Implications of the WeChat Ban

September 25, 2020

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning WeChat in the United States. The order says along with the ban, Americans will be prohibited from carrying out any transactions with Tencent, WeChat’s parent company. This decision to ban the WeChat app will have serious long-term implications on consumers, American companies that have a large and significant presence in China and US-China relations as well.

 

WeChat is China’s most popular and useful messaging app with a monthly active user base of over 1 billion. WeChat’s popularity makes it the main form of communication among Chinese consumers. Even though many like to call WeChat a messaging tool, it’s much more than that. The app can be used for texting, voice or video calls, reading news, bill payments, taxis, and even games. It’s no wonder why WeChat is called a “super app” in China.

 

What’s the issue?

According to Donald Trump, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in India had asserted that the Chinese companies Tencent Holdings and Bytedance were allegedly stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data without authorization to servers outside India and that the US needed to ban any transactions on such apps as a protective measure as well. The United States wants “untrusted” Chinese apps to be removed from US app stores. And those “untrusted” apps belong to Chinese companies Tencent Holdings, the owner of WeChat, and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. The executive order said the government would ban WeChat and TikTok from operating in the US if they are not sold by their parent companies.

 

What’s the Impact?

WeChat’s ban in the US would cut off millions of Chinese-Americans from their friends, family and clients. Since WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter are banned in China, WeChat is the only app left the Chinese employees in America can use to communicate with their families back in the Mainland. While TikTok’s US operations may be sold to Microsoft, WeChat is unlikely to get a second chance which means American businesses and Universities will face a lot of issues communicating with their suppliers, manufacturing partners, dealers and even students in China.

Trump’s ban could also harm Apple’s supply chain since most of the company’s products are still assembled in China.

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An Overview of the E-commerce Market in China

September 18, 2020

China is at the top of the e-commerce market with its big players like Alibaba and JD.com.

It has more e-commerce activity than any other country in the world. In the year 2017, China’s e-commerce expenditure was more than $750bn online – more than the UK and US combined.

While some sectors of the economy struggle for survival in a sudden, new, harsh reality, e-commerce is faced with massive demand. Since many of us are confined to our homes, we mostly rely on online shopping, leading to great innovation in e-commerce. There are two key trends that are transforming e-commerce in China by adding entertainment to the mix: social buying and live commerce.

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Toutiao Advertising for Businesses in China

September 10, 2020

If you’re a new business in the Chinese media market, or if you know how the advertising industry works in China, Toutiao may or may not have been one of your top choices for platforms to advertise your business on. Toutiao is a popular destination for finding and curating content, offering a new and fresh way for your business to showcase itself with the help of its unique way of displaying ads.

 

What is Toutiao?

Toutiao is a news-reading app that runs on AI. The news aggregator organizes daily news from various media sources and gives recommendations on the homepage. Some can even say it’s the “most serious app” in China.

 

Toutiao Advertising

With over 120 million daily users, Toutiao has a somewhat complex algorithm that offers content tailored to its users based on their interest. On a daily basis, over 200,000 articles and videos are published and these appear directly in the feed of the user. Toutiao content is quite diverse as it is news-based and comes from private publishers, official media, and blogs.

Also, part of the advertising revenue is given to the content creators. What makes the platform even better for advertising is that all featured articles and videos are also selected based on the user location. It’s also important to know that users don’t need to follow your account in order to see your content, which is excellent for brand exposure.

 

Toutiao Advertising Formats

There are 3 different types of ad formats that Toutiao offers, and supports both picture and video display. Ads can be targeted to specific ages, gender, interests, keywords, regions, weather, time, occupations, phone carriers, phone operating systems, phone brands, and types of internet connection. Such a diverge targeting mechanism opens up a lot of opportunities for creative and effective advertising.

 

Full cover open ads: They cover the entire screen and include options of a wide large screen banner or a maximum of 3 smaller images.

Feeds ads: These come with several advertising styles including ads with text and an image, 3 smaller images, full-width image, image with call extension and app downloads.

Streaming feed ads: These types of ads blend as video format into the Toutiao feed for seamless user experience.

 

Charges for Toutiao Advertising?

Along with CPM (Cost per mille) and CPC (Cost per click), Toutiao provides 4 new ways for advertisers to bid on the platform including oCPM, oCPC, CPA and CPV.

oCPM/oCPC: oCPM (Optimized Cost per Mille) and oCPC (Optimized Cost per Click) run on the same ad methodology. They are quite similar to CPC, but also include an estimated conversion ratio which is based on audience behavior.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition): In this case, advertisers only pay when there is definite conversion.

CPV (Cost per View): This method only supports video ads. Here, advertisers pay for the number of views when the video ad plays for 10 seconds.

 

Benefits of Toutiao Advertising

 

  1. Toutiao ads allow brands to target groups that have certain apps on their phones. This is great for brands that want niche customers, but this is currently only available for Android phones.
  2. Geo-targeting options can bring more sales due to the fact that people living in the same areas usually have similar consumer habits. This can be good for a lot of offline retailers.
  3. Toutiao’s DMP allows brands to upload the audience traits of their existing followers, which brands could then use to find a similar ‘lookalike’ target audience.

 

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Live Streaming in China

September 4, 2020

Live video streaming is becoming very popular in China, especially amongst the internet youth. Its popularity is also growing, which could present some fantastic opportunities for companies who are implementing digital marketing strategies in their business plan. More than 400 million online viewers live stream in China, making it one of the most popular video formats. With over 200 livestreaming platforms focusing on different markets and viewers, it can function as a resourceful marketing tool at a fraction of the price.

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