Wechat Advertising: The Ultimate Guide to WeChat Moments Ads

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be digging into each of WeChat’s advertising channels in order to help you determine which channels best suit your business.

In this week’s guide, we’ll take a look at WeChat Moments Ads and how to set them up.

In this step-by-step tutorial you will find detailed instructions on how to create ads in the WeChat backend.
We\’ve broken the process down into 9 simple steps that are each illustrated by a screen shot. Non-Chinese speakers rest assured, we\’ve even translated those screenshots so that you can follow each step with ease.

Want to follow our step-by-step guide and launch a WeChat ad campaign right away? Jump to part 5!

 

#1 What are WeChat Moments Ads and what do they look like?

 

To quote a popular advertising phrase, a WeChat moments ad does exactly what is says on the tin. WeChat moments ads give advertisers the opportunity to advertise within the Moments section, WeChat’s equivalent of Facebook’s news feed.
As it stands, WeChat moments ads are available in 2 formats, display ads and video ads.

Display Ads

1. Advertiser’s name and logo
2. Up to 40 characters ad description
3. Up to 6 images, depending on the budget you’re willing to invest
4. External link for more information (HTML5 webpage hosted on Tencent server or specific post of a WeChat official account)
5. User engagement (Likes & comments can only be seen by user’s friends)

You can also edit the external link text to encourage a specific action, such as “Download the app” or “Book your trip”.

Video Ads

1.  Advertiser’s name and logo
2. Up to 40 characters ad description
3. Video
4. User engagement (Likes & comments can only be seen by user’s friends)

 

#2 How can advertisers target users with moments ads?

 

WeChat Moments advertisers can target users based on various demographics such as location, gender, age, education, interests, device and telephone network. On top of that, WeChat have allegedly started recruiting a bunch of top-notch marketing managers and data analysts from competing internet companies in an effort to better serve the needs of marketers and dig into the massive amounts of data at their disposal.

WeChat are fully aware that the main challenge when introducing advertising to any website or mobile-app is to provide marketers with targeted & efficient advertising options that get results without compromising on user experience. Indeed, the best way to please both parties is to distribute advertisements in such a way that users feel the advertisements they encounter are relevant to them.

 

#3 How does WeChat distribute impressions?

 

Once you’ve configured your targeting preferences, WeChat identifies key active users and starts targeting them with your ads. Ads only appear if the user has a minimum of four new updates in their moments, meaning the ad will appear in the fifth spot behind 4 organic updates. If the ad doesn’t receive any likes or comments in the first 6 hours, the ad will automatically disappear from that user’s newsfeed. If however a user interacts with the ad in those 6 hours, there’s a good chance his or her friends will receive the same ad. Ads are active for seven days and each WeChat user will only see one ad every 48 hours.

It’s also important to keep in mind that for the sake of user experience, WeChat users can turn off individual ads thanks to the “Not Interested” button that accompanies each ad.

 

#4 How much does it cost to advertise through WeChat Moments Ads?

 

WeChat moments advertising is charged on a CPM basis, meaning you pay a fixed amount for one thousand impressions. According to WeChat, impressions are triggered when the ad appears in the newsfeed or when a user clicks on the external link or engages with the ad (likes & comments).
Most marketers will be surprised to hear that interactions count as impressions, as they would normally be defined as clicks, but WeChat clearly see things differently. Each user can only account for 1 impression every 5 minutes and 8 impressions in total.

Coming back to the CPM payment model, the unit price of these 1000 impressions depends on the advertising area you wish to target. Furthermore, video ads are slightly more pricey than their display counterparts. (by 20% to be exact).

WeChat defines 3 separate advertising areas; Core cities, key cities and normal cities. Beijing and Shanghai are the 2 core cities while there are 35 major cities including Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shenzhen among others. Normal cities are all other cities, excluding any central or major cities.
The table below displays CPM unit prices depending on the advertising area and ad format (display or video).

For your information, the list of key cities is as follows: Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Suzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Xian, Shenyang, Changsha, Qingdao, Ningbo, Chengzhou, Dalian, Xiamen, Jinan, Haarbin, Fuzhou, Shijiazhuang, Urumqi, Lanzhou, Xining, Yingchuan, Taiyuan, Hefei, Guiyang, Kunming, Nanning, Lhasa, Nanchang, Changchun, Haikou, Hohhot.

Companies that wish to advertise on WeChat moments must invest a minimum budget of 50,000 RMB, although different levels of budget get you different functionalities. For example, a minimum budget will get you one photo in your display ad while those willing to invest 5 million RMB can publish up to 6 photos.
The table below displays the different functions you’ll get depending on your budget.

If these pre-booked CPM packs aren’t your cup of tea, real-time bidding is also available but requires a minimum spend of at least 1,000RMB per day.

#5 How to setup WeChat Moments Ads

 

Now that we’ve got a good grasp on what Moments Ads look like and how they work, let’s take a step-by-step look at the process of setting up Moments ads in the WeChat backend.

STEP 1: LOG IN TO THE WECHAT BACKEND  

 

STEP 2: GO TO THE AD SECTION ON THE LEFT-HAND SIDE AND CHOOSE TO CREATE A MOMENTS AD

 

 

 

STEP 3: CHOOSE THE PROMOTION TYPE OF YOUR AD AND SELECT A PURCHASE METHOD

 

Choosing the promotion type means defining the purpose of your ad. WeChat allows you to choose between promoting an official WeChat account or mobile app and generating brand exposure.

PS: The third and final box refers to the name of the advertisement.

 

STEP 4: SELECT YOUR LAUNCH TIME AND TARGET AUDIENCE

 

STEP 5: SET YOUR BUDGET

 

STEP 6-1: EDIT THE ADVERTISEMENT (DETAILS TEMPLATE)

 

In this specific example, we’ve chosen to link to a details template instead of an official account article. The next few steps will take you through the 3 different template types you can choose from.

 

A) BRAND ACTIVITY INTRODUCTION TEMPLATE

 

B) INFORMATION-COLLECTION IMAGE TEMPLATE

 

C) INFORMATION-COLLECTION VIDEO TEMPLATE

 

 

STEP 6-2: OR WE CAN CHOOSE TO PROMOTE AN OFFICIAL ACCOUNT ARTICLE

Once you’ve configured your targeting preferences, set your budget and edited the look and functionality of your ad, you can move on to steps 7 and 8 which involve contacting a Tencent customer service representative and previewing your ad before its launch.

STEP 7: CONTACT THE TENCENT CS

 

 

STEP 8: DOUBLE CHECK THE DEMO BEFORE LAUNCHING THE AD

 

 

STEP 9: ANALYZING THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR AD

Fortunately for us marketers, WeChat enables us to get all sorts of performance data including impression data, interaction data and sharing data.

 

#6 Are WeChat Moments Ads right for you?

 

It goes without saying that WeChat Moments Ads are much more expensive than WeChat’s other advertising channels. There is a high barrier to entry – a minimum investment volume of 50,000 RMB – and certain advanced ad functionalities require much more than that.

WeChat Moments Ads are more in line with the needs of well-known brands with big advertising budgets whereas small and medium-sized businesses are better suited to WeChat’s cheaper advertising options such as CPC advertising and banner ads.

Keep your eyes peeled for next week’s blog post in which we’ll take a deeper look at WeChat’s other advertising channels.

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