Toutiao is one of China’s most powerful ad exchange platforms for advertisers to reach their massive online audience, with over 410 million users.

Toutiao is a locally trusted news and information platform with a built-in search engine owned by Bytedance, which also owns Douyin (i.e., TikTok). And with the ability for users to subscribe to channels, search content covering 100+ topics, and—perhaps most importantly for advertisers—receive personalized recommendations based on their searches, its engagement opportunities are plentiful.

Today, we reveal Toutiao’s serious power, which makes it an excellent digital marketing tool for Western businesses. We are certain that by advertising on Toutiao, you can convert Chinese users into lasting customers.

Not Just China’s Flipboard!

Those that are familiar with Flipboard will find it similar to Toutiao. Toutiao intelligently curates endless feeds of articles, videos, and advertisements based on an algorithm that learns about a user’s content preferences.

The platform uses location, reading history, link clicks, and even mobile device type to narrow down the best content to show each individual and does not rely on a user’s extended network’s preferences to display suggested content.

Toutiao is almost at 10 billion views per day!

Toutiao has made a strong impression in the Chinese market, recording nearly 200,000 new pieces of content every day. This success has propelled the platform to become a strong and rapidly rising competitor to Tencent News, the digital news giant.

Fortunately for digital marketers, the algorithm’s targeted capabilities ensure that their content does not get lost in the crowd and is instead viewed by online users who are specifically interested in the type of content a business has to offer.

Who Uses This App?

Marketers like the Beijing-based company because its user base is younger, wealthier, and more educated than users on other platforms.

More than 85% of daily users are under the age of 35, and more than 40% have degrees or are currently enrolled in university. In comparison to Weibo or WeChat, 38% of Toutiao users own a business or work as freelancers. Toutiao users are typically upper-middle class and from first and second-tier cities. As a result, advertising on Toutiao is an excellent way to promote your brand.

The difference in age, education, and income translates to users who are more globally aware and have disposable income to spend on goods and services purchased online. Furthermore, users are more committed to serious reading and expanding on their interests than other social platforms’ more lighthearted, fun offerings. This can be seen in the longer amounts of time users spend on Toutiao each day, which is approximately 70 minutes per day.

How Can International Business Target Their Audience?

This video platform displays text and image articles, live streams, answers queries, and even provides blogs. There are also advertisement spaces, but these are not always displayed as obvious Toutiao ads, but rather as part of the news feed content.

While the readership is educated and searching for serious content, content creators can still use a variety of media for lead generation, including infographics, question and answers, and short video clips.

Furthermore, the platform allows businesses to diversify their content. On the same platform, a brand may share weekly blog posts, generate useful images that address specific interests or problems, and release mini-video ads that capture a user’s attention. This helps to increase brand awareness.

When a user starts engaging with your brand, they will continue to see the content you post, establishing a long-term relationship that will benefit your brand. Toutiao’s digital marketing strategies provide real-time results from your ideal consumer and allow for more in-depth analysis of the type of content consumers prefer.

Keyword focus and audience-based content increase the likelihood that your content will be seen by those who are most interested in it, resulting in better lead generation.

Opportunities for brands

• Private publishers, official media, brands, and blogs

• Advertising revenue is split with the content creator

• No need to follow an account to see its content Toutiao has launched a new Q&A channel, an open discussion community. Registered users can interact with other users and share their experiences and opinions in specific fields of interest. Toutiao then suggests solutions to users in its news feed and Q&A channel.

• There are no distractions (no messages or social features)

The 3 Types Of Ads You Need To Know

We’ve identified three ad formats that offer significant opportunities for brand visibility on Toutiao’s app.

a)Launch Screen Ad

When users launch the Toutiao app, a full-screen advertisement appears on the launch screen while the app loads. Because of their immediate visibility (as the first visual component a user sees on the app), launch screen ads can significantly increase brand exposure on Toutiao.

Furthermore, advertisers can tailor launch screen ads to promote creatives and landing pages at times when users are most likely to be interested in them.

b)Feed Ad

Toutiao’s app allows advertisers to feature prominently throughout its main feed, intermixed with organic content but logically positioned according to the flow of news and information. Feed ads are especially effective for promoting products and app downloads with additional information about your offers.

c)Paid Search Ads

Paid search ads on Toutiao’s app may appear whenever users search for content containing the keywords you’ve chosen. Furthermore, because recommended paid search ads match user search intent so closely, they can typically drive higher conversions for your brand.

Costs of Toutiao Advertising On Toutiao

Toutiao advertisements are ideal for testing products in China at a low cost and risk. Toutiao’s pricing models are as follows:

•           Cost per Acquisition (CPA): brands only pay after a successful conversion

•           Cost per Mille (CPM): cost per 1,000 impressions

•           Optimized Cost per Mille (OCPM)

•           Cost per Click (CPC)

•           Cost per View (CPV): ideal for video ads; 1 view = ad is played for at least 10 seconds

Toutiao ads are appropriate for all markets, including real estate, beauty, and retail.

The “New” oCPM Model Vs The Traditional CPA Model

Getting online sales leads may be the most important goal of advertising to B2B companies, just as getting direct sales may be the most important goal of advertising to B2C companies. Ad media, in response to this need, introduces a new performance bidding mode, CPA, in addition to the traditional CPM and CPC. In recent years, a new bidding mode called oCPM/oCPC has emerged. However, if you’re looking for impressions or clicks, traditional CPM/CPC bidding is sufficient.

oCPM, or Optimized “cost per mille” (cost per 1,000 impressions), shows your ad to people who are more likely to take the action you set as a goal at the lowest possible cost. oCPM shines in conversion-focused campaigns.

When it comes to conversion campaigns, marketers are more likely to use the CPA mode when it’s available, which makes sense on many platforms, but Toutiao is an exception. Toutiao’s powerful AI-enhanced machine learning ability also enables it to effectively find the right audience, which is why automated bidding modes like oCPM outperform traditional CPC/CPM/CPA on this platform.

Toutiao’ Campaign Lifecycle

Toutiao differs from other ad media in that it prefers new over old, whether in terms of targeting, ad copy, or landing pages. PPC ads even have a scoring system for each ad campaign, and the campaign with the best history performance (i.e. a high score) wins the bid and receives more exposure. WeChat campaigns can differentiate themselves with new targeting or ad copy, and a successful campaign can continue to bring in conversions. However, this is not the case with Toutiao.

Toutiao’s campaign lifecycle is short, and even your hottest campaign will go cold quickly. To achieve consistent results, you must set up quality campaigns on a regular basis and replace underperforming campaigns with new ones on a regular basis.

Secrets To Successful Ad Placement

Ad placement should vary depending on your objectives. While Full Cover ads are better suited to branding campaigns, feed ads are much more conversion oriented.

Marketing creatives are critical to the success of your campaign. Your marketing creatives should differ depending on which channel you are running your campaign on.

Set up the proper targeting to reach out to your most valuable customers. Toutiao can assist you in reaching your most important consumers in China based on gender, age, location, behaviour, and other factors.

In Closing

Toutiao, by utilizing AI technology, makes it simple and affordable for any foreign business to gain exposure in China and among global Chinese communities. The platform learns about the user and serves up more content tailored to their tastes. As a result, advertising on Toutiao increases the potential of the Chinese market for online businesses by providing curated content.

Digital Crew assists international businesses in taking advantage of the Toutiao platform and direct connection with Chinese consumers by employing similar SEO strategies to those used on other Chinese search engine platforms such as Baidu, Shenma, Sogou, and Qihoo 360. Get in touch with us to know more.