If you’re a business that is new to the Chinese market, or even if you’ve familiar with how the advertising industry works in China, Toutiao may have not been on your radar for the list of platforms to advertise your business. The Toutiao app, which is a popular destination for finding and curating content, offers a unique way for your business to showcase itself with its unique way of displaying ads.
What is Toutiao?
Toutiao is an AI-based news reading app, but it rarely publishes any original content. Instead the news aggregator organizes daily news from various media sources and gives recommendations on the homepage.
Toutiao Advertising
Toutiao has over 120 million daily users and a complex algorithm that offers content tailored-made to each of its users based on their interest. Over 200,000 articles and videos are published on a daily basis and these ads appear right in the users’ feed. Toutiao content is quite diverse with content coming from private publishers, official media, brands, and blogs.
Furthermore, advertising revenue is shared with content creators. All featured articles and videos are also selected based on user location, which makes the platform even better for advertising. It’s also worth noting that users don’t have to following your account in order to see your content, which can be good for brand exposure.
How to open a Toutiao business account?
The Toutiao website is in Chinese so it would be useful to have someone who can read Chinese to help you set up your account.
- Go to the Toutiao official website. On the top left of the website click on 头条产品 (Toutiao product). Then select 头条号 (Toutiao ID) from the drop- down menu.
- Click on 注册 (Register) to register.
- You will be prompted to enter and verify your Chinese phone number. If you would like to register with an email address, click on 邮件注册 (Email registration).
- Once your Toutiao registration is complete, you will have to fill out information about your business. This includes selecting your account type (Educational group, NGO, personal media, etc.) and your account name. Your account name must be between 2-10 words and related to your business.
- After filling out your required business information, you need to write a short introduction that is between 10-30 characters that includes your contact information or business website. Then upload your profile picture.
- Upload an image of your business license with a max size of 2m.
- Then you will be required to download and fill in your company name, website, account name, ID of the account holder, signature, and company seal. Once this is complete, upload the scanned document.
- After desktop registration is complete, you will have to finish your ID verification via the mobile app. Search for the Toutiao app (今日头条).
- Enter the mobile number or email address that you used to register on the desktop version and verify your account.
- Once logged in, click on 我的 (my account). You will have to go through facial recognition and upload a picture of your ID card. Then you will have to read 4 numbers in Mandarin, which will be in a short video.
- It will take about 5 minutes to receive notification that your application is successful or not.
- Once your account is validated, you can start publishing on Toutiao.
Toutiao Advertising Formats
Toutiao offers 3 different types of ad formats and supports both picture and video display. The app supports targeting by age, gender, interest, keywords, region, weather, time, occupation, phone carrier, phone operating system, phone brand, and type of internet connection.
- Full cover open ads: Covers the entire screen and includes options of a wide large screen banner or a maximum of 3 smaller images.
- Feeds ads: Feeds ads come with a few different styles for advertising including ads with text and an image, 3 small images, full-width image, image with call extension, and app downloads.
- Streaming feed ads: These type of ads blend into the Toutiao feed and video formats for a seamless user experience.
How does Toutiao charge for advertising?
Along with CPM and CPC, Toutiao provides 4 unique ways for advertisers to make bids on the platform including oCPM, oCPC, CPA and CPV.
- oCPM/oCPC: oCPM (Optimized Cost per Millennium) and oCPC (Optimized Cost per Click) run on the same ad method. They are similar to CPC, but also includes in estimated conversion ratio based on audience behavior.
- CPA (Cost per Acquisition): Advertisers only pay when there is conversion.
- CPV (Cost per View): This method only supports videos ads, advertisers pay for number of views when the video ad plays for 10 seconds.
Benefits of Toutiao Advertising
- App targeting: Toutiao ads allow brands to target groups that have specifically installed certain apps on their phones. This is great for brands that want to find niche customers, but this is currently is only available for Android phones.
- Geo-targeting: This targeting option 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.
- Seed audience automation: Toutiao’s DMP allows brands to upload audience traits of their existing customers, which brands could then use to find a lookalike target audience.
Toutiao is a well-rounded platform where you can understand ad performance and develop personalized ads for the right audience. Please get in touch with our team to get the latest Toutiao marketing updates and gain more insights on which Toutiao ad is right for your business.
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