2024年 12月 13日 -

In the dynamic landscape of digital advertising, China’s advertising ecosystem has developed unique characteristics that set it apart from the global market. This article delves into specific advertising formats that are not commonly seen abroad but have gained significant attention in China. Furthermore, we analyze popular advertising strategies that have made a splash internationally but remain largely unknown in the Chinese market. By examining these differences, this article will help brands to better understand which advertising formats in the Chinese advertising market will be more conducive to business growth.

Elevator Advertising

China is one of the most populous countries in the world, with a high urban population density, especially in residential communities and commercial office buildings. Elevators, as a necessary facility in high-rise buildings, provide a high-frequency exposure opportunity for advertising as a large number of people pass through them every day.

The widespread application of digital advertising screens makes elevator advertising more dynamic and colorful, and even achieves precise push and interactivity, enhancing the attractiveness of advertising. Compared with traditional television, radio, or large outdoor advertising, elevator advertising has a relatively low cost and is more flexible in placement, which can be selectively placed based on specific attributes of the target audience. In addition, the space inside the elevator is relatively closed, and there are fewer interference factors in the display of advertisements. Passengers often have nothing to do when waiting for or riding in the elevator, which increases the attention and memory of the advertisement.

Advertisers can achieve precise placement after understanding the characteristics of the residents or office workers of the target building, including age, gender, occupation, and other information, and combine creative content with memorable points, using multimedia forms such as video and sound to improve the expressiveness and interactivity of elevator advertising. By using QR codes, NFC, and other technologies, online and offline connections are realized to guide the audience to further interact.

Splash Screen Advertising

Splash screen advertising is mainly used to display a previously cached advertising content (pictures, animations, videos) or re-requested advertising when an APP is opened. While displaying the advertising content, some preparatory operations of the application can also be done. The implementation process is not complicated and is more commonly used in mobile advertising in China.

Most foreign APPs are simple and direct. Users do not like to see an advertisement that is unrelated to the software after opening the APP, such as YouTube, Facebook, etc., which are all directly a logo screen. However, some domestic APPs are in a monopolistic position, and users have no choice. But too frequent advertisements will directly affect the user experience. If there is a splash screen advertisement that makes users wait for 3 to 5 seconds every time the application is launched, it will make people feel annoyed and may even uninstall the APP, so publishers need to reasonably set the number and interval of advertisements to balance revenue and user experience.

Some mobile apps in China with splash screen advertising include: CTV apps such as Mango and iQiyi; UGC social apps such as Zhihu; Knowledge apps such as Youdao and Youdao Cloud Notes; Photo editing apps such as Meitu Xiuxiu; Travel apps such as Gaode Map, Ctrip, and Tongcheng, etc.

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Lock Screen Advertising

The implementation of lock screen advertising is relatively more complex, requiring a background service to listen to the system’s boot, unlock, lock screen, and other broadcasts to replace the system’s lock screen interface with advertising content. It also uses the notification bar, desktop widgets as advertising spaces, but all require the user to apply for authorization to disturb the user. With the update of the Android system, the management of background resident tasks will only be more stringent. Compared with other forms of advertising, such as TV and outdoor advertising, lock screen advertising has a lower cost and is easy to measure the effect, so it is favored by advertisers.

Chinese users spend a long time on the mobile Internet every day on average, and frequent lock and unlock operations increase the exposure opportunities of lock screen advertising. Chinese users have a relatively high acceptance of lock screen advertising, especially when it can provide some instant information or small rewards.

Foreign Google Play has strict policy constraints, in addition to applications specifically developed for the lock screen function, other applications are not allowed to provide advertising or features that profit through the device’s lock screen. Therefore, lock screen advertising is not common abroad.

When advertisers place lock screen advertising, they need to pay attention to designing simple and attractive advertising content to ensure that users can quickly grab attention before unlocking. At the same time, avoid designing advertisements that are too cumbersome or interfere with normal use, and control the frequency of advertising display to avoid causing user dissatisfaction.

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Email Advertising

This article will also examine some advertising phenomena that have caused a sensation on the international stage but have not yet had a significant impact in China. Among them, email advertising, which is a favorite of foreign advertisers, finds it difficult to win the market in China for the following reasons:

The popularity of social media

In China, social media platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, QQ, Xiaohongshu, and others are very popular. People are more inclined to use these platforms for communication and to receive information, rather than email.

E-commerce Ecology

China’s e-commerce ecosystem has developed rapidly, and consumers are more accustomed to receiving promotional information directly through online shopping platforms, which usually appear in the form of app push notifications or text messages.

Advertising Regulations

China’s internet advertising regulations have strict stipulations for email advertising, requiring senders to comply with relevant laws and regulations, which increases the operational cost and compliance requirements of email advertising.

User Habits

Chinese users generally rely less on email, and many may not check their mailboxes frequently, resulting in relatively lower open and conversion rates for email advertising.

Mobile First

Most of China’s internet users spend their time on mobile devices, and the email client experience on mobile devices is usually not as good as on PC, which also reduces the frequency of users receiving advertising through email.

Therefore, for advertisers, from the perspective of interactive effects, SMS advertising and mobile advertising in China can perfectly replace email advertising.

Source of featured image: Photo by Magda Vrabetz on Unsplash

In China, the rapid development of the internet industry has become a thing of the past. Faced with increasingly precious traffic, brands and advertisers need to put in more effort to “explore” and manage. Advertising monitoring naturally becomes an indispensable part of the advertising placement industry chain. Through advertising monitoring, advertisers can understand the effectiveness of their placements and further optimize strategies to gradually improve the return on investment. This article will explore how advertising monitoring is implemented in the Chinese market and what the current state of advertising monitoring is like.

What to monitor?

In China, advertisers also focus on the exposure, clicks, and in-app interaction effects of advertisements.

Exposure Monitoring: Also known as “impression monitoring,” it is usually the channel vendors who pass the data back to the advertisers.

Click Monitoring: Monitoring the number of clicks, which can be collected by the advertisers themselves or passed back by the channel vendors through data transmission.

In-App Monitoring: Refers to the monitoring of behaviors/events within the APP, such as basic PV, UV, APP activation/registration/login, etc., and user retention on the next day, 7 days, 30 days, pay rate, ARPU value, etc. These data are generally collected through the integration of third-party monitoring companies’ SDKs within the app, and the interfaces provided by different apps will vary.

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Advertising Monitoring Process

To monitor the effectiveness of advertisements, advertisers fill in the corresponding monitoring address when creating the smallest unit of an advertisement, which is the creative. The monitoring URL generally includes the following macros: creative ID or advertisement ID identifier, user device identifier, IP, UA, operating system, etc., and special ones may include CLICKID, CALLBACK.

The entire monitoring process can be roughly divided into three steps:

Advertisers/ad agencies place advertisements with media outlets. When users browse and click on the advertisements, the media will report the data to the advertiser or a third-party advertising monitoring platform. Common third-party platforms include: Umeng, adMaster, and Miaozhen.
After users click on the advertisement, they enter the landing page and participate in the advertising activities, such as downloading and launching the APP. After completing a series of operations, the APP uploads the user data to the advertising monitoring platform through the corresponding interface. Of course, other interactive media such as websites and H5 can also monitor the interaction data from the source of the advertisement through tracking codes and embedded points.
After attribution through certain methods, the user’s relevant data will be associated with the channel merchant and ultimately fed back to the advertiser/ad agency.

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Data Reporting Methods for Advertising Monitoring: SDK & API

Advertising data monitoring in China is mainly implemented through SDK and API methods. The technical principles of the two are the same, both collecting user information and transmitting it back to the monitoring platform’s server for comparison. For example, when a user clicks on an advertisement link with tracking parameters, the monitoring platform collects the user’s IP, operating system version, device model, and other information through the link and stores it.

If a user clicks on an advertisement and is redirected to the App Store to download and activate the APP online, the APP will also collect all the user information stored by the monitoring platform.

Then, by matching the information collected when clicking on the link with the information collected after downloading and activating, subsequent conversion and other indicators can be monitored.

The SDK method is simple, easy to use, and powerful. Media outlets integrate SDKs into their Apps, and after completing certain development work, they can meet the vast majority of the needs of third parties and advertisers, with high accuracy and real-time performance.

The API method is flexible, versatile, and applicable to both Apps and mobile web pages. However, it requires media outlets to undertake some development work in accordance with API monitoring standards. API monitoring is divided into two types: C2S (Client to Server) API and S2S (Server to Server) API.

C2S, or Client to Server, refers to the terminal issuing a request instruction to the order placement proxy server. After the terminal receives and completes the instruction, it sends the completed instruction to the third-party monitoring proxy server, which conducts accurate traffic monitoring through mutual counting. Under the C2S model, user actions are directly reported to the third-party monitoring platform’s server, ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of the data. Renowned brand advertisers such as AdMaster and Nielsen often prefer this method to ensure seamless traffic authenticity verification.

S2S, or Server to Server, refers to the terminal issuing a request instruction to the order placement proxy server and then sending the completed instruction back to the order placement proxy server, which in turn sends the data to the third-party monitoring proxy server. This design may affect the timeliness of monitoring data while protecting user privacy, as it requires additional steps. Media outlets sometimes opt for S2S as an alternative strategy due to concerns over data security and may not support C2S monitoring.

C2S is more accurate and can reduce media cheating, commonly used by brand advertisers, but C2S requires client releases for each monitoring, making the implementation more complex.

Click Monitoring Methods: Synchronous Monitoring & Asynchronous Monitoring

Synchronous monitoring integrates the monitoring code with the landing page link. When a user clicks on an advertisement, they first visit the monitoring link, jump to the monitoring company’s server, and then jump to the landing page. Synchronous monitoring ensures the immediacy of the monitoring but may affect the user experience. In addition, synchronous monitoring does not support the transmission of parameters such as IDFA.

Asynchronous monitoring, on the other hand, directly redirects users to the landing page after clicking on the advertisement, with the media server sending a monitoring request to the monitoring company’s server. The asynchronous mode ensures a good user experience, but data transmission may be delayed. Moreover, since the request is sent by the server, the visits collected by the monitoring company all come from the same IP segment. If the client is targeting a specific city, determining the region solely based on the IP can lead to significant geographical discrepancies.

Current State of Advertising Monitoring

The mainstream third-party advertising media monitoring tools in China are TrackMaster introduced by AdMaster and AdMonitor introduced by Miaozhen. However, some dominant media outlets refuse third-party monitoring:

The first kind is top-tier vertical media, mainly out of concern for protecting their own data, fearing that clients obtaining the data will affect the media’s valuation and traffic value.
The second kind is dominant internet platforms, which often provide their own developed monitoring tools to clients.

Brands and advertisers must monitor advertising to better understand the effects, prevent data fraud, and continuously optimize the media mix, timing, geography, and creativity using the data obtained. The choice of monitoring mode depends on factors such as the brand’s demand for traffic authenticity, user privacy protection, and system compatibility between both parties. As the market evolves, China’s advertising monitoring methods may continue to evolve to adapt to the ever-changing advertising environment.

Source of featured image: Photo by Andrew Garrison on Unsplash