After Desire won the promotion resources of Li Gouzi's Weibo, the Wall Street Journal dedicated a page to analyze Desire's actions. They came to a conclusion based on Desire's recent skyrocketing popularity on the Internet, skyrocketing sales, and rapidly expanding sales channels: Desire's 26 million US dollars of advertising investment, if it wanted to achieve the same effect in traditional media, it would need at least 180 million US dollars.
This price was not an exaggeration.
Coca-Cola invests about 3 billion US dollars in advertising costs every year to maintain their global exposure. Only 3 billion US dollars can be exchanged for a real household name around the world.
If Desire wanted to be as well-known as Coca-Cola, the actual cost of such a brand would be far more than 3 billion US dollars. After all, pet products were still a subdivided vertical field. It was not as widely applicable as Coca-Cola. It was closer to its own vertical users, but at the same time, it was further away from other users.
After this auction, Desire not only became popular online, but also received a large number of traditional media publicity resources offline. So, in summary, the strength of this publicity was unprecedented in the entire advertising field.
Even if Coca-Cola invested 3 billion USD in marketing every year, the 3 billion USD would only be distributed to hundreds of countries and regions around the world. Depending on the media and channels, the 3 billion USD would be distributed to hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of countries and regions around the world. It was impossible to find a single USD that was more effective than this one.
This made Mars so regretful that it wished it could kill a few executives as a sacrifice to the heavens. Such a great advantage had been taken away by Desire right under its nose. Not only did it make Mars regretful, but it also made Mars feel a huge competitive pressure.
Desire's instant popularity let the world see the great value implied by self-media. For a time, all accounts with a large number of fans on Weibo, Titter, became the choice of advertising targets for advertisers. Especially the stars' Weibo, the price was simply rising. For example, a star with millions of fans may post an advertisement for 150,000 in the morning, and in the afternoon, it may be inflated to 300,000.
Moreover, many companies and individuals who saw business opportunities began to actively operate their own self-media accounts on Weibo, hoping to achieve the effect of quickly gathering fans.
Li Mu spent two nights finishing all the arrangements of "21 Guns" with the recording musicians of Rolling Stone Records. When he came to Makino Technology early the next morning, a group of executives found him and asked him to host a meeting. The core content of the meeting was how to deal with the crazy advertising heat of the platform at this stage.
In the senior management team of Makino Technology, there were two camps regarding this issue.
On the one hand, he felt that he should encourage and promote the advertising market of Weibo Titter and further increase the value of the entire Weibo Titter. He should even set up an advertising distribution platform in Weibo Titter.
The so-called advertising distribution platform was because the executives of this camp believed that if they allowed the verified accounts to use Weibo Titter to make money, then Weibo Titter should have a certain share of the income. Otherwise, it would be completely benefiting others, and the invisible loss would be too great.
As for the advertising distribution platform, it was necessary to get all the advertising outlets to Weibo Titter itself. For example, it was clearly required that all users were not allowed to accept advertisements privately. All the verified accounts who wanted to accept advertisements had to first access the advertising distribution platform. They could only take jobs from the advertising distribution platform, and the advertising distribution platform itself was actually a middleman to earn the price difference.
For example, if a facial mask brand wanted to find Du Wei's personal Weibo to promote once, then they must find an advertising distribution platform. The distribution platform would increase the price by about 30% according to Du Wei's quotation to the company. At that time, they would get a 10% commission from Du Wei, which would basically achieve a gross profit margin of 40%.
On the other hand, some people felt that Weibo Titter could not cultivate the advertising market endlessly. If that happened, the entire Weibo Titter would be flooded with advertisements, which would affect the quality of the entire platform and even cause the platform to lose a lot of users.
Li Mu came to the meeting room and spent more than half an hour listening to the opinions of both sides. Then, he smiled and said, "There are two sides to everything. If you drive too fast, you will naturally consume more gas. It's just like our platform's attitude towards advertising. If you allow them to carry out advertising transactions freely and don't stop them, then the overall advertising volume of the platform will definitely increase rapidly and affect the user experience. But if you don't allow them to carry out advertising transactions freely, then everyone will not be able to see how to cash in, and their own motivation will be greatly affected."
When Li Mu said this, he paused for a moment and said, "Before we look at the problem in detail, we must first make it clear that we are a mega enterprise that covers the entire internet and even plans to cover the offline market. So, in front of our grand strategy, we will never consider vertical. Once we do, our scope will also become smaller. So, we must find a balanced way to deal with everything."
Kong Lingyu said, "Li Zong, what about the model of the advertising platform? The good thing about this model is that we can control the volume of advertising on the entire platform. It's like we have a valve in our hands. When we need it, we can open it. When we don't need it, we can also turn it down or even turn it off. "
Li Mu said, "Building a specialized advertising platform and letting the platform completely control all the advertising business is a manifestation of the platform's control, but this kind of platform hegemony is too obvious. We can't take this path."
Kong Lingyu said, "Li Zong, the platform and traffic are all ours. It's actually natural for us to set up such a control unit …"
Li Mu nodded and said, "Of course it's natural for us to set up such a control unit. But if we change to a softer and more open method, we will become a clear stream in the internet platform field."
Li Mu hoped that Makino Technology would become a large closed loop in the industry. This closed loop would make other competitors in the industry look up to it and be amazed. But he did not hope that Makino Technology would also become a closed loop at the user level.
If a platform wanted to achieve a closed loop at the user level, it would usually be because they cherished their reputation.
They did not want others to snatch their users, they did not want others to cash in on their users and platform, and they did not want others to use their users to incubate their business.
In Li Mu's eyes, this kind of mentality was too cherishing of their reputation.
And he felt that platforms that cherished their reputation too much would usually find it difficult to develop and grow.
For example, Baidu's control of the traffic in their platform could be said to be extremely strict. Their keyword bidding system was completely linked to the user's search behavior and profits. They sold countless keywords in the hope that every search by the user would bring them profits. Therefore, no matter what keywords the user searched for, the top search would usually be advertisements, squeezing out the potential value of the user.
In products like Baidu, Baidu had also set up a very powerful screening mechanism to try to identify as many users as possible who posted advertisements. They would instantly delete the advertisements posted in Baidu that they knew and permanently ban all users who posted advertisements or were only suspected of posting advertisements. They would do their best to prevent others from diverting traffic from their products. This was a manifestation of extreme cherishing of their reputation.
What was even more ridiculous was that even a knowledge encyclopedia like Baidu was mixed with a huge relationship of interests. It was extremely difficult for an ordinary user to create an encyclopedia and pass the review. But if one chose to spend money, it could be done in minutes.
For such a company, as an ordinary Internet user or an ordinary Internet entrepreneur, not to mention picking up a few strands of their hair, even if it was dandruff, they would take it away themselves. They would not let anyone have it. If they wanted to have it, they could pay for it.
If a company did this, it would be difficult for it to become a leader in this industry. It would only become a slave to money. Li Mu did not want Makino Technology's platform to follow Baidu's path in the future.
Although Ali and Tencent in the future did not completely open their platforms to users, they still gave users a lot of moderate freedom. For example, WeChat's public account, in such a huge group of media, WeChat basically did not guard against external links, unless the other party's link was a Taobao product link or a link that violated the law. This proved that WeChat was not worried that its users would be snatched away by the public account owner. This was also a manifestation of the platform's confidence.
Moreover, WeChat's public account had never asked to control the freedom of all the account owners' advertising, let alone to share the profits. This was also a manifestation of the platform's confidence. There were really not many platforms that could really do this.
But Baidu was different. External links were a very sensitive existence in Baidu. Basically, more than 90% of the external links published by users would be killed by Baidu in various ways. This was because Baidu was afraid that its users would overflow through these external links. It was afraid that others would use its users to support its projects and earn the money it should earn.
Therefore, Li Mu could not set up a platform on Weibo Titter to control the advertising. He must give users enough freedom.
Of course, the freedom left to the users must also be appropriately restricted. Otherwise, if everyone published advertisements without restrictions, the platform would immediately become a gathering place for spam.
After pondering for a while, Li Mu said, "Our Weibo Titter must find a moderate solution. In the future, we must not be obsessed with the income brought by advertising. Otherwise, our platform will be flooded with a large number of rubbish advertisements, which will affect our users' experience. But we also can't let the users make all the decisions. Therefore, in my management philosophy, we need to formulate a set of reasonable and convincing game rules. Everyone will play according to the rules and live in harmony with each other."
After saying that, Li Mu continued, "My idea is, first, to limit the spam content of every Weibo Titter account. For example, an ordinary account can only publish a total of ten Weibo posts per day. This is actually already enough to meet the needs of most normal users.
Secondly, we will carry out three judgment logics, which are algorithmic screening, assisted manual review, and user complaints. If the spam content exceeds 10%, 30%, and 50%, what kind of punishment will be given. For example, we will restrict posting, restrict following, forcibly deduct fans, ban, or permanent ban.
Thirdly, all the platforms that accept advertisements must be responsible for the products they accept advertisements for. First, they must not advertise for any products that have no quality. Second, if there is a problem with the advertised product, the account owner will also have to bear the responsibility. If it is light, the account owner will be punished. If it is heavy, the account owner will be banned.
Finally, only traffic owners are allowed to spread advertisements. No company or individual is allowed to put advertisements on Weibo's major rankings in any way. As a platform, what we present to our users must be quality content! "
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