Advertising on WeChat Moments: cost, ad formats, targeting and rules

After defining the concept of paid advertising on WeChat and giving an overview of the available formats and ad display costs, let’s dive deeper into each channel of paid advertising in WeChat’s ecosystem with a series of comprehensive guides.

After WeChat Mini Program Advertising and WeChat Banner Promotion spot, this chapter is dedicated to WeChat moment ads.

1. What is WeChat Moments Advertising? How does it work?

What is WeChat Moments advertising?

The advertisement will automatically disappear on the users’ timeline if they don’t comment, like, or interact with the ad within 6 hours.

Currently, WeChat limits the moment ads shown to users to three per day.

Ad Unit – Placement

WeChat users’ Moments feed (WeChat Users’ timeline)

If a term on this page is unclear, here is a WeChat-related comprehensive lexicon: + WeChat APP: glossary, lexicon & definitions to learn the basics right

2. Pre-requisites to display a promotional message on Users’ Feed

Restrictions on WeChat Ads

Chinese advertising law & Tencent’s specific stipulations

1. Absolute terms such as “national level”, “highest level” and “best” shall not be used.
2. No false or misleading advertisements may be placed.
3. The data, statistics, survey results, abstracts, and quotations used in advertisements shall be true and accurate, and the source shall be indicated.
4. False patented products or patented methods shall not be involved in advertisements.
5. Do not use advertising ideas that are easily misunderstood and intentionally deceive or mislead consumers.
6. The commodities or services of other producers or operators shall not be belittled.
7. The words “well-known trademark” shall not appear in advertisements (article 15 of the trademark law of the People’s Republic of China).
8. “National products exempted from inspection” and other contents related to quality exemption shall not appear.
9. Unauthorized third party images or logos shall not be used.
10. The image and security of the state, the nation, and society shall not be harmed.
11. It must not go against the requirements of building a social and spiritual civilization and must not go against the good customs of society.
12. Shall not violate the advertising endorsement rules.

Campaign advertising launch rules

1. Limits the following types of campaigns:
   • Promotional activities with strong inducement and high risk.
   • Activities that do not involve the purchase of physical goods.
   • The selection of spokespersons, models and actors, etc.
2. Types of activities prohibited: including but not limited to crowdfunding, 1 RMB shopping, etc.
3. Basic content requirements: advertising content description needs to be clear & detail the rules of the campaign.
4. Lucky draw campaign prize price must be less than 5000 RMB.
5. Gift activities state clearly the variety, specification, quantity, time limit and manner of the goods or services provided as gifts.
6. Coupon activities,do not use activities to induce sharing, attract attention to quickly get fans or seek improper interests.
7. No format clause like “XXX has the right to interpret this activity” shall appear in the content of the activity.

Industry restrictions

How to apply and manage the advertising campaign

Chinese companies can follow the following link to apply: http://ad.weixin.qq.com/

Foreign companies can follow the following link to apply: http://ad.weixin.qq.com/

3. Ad Display Formats & sizes on WeChat Moments

3 formats available of Moments ad display:

1. Post format = Image/Video + Text + Link
2. Card format = Card image/video + Text
3. Special Format

Post format

Maximizing the friendliness of the ad to encourage engagement

Here are the different features available with this format:

Card format (full-width)

Creating an attention-catching “branding zone” in moments feed

Here are the different features available with this format:

Special formats

WeChat offers special formats and features such as A/B option, full-frame, etc. to selected advertisers.

Depending on the advertising investment, the features related to this specific type of ad display are unlocked:

> 1 Million RMB investment

> 2 Million RMB investment

> 5 Million RMB investment

4. Landing pages for WeChat Moments Advertising

Type of landing pages

When clicking on a display ad, advertisers can choose to redirect the users to:

• Event details page to know more about the event
• Registration Page for lead generation WeChat templated page
• Article Page From Official Account
• Official Account Home & Follow Page
• Location-Based Service Store Page to Direct Online Traffic Not available for Bottom Ads
• Mini Program Developed by brands
• Other landing pages: Coupon, app store, external web page, etc.

The landing page is meant to meet a given objective (Brand event promotion, WeChat Official Account Promotion, collecting sales leads, etc…). That’s why it’s important to define a clear objective when designing a paid marketing campaign (Tips, tactics and best practices to promote brands efficiently on WeChat Moments later in the chapter 👇👇👇👇).

Landing pages requirements

Depending on the defined Ads Objective, the landing page must follow some requirements.

5. How much do WeChat Moment ads cost? 

Pricing Model of WeChat Moments Ads

CPM: Cost Per Thousand impressions = cost÷impression×1000 

with impression: number of times an ad been shown

Minimum investment

WeChat Moments Cost

Scheduled

CPM varies among the 3 tiers of cities

City	Image ad	Video ad
Core	150 RMB / CPM	180 RMB / CPM
Key	100 RMB / CPM	120 RMB / CPM
Other	50 RMB / CPM	60 RMB / CPM

Ad spots scheduled 1-28 days in advance with placement priority guaranteed

Real-time Bidding

Available starting from 100 RMB per thousand impressions with a minimum investment of 1,000 RMB per DAY

1. Exposure window selected in advance while placement would not be guaranteed.
2. Impressions are distributed according to bidding price and ad quality.
3. Minimum investment: 1,000 RMB per day

6. WeChat Targeting Options

Depending on the ad’s objective, advertisers may change some parameters in order to target the right group of people.

Here are the targeting criteria to leverage in order to push the ad to a certain profile of WeChat users which is matching with buyer persona: 

Interest

Users‘ long-term interests (what I like)

Possibilities: News / LOHAS / Automobile / Entertainment / Travel / Games / Food & Beverage / Health / Sports / Cosmetics / Home / Tech

Behaviour

Users‘ specific behaviour (what I have done)

Possibilities: News / Fashion / Education / Services / Finance / Business services / Automobile / Entertainment / Parenthood / Travel / Real Estates / Gaming / Food & Beverage / Health / Sports & Fitness / Beauty / Home / Digital product

Geographic

Utilizing Location-Based Service technology, WeChat captures:

• users’ usual places of residence
• Current locations precise to a specific commercial area

Currently, the platform has captured over 4400 commercial areas and over 58 million POI (Points of Interest) in their system for marketers to target.

Also, the platform collects users’ login location which is used for Outbound China.

Advertisers can target WeChat users based on this location data (Inbound and Outbound China)

Inbound China

Possibilities (inner China Mainland) :

Outbound China

Users travelling overseas will be targeted by country

Age & Gender

Age: from 14 to 60 years old
Gender: Male / Female

Education background

Possibilities: Primary school / Junior high school / High school / College / Bachelor / Master / PhD

Marriage status

Possibilities: Single / Newly-married / Married / Parenting

Mobile phone brand & price

Possibilities:

By brand: Apple / Samsung / Huawei / Xiaomi / Vivo / etc.
Price range: ￥1500 to￥4500+

Phone operating system & Internet provider

Operating system: Android / iOS
Internet provider: China Mobile / China Unicom / China Telecom

7. Process to design and execute a paid media campaign on WeChat Moments

8-step process to roll out a WeChat Moments Advertising campaign:

1. Define ad objective
2. Choose ad format
3. Select target audiences
4. Top-up & schedule the ad position from WeChat back-end
5. Upload ad assets from WeChat back-end
6. Pass the Tencent ad verification – Ad preview
7. Ad launch
8. Ad Monitoring & A/B Testing – Ad optimization

When the 3 first steps are completed, ad assets can be produced.

8. Tips, tactics and best practices to promote brands efficiently on WeChat Moments

Define clear advertising objectives

Advertisers must define beforehand what is the objective of the ad because some objectives are only available for some types of display.

Eg: store promotion only available for Moments Ads

9. Case Studies of WeChat Moments Advertising

Brand event promotion

La Mer promoting International Ocean Day on WeChat Users’ feed

La Mer Canvas ad promoting International Ocean Day and encouraging users to take environment-friendly actions

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Canvas consists of full-screen video experience with creative animation.

---

Johnnie Walker

Johnnie Walker brand event promoting customizable bottles

• 

• 

• 

Canvas consists of full-screen visual experience with creative animation.

Official account promotion

Remy Cointreau

Rémy Cointreau ad redirecting to creative Canvas to promote its products and Official Account.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Canvas consists of full-screen visual experience with creative animation.

Store promotion

SK-II

SK-II Hong Kong Canvas ad celebrating annual anniversary & promoting exclusive products targeting Chinese tourists in Hong Kong.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

LBS (Location-based services) is targeting users in a specific area or city to drive online traffic to an offline store.

Collecting sales leads

Buick

Collecting sales leads can help brands targeting quickly potential customers.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Buick Canvas ad promoting its cars and test drive booking.

10. WeChat Moments Advertising: how to measure success

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of your WeChat Moments Advertising campaign

• Impression data = Total impressions, Non-charged impressions help to assess the range of audience the ad reached
• Engagement
• Click data & Ad visual = Ad visual click rate, Landing page click rate help assessing the quality of the ad
• Interaction data = Like rate, Comment rate and No interest percentage help assessing the interaction between users and the brand
• Share data = Share to friends and Moments help to assess users’ acceptance towards the ad and initiative to spread it
• Follow data = Icon & Name click rate, Follow rate help assessing brand influence
• CPE = Cost Per Engagement – cost ÷ engagement
• CPF = Cost Per Follower – cost ÷ follower
• Other Customized Data = Sales leads, Purchases and other data

11. Updates and timeline on WeChat media buying capabilities on Moments

Date	Updates	Source / more details
October 2019	Besides their standard offerings (detailed in this guide), WeChat offer new WeChat Moments Adverstising Package (with specific ad display and pricing model) targeting micro-businesses (附近推) – It allows an offline business to push ads to users within a 3 km radius – Pricing: starting at 2,000 CNY/month (less expensive that the standard pricing) – Goals of this offering: improve ad’s conversion rate, drive traffic to small businesses and create an online circle of nearby businesses relevant to the users’ actual “life circle”.	Discount coupon for a nearby restaurant advertised on the user’s Moments
May 2019	Show 3 WeChat Moments Ads per day (instead of two) for Chinese users in 1st Tier cities (only) – more visibility for brands and more revenue for Tencent	Twitter – Matthew Brennan kr-asia