Are The Feed Ads of Wechat Moments Based on Big Data on Earth?

Written by Joey Wang

On Jan 25^th, 2015, Wechat-the most popular Chinese instant message and social network service application, started to feed ads in Wechat Moments. Coca-Cola, BMW China, and Vivo, the Chinese smartphone maker were the first advertisers to conduct the tested advertising. Interestingly, it seemed that the sponsored ads followed some mechanisms as different users had loaded different ads, which dramatically caused a hot topic among Wechat users. All they wanted to know is why did I receive this specific ad instead of others?

Then nearly every guess pointed to big data, a kind of analytic way used to unlock hidden patterns, market trends, customer preferences and other potential business values, etc. And according to IBM data scientists, big data could be broken into four dimensions: Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity, which means that big data encompasses information from multiple internal and external sources.

As after analyzing by some passionate users, a conclusion was generated that the rich ones with annual income over 1 million RMB received BMW ads, those who are not iPhone users but able to afford Xiaomi got Vivo ads and those who even cannot afford Xiaomi or teenagers got Coca-Cola ads. Sounds like a joke, but worth deeply thinking, as it did show a clue that the notifications based on users’ demographics and behavior information detected from their chatting history or moment posts such as hobbies, habits, preferences, etc. From this perspective, the feature of Variety can be approved. Also, on the other hand, it is known that with the help of big data analytics, advertisers will have more opportunities to reach different consumers with personalized and provide more precise advertising. All these messages could be tailored to users interests based on the information gained from aspects mentioned above. What’s more, in the third quarter of last year, Wechat has already owns 468 million monthly active users who keep creating large scale information everyday, which ensures the volume and velocity of big data. Therefore, we have the reason to believe that it is big data that gives Wechat or its advertisers a hand to engage with their target or potential customers.

However, when taking the effect of big data into consideration, the fact that big data helps provide precise information to target customers is inevitable. Hence, precision becomes one of the standards of big data. Here we defined precision into two dimensions: precise channel and precise content. Then reflecting on those Wechat ads, which were not sent in a one-to-one private chat way but spreading with the help of Wechat moments’ socialization, they failed to reach the standard of precise channel in a way. Meanwhile, when focusing on the content of these feed ads, all of them are brand advertising instead of specific product promotion, which are actually aiming to raise brand recognition. Therefore, it is undeniable that those ads did not cover precise content, either. From this perspective, did big data real matter? I think it is worth doubting.

Overall, it seems that although the feed ads of Wechat moments have the ability of big data as they did reflect the nature of big data, the applying of big data analytics still needs to be more precise.