we make the move of commercializing search ads? What is the resistance to search advertising?
Bidding ranking "chaotic"
Today, when Baidu has been firmly in the top spot in the domestic search market, it is difficult for Toutiao to divide the search market, not to mention the search business market.
This is indeed a gap that Toutiao cannot bridge in the short term, but compared to the byte matrix of nearly 800 million daily activities, it can fully attract advertisers to place ads. And suppose that Toutiao can make full use of the advantages of users' monthly activity and convert all monthly activities into Toutiao searches. This huge amount can push Toutiao searches to the top in the industry.
It is indisputable that Toutiao search is not as stable as Baidu search after all. If you want to use Baidu search advertising jobs, it is tantamount to touching a tiger's ass.
On the other hand, the chaos in search ads needs to be resolved urgently. The author once read such a sentence, “The moment you go online, you are “stared” and your personal information is manipulated.” Yes, this sentence is an insight into the chaos in the “bid ranking” of search ads.
Internet companies do not make search engines for selfless dedication. They are all for profit as their primary purpose, and they will not support the sustainable development of the search market without seeking profit at all. Below this, Baidu, which occupies the top spot in the search and business markets, has taken a "barbaric road" in bidding rankings.
In search advertising, Baidu's bidding ranking has caused many things. The higher the price, the higher the ranking obtained. Many hospitals with insufficient qualifications spend high prices on rankings, causing consumers to enter the hospital and misdiagnose. For example, the "Wei Zexi" incident that once made a lot of noise was also due to the negative impact of this medical incident, which directly cut Baidu's 2 billion yuan in revenue during the season.
Nowadays, on the "telephone pole" of the search engine, you can still see all kinds of psoriasis-type advertisements. Therefore, the proliferation of fake advertisements in search engines, and the sort only looks at the "how much money you pay" phenomenon has not been effectively managed. The proliferation of such psoriasis-style advertisements has also caused a large number of consumers to "kidnap" their right to choose. Internet users hate searching the market.
Can you not follow the old path of Baidu search advertising?
Can Toutiao search ads distinguish the boundaries between search and ad auction rankings? Will you not follow Baidu's path?
The author believes that Toutiao search ads do not do bidding rankings, only to create a "pure" search advertising environment, which is difficult.
As far as the industry is concerned, the rule that search ads rely on bidding rankings has become an industry consensus. Today’s headlines are difficult to break, or they don’t want to break it at all. As the old saying goes, every company establishes a new department or business for profit.
In recent years, my country has violated Internet advertising rules, and the amount of fines they face is between 200,000 and 300,000. For giants like Baidu, 360 or ByteDance, they are just scratching their heads and not hurting their bones. Facing the huge benefits brought by near-bid rankings, these companies will not be purely non-profit companies.
In addition, Yang Song, deputy general manager of People's Online, once said, “Bid ranking is not new. It is related to the fundamental operating mechanism of Internet companies. More mature advertising models have also been developed abroad. However, it must be regulated in accordance with legal requirements and industry ethics. Manage, grasp the degree of bidding, and take special treatment in areas where problems occur frequently such as medical care, education, and recruitment advertisements, and treat the rigid needs of the public in search."
This sentence is easier said than done. Where is the bidding degree? No one can tell.
For Toutiao users, the age of its users is mainly under 35, accounting for 79%. Among them, users under 30 accounted for 53%, and users as a whole tend to be younger. Search advertising in news information is easy to mislead these user groups, and this year user groups are becoming the main force of consumption today.
From the purpose of Toutiao's online search advertising, it is for commercialization. With such a big piece of fat in the bidding rankings, it is difficult to achieve rigorous checks and not take profit as the first goal to create a "pure" search advertising environment.
On the other hand, the author believes that Toutiao’s search advertising may specialize in recruitment and education advertising, and it is precisely because its user groups tend to be younger, and education and work are just needs of these young groups. In addition, Toutiao is a news information platform, which may be more suitable for itself than medical, education and recruitment.
Finally, Toutiao, for the reputation of search ads, may not be the first person in a "pure" environment. Moreover, in the future, such chaos in the advertising industry will gradually be regulated and governed by legal provisions one by one.
For example, after the Wei Zexi incident on Baidu’s search bidding rankings in 2016, the state issued the “Interim Measures for the Administration of Internet Advertising.” The law clearly defined Internet advertising, requiring Internet advertising to be identifiable and marked with “Advertising” in a prominent position. "The words.
The chaos in the search engine market will eventually be cleaned up someday in the future. If headline search ads are innovative and changeable, every step taken in the future must also be bright.
Author: Yexiao An
Article source: Songguo Finance, please indicate the copyright