Have you received ads from Wechat?

By L'Atelier - Shanghai

The screenshot of Wechat ads (the second turn) are posts a lot in the Wechat moment last Sunday. People are seems more interested in what kind of ads they received than the ads' content. Wechat send different people with different ads - BMW, Coco Cola and Vivo. According to some grapevines, Wechat ads aimed at a certain group - riches, teens and white-collar workers, which are in the different level of income.

It is written by Hanna Chen, Analyst Consultant of L'Atelier Asia

Wechat began the ads service a week ago and caused a stir online. From the repost, ads are pushed to 200 million Wechat users in one day and cost 9 million RMB for each advertiser. According to BMW repost, during the 17 hours (25th 20:45 - 26th 12:00), the total exposure was 46 million and gained 200,000 followers. It could be a good deal for the big brand, but is that what users want? Some sites hold a voting for the users' attitude and it shows that about 40% to 50% users consider it as the commercial harassment, and more than 23% users think the commercialization of Wechat is understandable. Wechat claims that they are doing the precision marketing and trying to push the ads the user likes. Actually, users could choose 'Not interested in it' which hide in the 'Promotion' pull-down list, or could choose to follow the 'Wechat group' account (the one automatically added to users' friend list and promote the ads) or not. But still, people not really like it or might a little resistant.

We can find the ads in each social media, since this kind of business model is widely used and earning profit is the core for companies. But how to keep the user is also an issue for everyone. Kaixin, Renren, even Weibo, no one could avoid the recession after the peak. And people are always chasing the new things especially in the rapid-changing world. It's hard to say whether the commercial ads will reduce Wechat customer base. But if it's the case, Wechat definitely need to find a more innovative way to keep the balance between user and profit.

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