Explosive money on TikTok is equivalent to picking up money

When a TikTok advertisement with a cost of 10,000 yuan "explodes", the commission can be as high as 1.5 million. But making explosive money is also a metaphysics.

The advertisement for "Rolls Royce" exploded in TikTok!

"Rolls Royce" is a synonym for an ad in TikTok. The ad started with the logo of a black Rolls-Royce, and then a little girl carrying a blue schoolbag stepped onto the Rolls-Royce angrily and shouted to the female president in a black suit next to her: "Hmph! I blame you, I know I'm busy with work! I didn't register for the XXXX special training class, now I can't register for the name!"

The female president Erlang tilted her legs and turned her head to the window and muttered: "Who knew that this class is so cheap, there are really teachers from Tsinghua and Peking University..." The mother and daughter introduced the brand advantages in the form of "quarrels". Later, the male assistant next to him immediately helped the president regain the registration quota, and told the users who were watching this video: "Click on the link below the video to register."

This advertisement "exploded"-an advertisement directly brought more than 200,000 course orders to the brand, and the total consumption (spending money) in the advertising system exceeded 30 million.

Calculated on the basis of the rebate rate of more than 5% of the head agency, this information flow advertisement has made at least 1.5 million for the advertising company that produces this video. And the cost of hiring actors and renting a car is evenly spread across multiple sets of films. The cost of this advertisement is less than 10,000 yuan-which is more than 150 times the rate of return.

Copy this hot style right away!

On the day of seeing this hot product, the producers of the information flow advertising industry immediately did the same thing: contact the female president, male assistant and little girl in this video to ask for the schedule, and at the same time find channels to rent a luxury car. , "If you can't find the three actors in this movie at the end, then find actors with similar temperaments!"

"That week and a half of the circle of friends were looking for them." Junjun is the head of the unlimited information flow business on the palm. After she posted to find the three starring circle of friends, the message she received the most was "tell me after you find it." Let me thank you."

In this video, the assistant actor: "The WeChat of the day was blown up. Hundreds of people added him and asked him if there is a schedule in the last week." Some people couldn't find his WeChat, so they left a message on Weibo that he hadn't updated in many years: "I am a producer from XXX company and want to have a cooperation with you."

In less than 48 hours, hundreds of similar videos appeared backstage of ads: all were equipped with luxury cars: Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, and then staged a plot of the president grabbing lessons. What's more, helicopters and cruise ships were hired as backgrounds-everyone wanted to hit an explosive advertisement in the shortest possible time.

This is the video advertising market with the rise of TikTok. Before 2017, information flow advertising was mainly based on pictures and texts, and the content was immediately known. Although it could explain the selling point clearly, it was far inferior to the short video. Short video could make the product scene and effect concrete, and at the same time use immersion. , The three-dimensional plot stimulates users to believe and transform.

Therefore, compared with the smooth effect of graphic advertisements, the video format is more likely to produce explosives, and it has spawned a "pull new myth" that a video brings hundreds of thousands of orders.

When it comes to TikTok, everyone knows "Aunt Qingdao" and "Luo Wangyu", but they don't remember which advertisement they have seen. Even many users sometimes don't realize that this is just an advertisement. In the Rolls-Royce advertisement, many users were brought in by the plot and left a message below: "You make so much money, why can't you give your children a lesson!"

This area that is most easily overlooked by users is the fastest realizing nuggets in TikTok.

During the bonus period of this gold mine, some practitioners call it "money picking": a small team of 4 people can easily make tens of thousands of dollars a day, and the grassroots team can also make millions of income.

A practitioner once described it like this: From the industry contempt chain recognized by the general public, it seems to be "web drama> web comprehensive> brand advertising> short video advertising", but as everyone knows, the logic of making money is the reverse, the flow of information Advertising is the most profitable industry.

Its threshold is lower than that of making IP: "It doesn't take three months to raise an IP, to accumulate millions of fans to receive business orders, and there is no need to worry about the life cycle of an IP which is only a few months. Just shoot an idea right away. The account in the advertising backend can directly give feedback on how much money you can withdraw from this video. The greater the amount of a video, the more you earn."

But at the same time, under the premise that the advertisement and the normal content are in the same location and form, the requirements for the advertisement content are extremely high, because users can slip away at any time.

In this market, the vast majority of advertisements will be abandoned by the algorithm immediately after testing in the small traffic pool of TikTok because they cannot bring conversions. They can't get more traffic, and they can hardly bring any return-this Advertisements are abolished, and such advertisements account for 99% of the market. For ads with high conversion rates, advertisers will tilt their budgets and focus on advertising until it enters a period of recession.

"This is the most competitive and unpredictable area in TikTok." A head agency for information flow advertising described this way.

Frantically working advertising machine

Few content industries, like the information flow advertising industry, make creative speed into "wholesale" production.

In this industry, a group of directors often produces hundreds of videos a month, and each video is produced within 48 hours from production to online. Most of the content will be eliminated by the algorithm within two weeks, and there will no longer be any chance of exposure.

The advertisement of "Rolls Royce" took only 21 hours from creative to launch.

Knowing that the producer had booked a car at the wedding company and was about to shoot in the afternoon, the director wrote six sets of Rolls-Royce-themed scripts in one go in the morning. At noon, the director, camera, actors, and cars were all in place to start shooting; six sets After the video was filmed, at 6 pm, I switched to being an editor and went home to edit the film. After the third version was changed, the content was confirmed that night; the next morning, six sets of Rolls-Royce-themed materials began to be in TikTok. Serve.

On the morning the material was cast, the cameraman of "Rolls-Royce" and actor Yichen Zhang Yuanyuan bet: "I feel like I'm going to earn back the money from renting the Rolls-Royce." At noon that day, this video had consumed several million yuan; in less than 15 days, this video had consumed 30 million yuan in the backstage of TikTok—a rare big hit.

While this "Rolls Royce" defeated countless other advertisements in the backstage of TikTok and continuously converted users, this group of directors is on the way to the Badaling Airport. Today, this group of directors is going to shoot another scene with a helicopter. A set of films. The Rolls-Royce burst, and the filming speed of this group of planes must be faster.

"A group of movies will explode, and hundreds of similar advertisements will appear soon. Because your scripts, shots, scenes, and plots have all been exposed, the cost of the remake is very low, and even the other party can directly invite the same. Actors from here come to remake it, because the circle is so big, and the explosion of luxury cars, everyone can also think of looking for planes and cruises to make attractive scenes."

For luxury cars, airports, golf courses, racecourses, and costumes, the choreographer team rushes forward almost every day. In this industry, a group of directors have to shoot and cut 5-10 complete works a day, while actors have to shoot at least 20 commercials a day.

The actor Yichen still remembers that on the most day, he shot 40 commercials in 8 hours. That was after the "Rolls Royce" exploded, Yichen also exploded two tens of millions of single-cast ads, because there were many cases of explosions and became the leading actors in the information flow industry.

In this industry, actors sign work contracts on a daily basis and circulate among various advertising companies. For most companies pursuing explosive volume, choosing explosive actors means greater certainty. In less than two months, the price of Yichen's shooting has risen to 6000 yuan/8 hours of shooting-this is the top price for TikTok advertising actors. Since Yichen is invited at this price, most of the choreographers will choose to "squeeze him dry." Every minute".

"The director took 40 sets of scripts that day, all of which were just finished the day before. The 40 scripts were printed out on A4 paper and stacked together. They were almost as thick as Cihai. I put the script on the table and the director turned around and moved out. A box of Red Bulls came in, and the door was unlocked and the filming was opened. A total of four groups of editors came and took turns to shoot. Each of them left after taking ten shots and changed to the next group. Within 8 hours, all 40 shots were shot, and it took no one minute. Over time," Even for regular shooting, shooting 20 to 30 shots in 8 hours and 600 shots a month is the norm for actors in this industry.

Mass production, rapid growth and death are the characteristics of TikTok advertising. In this channel, the head company has to cast hundreds of advertisements every day, and the peak business period can reach thousands of advertisements every day.

Brands have a great demand for advertising, which is related to the mechanism of TikTok advertising: the delivery effect is linked to the quality of the advertising account, and the quality of the account requires a steady stream of new materials to maintain. At the same time, the materials generally have a period of decline. Will be eliminated within two weeks of launch.

Another reason is that different groups of people have different selling points that can be impressed. Take the financial management class as an example. Some people are for wealth appreciation, some are for family, and some are for confidence. Each selling point corresponds to different plots, scenes and actors. Suppliers need to keep trying, and then screen out explosives and focus on placements. .

The number of explosions and the extremely strong effect of explosions make the change of TikTok's wind direction both rapid and elusive.

Wang Yan, a market leader who has invested billions in TikTok, "The ecology of TikTok is too complicated. We also hope that there are some fixed formulas for popular models, but it is really not about using stars and using Internet celebrities will definitely be able to run when they come to shoot. Sometimes users prefer to look at the native style of TikTok. If you shoot too positively, users may not like to watch it. The wind direction keeps changing."

In the content of TikTok, "Golden First Look" is the first threshold for information flow short video advertising. Jun Jun told: "The first 3 seconds must be nailed to the user at once. Usually, conflicts or contradictions are placed here, a cup is thrown, or a close-up of a roadster. Everyone will think of hundreds of kinds of beginnings, because If he leaves at this glance, this ad will be useless."

Practitioner Luo Yun summed up a common plot-to-ads routine: the protagonist encountered a trouble that was difficult to solve by himself, and was informed by a friend of a plan (advertising), which became stronger after using the plan; then asked the audience Do you want to try this solution too. Finally, add a discount. For example, place an order now and get a discount of 99.

Everyone's gaze is staring at the "explosive models"-only the explosive models can bring considerable income to the agents. But summarizing the routine, and the ability to make explosive styles, may still be a hundred points of luck. Therefore, in many cases, people jokingly call it "metaphysics" to do information flow advertising.

Metaphysics in the explosion

In this industry, no creator can accurately predict explosions.

An important reason why it is difficult to predict is that even if the quality of an advertisement is very important, whether an advertisement can explode depends on the level of delivery, and the delivery mechanism of TikTok advertisements is very complicated.

To put it simply, after a video is shot, the optimizer (operating in the information flow industry) selects the target customer's label in the advertising backend. There are more than a dozen dimensions including age, gender, interest, etc., and the brand's bid is determined. (Bid represents how much money you are willing to spend to acquire a customer) After that, put it out. The creative will be tested repeatedly in different small pools, and the conversion effect will be good before being pushed to more people.

How big is the difference in the effectiveness of different combinations? Some optimizers have encountered a gap of 100 times. "The other factors are the same, that is, the crowd labels are adjusted a little bit differently. The first one voted out and only cost 1,000 yuan and stopped, and the second one ran for 100,000 yuan."

This variable and uncontrollable is the source of "metaphysics."

The other part of metaphysics comes from the "unintelligible" explosions.

In the information flow advertising industry, although most of the hits are videos with good actors, well-made, and analyzable frames, hits that are completely incomprehensible are often hit.

During the National Day last year, a popular advertisement for a weather forecast app gave practitioners the deepest impression of "ugliness." This ad video is a spliced ​​video of big trees, dark clouds, raindrops and app icons. The copywriting is simple: "It will rain in five minutes. Please take care to avoid the rain. The era of inaccurate weather forecasts is over. Now I recommend one for everyone. Weather software...".

The monotonous material, the old picture quality, and the synthetic dubbing like a robot reading a manuscript all reveal the "abnormal aesthetic" of this explosive model. "This is the stitching of several weather materials. Even the team doesn't need to take real shots. Go to the free material website to download, then spell it out and add subtitles." Yu Han, who has been filming TikTok ads for more than three years.

"It's ugly, maybe users like nostalgia during this time. How did this kind of video become a hit? Before, some advertisers wanted to advertise but didn't have the budget to try this kind of video. Although I already knew it at the time This is a hit, but my friend came and told me that I was still a little surprised after this kind of hit.” Don Yuhan paused and added, “We can make 100 videos of this kind a day.”

The emergence of such hot styles has overshadowed the rules of hot styles summarized by content producers. The plot, performance, soundtrack, rhythm, shots, and editing are all abnormal and even "uglier". Even if it occupies a small proportion, it will cause everyone's confusion every time.

A brand owner who spends hundreds of millions of yuan on TikTok every month: “In the popular advertisements, some of them have good plots and well-made content, but there is indeed another part that people can’t understand and analyze. Explosions that can’t come out and can’t figure out.”

Even if many practitioners don't want to admit "metaphysics," they still go to the Lama Temple for a big explosion, or set the "minimum sign" as the background of the circle of friends, post it on the desktop of the office, and make it into a daily emoji package.

An "explosive" emoji circulated in the information flow industry, the minimum cheat is "burn incense and wash your hands before adjusting your account, kowtow three heads before looking at the data, if the effect is not good, catch an operation to sacrifice to heaven."

The emoji still stays at the level of ridicule, but other "explosive" methods seem a bit psychedelic.

An actress told: “There is an agent in Beijing. The boss sent a uniform seat cushion to every employee of the company. Rely on explosive volume." Some companies simply named the company as Booming XX Company.” According to the Tianyan Check, there are hundreds of advertising companies named after Booming XX Co., Ltd..

It is precisely because the explosion mechanism is elusive, so one of the simplest and most effective tips for getting rich is: remake the explosion.

Since a hot spot advertisement cannot cover all target users at once, after discovering a hot spot, quickly remake one and still have a chance to explode. "Rather than trying it out by yourself, the remake is more certain. You can upgrade it according to the original framework, or just shoot a similar one. The faster you shoot, the higher the probability of bursting." In order to catch the hot money in the shortest time, an information flow advertising company specially set up an emergency team to respond to the hot money in the middle of the night or on holidays. If a hot money is detected in the early morning, the emergency team editor will write a script to upgrade the hot money overnight At the same time, the camera actors also work synchronously, so that the optimizer can arrange the delivery early in the morning and catch the bonus period of the hot money as soon as possible.

When the competition accelerates and then accelerates

"The "meeting room" has exploded. "On the night when Ma Hao consumed more than one million dollars in an original video, he had an appointment with seven or eight other good friends who were information streams and synchronized this hot item.

"There will always be a large number of people coming for the remake. Instead of letting someone you don’t know grab it, why not just let a friend take it?" The two-hour meal has not been finished yet, and the company with a friend has set up the scene and made an appointment. The actor is ready to start the remake.

What Ma Hao exploded was a film set in a five-star hotel conference room: "In a large conference room with grand specifications, a president in a suit and leather shoes said, I voted 100 million! Another boss raised his hand to fight. Suddenly, I will vote 300 million, US dollars", and then lead the brand owners who are competing to invest.

On the second day, every team that had dinner together posted seven or eight videos with similar scenes and themes. "You can make a full run when you shoot fast. If you shoot too much, you can earn one or two hundred thousand. If you shoot slowly, you can earn tens of thousands. We have also been shooting videos on this topic for a week, and there are four or five small bursts. ."

"When we are in this industry, if we are slow, we will be scrapped, and if we are slow, we will not produce any value." Ma Hao described.

For the certainty of this video: the quick response team even rented the same venue and invited the original actor in Ma Hao's video to shoot. There are too many people who want to remake, which has caused the price of the "meeting room" in this five-star hotel in the provincial capital to soar.

When Ma Hao filmed this video, he said hello to a friend in the hotel and borrowed it without spending any money. After becoming a hot item, every day someone raises the price and wants to grab this "hot style meeting room" and then copy the hot item. The price has risen from 1,000 to 5,000 a day.

"It seems that renting a luxury car, airplane, cruise, and church for a day is quite expensive, ranging from a few thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, but compared to the income that can be brought by a hot advertisement, this little money is not counted at all. What. A good venue will help the quality of the film. The better the venue and the more expensive the people, the better the effect of the film."

"Last year this industry was not likely to rent these expensive big scenes, but now it has entered a reshuffle period. If we want to support this business, we have to fill the configuration, find the best actors and venues, and at the same time edit , Choreographer, operation and other horizontal positions are all the most professional." Jun Jun added.

In 2020, the information flow advertising industry will enter a reshuffle period. The epidemic has caused the suspension of most of the film and television projects, but TikTok has therefore greatly increased the daily activity and duration, and ushered in a small bonus period for advertising. Countless media people have entered this field that has not been paid attention to: TV dramas, Internet majors, and Internet comprehensive Various positions in the film and television industry such as host, host, drama, model, etc. continue to flow into this emerging industry. The direct result is that the difficulty of making explosive styles has risen sharply.

"When TikTok was first commercialized in 2017, basically any material can be run, because the content is small and the traffic of TikTok is relatively abundant. Now, if you can make a hundred videos, you will have to burn it. The fragrance is high." An optimizer who has been in the industry for 3 yea.

But this does not mean that short videos have to move closer to the "refined" direction of traditional TV advertising. Although in terms of equipment, scenes, and quality, the quality of the content of the information flow advertising header is getting closer to that of TV advertising, but in terms of content, the two types of advertising are almost completely different.

Different from TV advertisements that emphasize brand quality, the purpose of information flow advertisements is to convert users. The difficulty lies in: in a 1-minute video, it has to be attractive, explain the selling points, and finally convert users. On a platform like TikTok, content that is reversal, curious, absurd, and funny is ever-changing. Every type of video is competing for the attention of users. The rhythm of brand advertising is not suitable for TikTok.

The result of competition is the concentration of everything to the "head". Not only because the head company has better talents in the industry, but also because a large-scale information flow advertising company can satisfy the massive appetite of Party A’s advertisers and have enough money to advance funds in advance.

Large advertisers look for agency companies. "The video team has less than 70 or 80 people. Basically, they don’t watch it. The fact that a skinhead company monopolizes large customers is enough for a small team to feel uncomfortable." Luo Yun said, "Because the premise of making a big hit is that the customer has enough budget and can recharge hundreds of thousands or even millions of funds a day for a video account with a particularly good conversion."

Previously, a grassroots team that had attracted millions of gold during the bonus period left the market after losing money for several months in 2020. An practitioner explained: “There are too many suppliers, and the settlement methods of "base price + consumption share" discussed by many teams and agents who made videos before are not counted. Either the reserve price of the film has been cancelled, or a symbolic one hundred and two hundred will be given, which can't cover the cost of the video at all, and everyone can only bite the bullet and fight for consumption. The capped commission for a film is 20,000 to 30,000, which is only enough for a bite to eat. "

Although it seems that the rules are good for the head agents, under the "mass shooting volume", the shooting cost is the heart disease of most head agents.

Just as the number-making company in today’s headlines can recruit Shandong village women to work, the cost is so low that all colleagues are hit. In the TikTok era, editing, camera, and part-time actors’ salaries, and office rent, the company’s main expenses are placed on the second line. Provincial capital cities are half lower than Beijing. Wen Hua, an employee of an information flow company in Shandong, when looking for a shooting location in second-tier cities, most locals can just say hello to shoot, but this is difficult to achieve in Beijing, and you need to set up another scene yourself.

Most of TikTok's major agents are entrenched in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but they are all considering moving to second-tier cities. "Beijing will move to neighboring cities like Hebei and Shanxi. Or move to Xi'an, Chengdu, because hiring college students is very cheap, and it can be done at three or four thousand."

Directly speaking of consumption, first the conditions that Party A puts forward to the agent company, and then it becomes the most important evaluation standard for the employees of the agent. "If you have the amount you get a commission, if you don't have the amount you get a dead salary," this is a mild version. The more drastic approach is: leave without running too much.

Jianguo, a business leader who established short video information flow this year, recruited three new directors in August, but within two months, the three directors returned to the talent market. "During the interview, all three of them spoke very well, but when it comes to the actual operation, you will find that it is not like that. They don't have a deep understanding of the industry and customers, and the things they do are not minimal, so they can only be eliminated directly."

"Now we are doing a new round of recruiting. If the other party is from the traditional advertising industry, then I will ask a question mark. This industry will produce 10 films a day, and each position must respond quickly. Sometimes it will be difficult. Da Ye, can your rhythm keep up with me? This seems a bit cruel, but if it is not cruel, our company will die."

The pressure is not limited to short video advertisers. For Party A who has to vote for hundreds of video creatives every day and may spend tens of millions of dollars in advertising expenses a day, behind the crazy investment is often the key battle for market share. . But the price may be a loss: Take the most fierce online education industry in the past as an example. According to the financial reports of Good Future and GSX, they will all turn from profit to loss in 2020 due to high advertising costs.

Tik Tok may be the biggest winner. According to a bytebeat data file circulated two months ago, TikTok's advertising revenue in 2020 is about 100 billion yuan. The latest news is that even Tencent, which has suspended TikTok's business cooperation since 2018, also advertised games on TikTok this week.

This ecology was once beautiful: short video advertisers "picked up money every day", Party A gained a large number of users, and TikTok and ByteDance companies paid a huge amount of advertising fees. At that time, everyone seemed to have a bright future.

• Tiktok App

• China

• Technology

• Business

• Money