Chinese New Year marketing engagements include both brand and organic content.

Luxury Sector Chinese New Year Marketing Summary Insights 

1. The presence of offline artistic installations have increased significantly compared to last year during this Chinese New Year marketing season, indicating a more substantial investment in physical presence and engagement.
2. Online interactions, especially through WeChat H5 games, have become more prevalent, with innovative red envelope (red packet) mechanisms being introduced to engage consumers.
3. Marketing efforts have become more localized, as evidenced by the use of Chinese New Year-themed short films, which resonate more deeply with the local culture and traditions.
4. There’s a noticeable reduction in collaborations with IP characters, particularly compared to those related to the Year of the Rabbit, likely due to the significant differences between Chinese and Western interpretations of dragons, which often spark discussions.
5. Some brands have opted not to use dragon imagery in their campaigns, a departure from the previous year where rabbit motifs took dominance in Chinese New Year marketing campaigns and products.
6. A deeper exploration of traditional Chinese culture beyond the obvious symbols like dragons and the color red

Offline artistic installations

The recent Chinese New Year marketing campaigns by luxury brands have showcased a significant uptick in the deployment of offline artistic installations, a testament to the brands’ heightened commitment to immersive customer experiences. This year, the venerable Louis Vuitton orchestrated an ephemeral pop-up space for its Spring/Summer 2024 Menswear collection in Shanghai and Beijing, drawing inspiration from the sun element—a central motif of Pharrell’s debut series as the brand’s Men’s Creative Director. This thematic choice reflected in the collection’s warm hues and ornamental luminosity was brought to life through these physical spaces, reinforcing the connection between the brand’s aesthetic narrative and its architectural manifestations.

Simultaneously, Louis Vuitton’s home in Chengdu’s Taikoo Li presented an even more eye-catching installation for the Year of the Dragon. Set against the backdrop of the millennial Daci Temple with its two standalone buildings and an open courtyard, the installation featured a commanding dragon that encapsulated the charm of the “Land of Abundance,” resonating with both cultural significance and contemporary relevance.

Moreover, Italian luxury brand Fendi seized the festive period as an opportunity to launch a collaboration featuring the iconic Pokémon franchise and Japanese streetwear designer Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment. The Fendi x Fragment x Pokémon collection integrated beloved dragon-themed characters from Pokémon with Fendi’s highly recognizable Peekaboo and Baguette bag designs, merging them with the classic FF motif. This creative synergy was celebrated with a unique flash store in the East Square of Chengdu’s Taikoo Li, showcasing the innovative interplay between iconic brand symbols and pop culture elements.

These installations exemplify how luxury brands are increasingly investing in elaborate, tangible art pieces to elevate their in-person engagement, crafting an intertwined narrative of tradition and modernity that not only captures the imagination but also creates distinctive, memorable experiences for consumers.

Evolving digital engagement and WeChat mini-programs

This Chinese New Year marketing season, luxury brands significantly leveraged WeChat mini-programs for heightened user interaction, offering exclusive red packet covers, wallpapers, and emoticons. Unlike the direct claim methods of previous years, more brands now require entry and registration via mini-programs, capturing valuable consumer data for future marketing endeavors (e.g., targeted SMS campaigns). The engagement strategies have evolved, incorporating keyword searches, link sharing, and interactive games to unlock exclusive content, enriching the user experience. WeChat’s latest module template enabled brands to integrate ads, lucky draws, and product promotions seamlessly, maximizing engagement.

Van Cleef & Arpels introduced a Chinese New Year marketing interaction that included dragon-themed emoticon packs, the collection of lucky wallpapers (with a chance to win a hidden red packet cover upon gathering all four designs), and a new year avatar update feature (where users could upload their portrait to generate a themed avatar).

In terms of private domain marketing, after retaining user information, luxury brands like Balenciaga are sending text messages to users, increasing consumer touchpoints.

Other brands, such as Hermès, utilized the limited edition red packet covers as a tool for sales associates (SAs) to connect with clients, with SAs sending them directly to customers via private messages.

This approach not only enhanced direct engagement but also leveraged personalized communication to strengthen brand loyalty and consumer relationships.

Localized storytelling in New Year campaigns

This year, luxury brands have continued the tradition of crafting New Year campaign films, focusing on themes of “hope and expectations,” “prospects and the future,” and “identity,” particularly addressing the existential concerns of contemporary youth. Post-pandemic, these narratives extend beyond the timeless New Year themes of “homecoming” and “reunion dinners,” aiming to resonate emotionally through localized storytelling that simplifies complexity, showcasing respect and sincerity towards cultural nuances.

Bottega Veneta’s “The First Sunrise with You” captures the essence of new beginnings and the relentless pursuit of life’s journeys through the lens of traditional reunion themes, interwoven with the anticipation of dawn’s first light. This narrative not only aligns with the cultural significance of greeting the New Year but also addresses the aspirations and anxieties of modern Chinese society, showcasing a deep respect and understanding of local sentiments.

Though not a luxury fashion brand, Ganni’s campaign, inspired by the traditional “dragon boating,” is a noteworthy one. It connects with Chinese cultural heritage while highlighting themes of female empowerment and collective strength. By depicting athletes overcoming limitations through unity and determination, the campaign resonates with the contemporary Chinese values of resilience and community, reflecting the brand’s commitment to embracing and honoring Chinese traditions and the evolving identity of its people.

Declining IP collaborations and cultural interpretation challenges

In the Year of the Rabbit, fashion brand marketing frequently featured collaborations with designers and iconic cartoon characters, such as Coach x White Rabbit, Chloé x My Melody, Givenchy x Lucky Rabbit Ozwald, and Moncler x Roger Rabbit. This year, however, there’s been a noticeable decrease in such IP collaborations. Even those that have launched face scrutiny, particularly regarding their relevance to the “Chinese Dragon.”

Dior’s partnership with Japanese contemporary artist Otani Workshop produced a green monster TANILLA. Upon release, many criticized it for not representing the “Chinese Dragon,” with feedback ranging from its appearance being “ugly” and “abstract” to outright “ghastly.”

Products featuring this design, including jackets with a burnt color effect, prints that obscure the face, and dragon scarves with an unclear motif, have been particularly disparaged. Some netizens dubbed the design as a “zombie dragon,” neither festive nor auspicious, predicting it to quickly become discounted stock.

This backlash underscores the unique emotional connection Chinese people have with zodiac symbols, expecting the Chinese dragon to embody power and protection, not the characteristics of a “dinosaur” or a “European-style evil dragon.” This mismatch in cultural expectations likely contributed to the reduced number of IP collaborations this year, as brands aim to avoid controversy and more deeply respect traditional Chinese sentiments.

Creative approaches beyond literal dragon imagery

This year, in contrast to the rabbit-themed marketing saturating last year’s campaigns, several brands have strategically refrained from directly incorporating dragon imagery into their Chinese New Year products. Seeking a more creative and thematic approach to zodiac marketing for the Year of the Dragon, these brands have found innovative ways to honor the dragon theme without resorting to explicit depictions.

Bottega Veneta utilized its sophisticated weaving techniques to mimic dragon spines and scales, subtly celebrating dragon culture through craftsmanship rather than literal representation.

Givenchy, in collaboration with Juanzong Bookstore, released the 2024 Dragon Scale Scroll, drawing upon the classical Chinese bookbinding method known as dragon scale binding, named for its pages that fan out resembling dragon scales.

Loewe tapped into the Chinese appreciation for jade and its symbolic meanings. The brand commissioned jade carving masters to create three limited-edition jade pendants. Additionally, each jade-color-inspired Flamenco Mini clutch bag comes with a special pouch containing a jade piece in a matching color, symbolizing good fortune for the new year.

Cosmetics Industry Chinese New Year Marketing Ranking

Compared to 2023 Chinese New Year marketing, most international brand rankings for Chinese New Year do not show big changes. Young cosmetic brands have exhibited remarkable growth, including brands like TIMAGE, First Impression, and JUDYDOLL. The rankings for established brands such as Chanel, Dior, and Giorgio Armani show relatively stable positions with minimal changes.

There is a dynamic and rapidly growing market for brands that are relatively young in the market, which are becoming increasingly competitive and are resonating more with local consumers.

Douyin’s cosmetics sales are growing at a strong rate, with a 111% GMV growth in Jan 2024. Comparatively, Tmall’s cosmetics category has a 12% decrease during the same time, showing that it is losing traction to Douyin.

Shu Uemura plays with Nostalgia Marketing and cultural alignment

In the Chinese New Year marketing campaign by Shu Uemura, contrasting outcomes from collaborations with two distinct celebrities highlight an important strategic consideration. The brand’s engagement with Wang Yibo, a prominent figure with substantial influence among younger audiences, indeed generated significant short-term traffic. However, this approach, often characterized by hefty endorsement costs, may not ensure a sustained interest in the brand itself, as the followers are typically more celebrity-driven rather than brand-loyal.

Conversely, the partnership with Carman Lee (李若彤) tapped into a more profound cultural and nostalgic vein. She is an actress revered for her portrayal of Xiaolongnü, the ethereal ‘Dragon Girl’ from the famed ’90s TV series “The Return of the Condor Heroes”.

Her association with the character Dragon Girl deeply rooted in the cultural fabric, presented an authentic alignment with the brand’s campaign theme, resulting in higher engagement and bookmarking figures. The Little Red Book post featuring her got over 7000 engagements with a much higher comment rate and bookmark rate compared to that of Wang Yibo. This suggests a more enduring connection with consumers. Carman Lee’s influence comes at a likely lower cost, yet it appears to resonate on a more substantial level, potentially leading to a lasting affinity with the brand beyond the campaign’s run.

With a 12% annual decline in China’s cosmetics sales in 2023, the reliance on tier 1 celebrities for quick traffic surges might not be the most prudent financial commitment. Brands should consider a balanced approach that combines the widespread reach of popular figures with influencers who have a more resonant cultural or niche appeal. This dual strategy could optimize marketing budgets while fostering a deeper and more sustainable relationship with consumers, steering clear of transient trends and instead building a loyal customer base rooted in shared values and cultural relevance.

Conclusion

Luxury brands have adeptly navigated the festive Chinese New Year marketing period, unveiling a blend of innovative physical and digital marketing strategies. By emphasizing offline artistic installations, alongside the smart use of WeChat mini-programs for interactive digital engagement, brands have created immersive experiences that establish multi-touchpoints with consumers. Coupled with a shift towards localized storytelling and creative interpretations of zodiac themes, luxury brands show commitment to marrying tradition with modernity, ensuring cultural relevance and fostering deeper consumer connections without leaning on explicit or potentially culturally insensitive imagery.

In the cosmetics industry’s Chinese New Year marketing, a notable shift favoring Douyin’s digital platform. The remarkable growth of brands like TIMAGE and Douyin’s 111% sales increase underscore the changing consumer dynamics. Additionally, Shu Uemura’s nostalgia-driven campaign with Carman Lee highlights the power of culturally resonant marketing.

Overall, Chinese New Year marketing reveals a sophisticated interplay between tradition and innovation across the luxury and cosmetics industries. By integrating artistic installations and digital interactivity, embracing localized and culturally nuanced content, and strategically leveraging nostalgia and celebrity influence, brands have demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the Chinese market, setting a precedent for future marketing strategies that prioritize cultural sensitivity, creativity, and authentic connections, ensuring the continued relevance and appeal of luxury brands in a rapidly evolving consumer landscape.

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WalktheChat is an AI-powered China Marketing Agency supercharged with an industry-leading AIGC and tech team.

Follow us on LinkedIn for more news and insight about China’s digital marketing and luxury landscape.

More reports available upon request.

Contact us at: info@walkthechat.com

The post Chinese New Year Marketing: Luxury and Cosmetic Brands Are Redefining Strategies for the Modern Chinese Consumer appeared first on WalkTheChat.

The Super Brand Day event will last from the 14th to the 20th of April. The limited collection includes two products: a facial cream (319 RMB / 60g) and a serum (329 RMB / 30ml). (source: L’Oréal Weibo & Douyin account)

L’Oréal leverages internet slang to resonate with Chinese females on Douyin

In China, the word “Versailles” (in Chinese, “凡尔赛”) stands for not only the French Palace. It is one of the most trendy internet slang among young Netizens. It’s similar to “humblebrag” in English but with little negative meaning. 

Thanks to famous CCTV host Benny Sa (撒贝宁), the slang soon went viral on the Internet and in real-life communication. While Chinese people study day and night to enter the top universities and to work in megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai, Benny Sa is an “exception”. He stated on a talk show: “I didn’t choose to go to Beijing. I got recommended to Peking University without attending the Colleague Entry Examination. I hesitated because it’s too far from home, but Peking University is just alright.” (See video clip here)

Another typical Versailles sentence would be: “I own so many apartments that I don’t have enough money to renovate all of them. Such a struggle!”  

L’Oréal used this cultural context in its slogan “you deserve to be Versailles (humblebrag).” This shows support to Chinese young females’ desire to be independent, confident, and pretty.  

Considering how to promote your brand and products in China with a localized strategy? Simply fill out this 1-minute form and we will be in touch with you.

Douyin eCommerce Super Brand Day becomes a major shopping festival

Douyin has become an essential social eCommerce platform. Its Super Brand Day keeps attracting many domestic and international brands to participate. 
In 2020, the Chinese leading smartphone brand OPPO successfully held Super Brand Day on Douyin. By leveraging Douyin KOL and KOC seeding, users generated fun video content and created a buzz. OPPO did multiple live streamings collaborating with top-tier influencers like Luo Yonghao and Lamu Yangzi) and other offline pop-up activities. As a result, OPPO Douyin account attracted 510k new followers, 400 million total impressions on Douyin platform, and 21.74 million total views in live streamings. (Source: ChinaDaily)

In 2021, C-beauty leader Perfect Diary, smartphone giant Huawei, and F&B leader Wufangzhai took part in Douyin Super Brand Day. 

Besides, German kitchen utility brand Zwilling also joined Douyin Super Brand Day in collaboration with Chinese celebrity Xiao Zhan. The GMV reached 102 million CNY (~15.7 million USD) in 24 hours, overachieving the sales target by 204% (source: China Daily)

Douyin helped the 209-year-old brand reconnect with young audiences and attracted young followers through celebrity marketing and KOL collaboration.

Is Douyin becoming the next Tmall?

A few years ago, Tmall invented “Super Brand Day” as the ultimate event aiming to push signature collections and launch new products. It is often combined with celebrity collaboration or any other IP collaboration. 

Tmall Super Brand Day is still going, but Douyin picked up with the trend and started Douyin Super Brand Day. 

The shopping experience for Gen-Z customers is more interconnected with seeding and customized interests than ever. On Douyin, the system customizes the feed based on users’ interests, behavior, and other interactions shown on social media. So it’s a perfect channel to reach potential young customers interested in your brand.

Douyin has created a full-funnel ecosystem from seeding to conversion. It also has its own culture and vibe, thus needs tailored marketing strategies to succeed. With the joint force of celebrity and Douyin KOLs, eCommerce posts real challenges to traditional eCommerce platforms such as Tmall.

Looking for more information about Douyin, the Chinese Tiktok? Read on here:

• Douyin Marketing Guide: 7 examples of successful Douyin marketing campaigns
• Step-by step Douyin Advertising Guide
• What is Douyin Payment?
• How to create a Douyin Store?
• How to create a Douyin Verified Account?

The post L’Oréal x Palace of Versailles Limited Collection Launch on Douyin eCommerce appeared first on WalkTheChat.

In this article, we’ll dive into Douyin advertising formats and strategies that will help you make the most out of Douyin. We will cover:

• Why Douyin is a good option for advertising 
• Douyin’s official advertising formats 
• Douyin Advertising specs
• Douyin Advertising segmentation and capacity 
• How to run successful Douyin Advertising campaign
• Few steps and workflow to run Douyin Advertising campaign

Reasons to choose Douyin Advertising

Why is Douyin a good option for advertising? 

Nearly half of the Chinese population uses Douyin daily (600 DAU), and is one of the Chinese social platforms with the highest user engagement and stickiness. According to Kantar and 36Kr, a user spends 120 minutes per day on average on Douyin to actively consume content and entertainment. This usage time is twice that of other social counterparts, including WeChat (61 mins), Red (57 mins), and Weibo (47 mins).   

Douyin users also show the highest advertising receptivity among all leading social platforms. For example, 43% of users indicate that Douyin ads are easy to accept, sometimes even entertaining to watch. A higher receptivity also leads to a better feeling for the brand and makes conversion more likely to happen. 

Douyin’s 4 different advertising formats

Douyin has four different ads formats. Which ones should you use? Read on.

In-feed ads

In-feed ads are the most common form of Douyin advertising, appearing in the For You feed of users as they scroll through videos.

This ad format includes an action call to take users to a landing page. For example, the landing page can be a Douyin business account or redirect to a product or live-streaming (if the business account has a Douyin store) for eCommerce conversion. 

With a CPM ranging from 10 to 50 RMB ($1.7 to $7.8), in-feed ads are a cost-effective format if you are looking for lead generation, eCommerce conversion, drive traffic to live-stream, or other types of performance-oriented campaigns.

Native ads

Douyin Native ads (or Dou+ ads) amplify existing content on the Douyin App, similar to “Boosted posts” ads on Facebook.

Interestingly, Douyin Native ads don’t include any watermark suggesting that they benefited from the advertising budget. Instead, they look just like any other Douyin video promoted via the algorithm.

They can also include e-commerce links, often driving users to Taobao, Tmall, or Douyin stores.

Search ads

Douyin also provides search advertising for brands to capture potential clients. For example, brands can define specific keywords related to their brand name (e.g., Dior), business (e.g., niche handbag brands), or services, just like search ads on Red or Google. 

Unlike other ad formats in the “For You” section, search ads appear only when users search related keywords. As a result, it can capture more qualified traffic in the lower funnel and help effectively convert people who are already interested in certain brands, products, or services. Therefore, they are also a bit more expensive than In-Feed ads.

Many international brands, including Gucci, Sephora, and Farfetch, use search ads to drive traffic to the official website or download the official App. 

TopView / Brand Takeover

This advertising format consists of full-screen ads displayed as soon as users open the App.

The full-page advertising can lead to:

• Landing pages
• Live-streams

This advertising format is most appropriate for brands looking for a branding boost, but they are not geared toward conversions to e-commerce:

• The focus is usually on branding, not on specific products or prices
• Can’t redirect directly to a product
• CPM/CPC is generally higher than other types of programmatic ads, such as in-feed ads

Douyin Advertising Platforms

OceanEngine Platform

Like Facebook or WeChat, Douyin also provides various segmentation capacities for advertisers to impact their audience. In the case of Douyin, you will create and manage your advertising campaign through the OceanEngine platform.

OceanEngine is the official mobile marketing platform from ByteDance. OceanEngine helps brands advertise products and services on Bytedance’s ecosystem. It covers Apps including Douyin, Toutiao (one of China’s largest mobile news platforms), Xigua short video, Huoshan short video, FaceU (one of China’s most famous selfie camera and filter Apps), and more. You can understand OceanEngine as Facebook Ads Manager, which contains data from Facebook/Meta, Instagram, and other Facebook/Meta group Apps. 

ByteDance Big Data

Tencent Ads used to have two separate ad systems for the WeChat ecosystem (MP platform) and Tencent ecosystem (GDT platform), which used to be an issue blocking data sharing between two different platforms. In comparison, ByteDance has always relied on collecting users’ activities in all the apps belonging to the giant social empire mentioned above. As a result, it is easier for the system to overview users’ actions and preferences across the affiliated Apps, and deliver the ads more accurately, thanks to a broader range of information gathered. 

ByteDance is a global leader in recommendation algorithms. Before the creation of Douyin, Toutiao was the most successful product of ByteDance. Toutiao is a news app that customizes push notifications and news feeds depending on each user’s interest and behavior. The vital machine learning of Toutiao provided valuable experience for Douyin. As a result, Douyin’s For You page (which is also highly customized in real-time) has become critical in keeping users in the App. The well-functioning recommendation algorithm is also why many people find Douyin or Tiktok “addictive”. Therefore, this app is expert for pushing the perfect content and delivering proper advertising that a user may be looking for. 

Douyin Advertising Segmentation

Douyin provides many dimensions for advertisers to find their target audience accurately. The details are as below (updated 2022 Jan):

Basic Segmentation

You can choose demographic targetings such as location (by province/city/area/town), gender, and age range (18-23，24-30，31-40，41-49，50+). Douyin Ads also provide segmentation based on environment, such as types of network (4G, Wifi…), Operating system (iOS, Android), etc.

Interest and Behavior

Douyin provides 20 category tags and supports up to 350 keywords. Category tags are general interest and behavior. Interest refers to users’ possible hobbies shown by their consuming habits on social media or related eCommerce; behavior means users’ actions such as view, engage, search, purchase, and so on. You can also choose a specific time frame to make the activity more relevant, for example, in the recent 30 days).

Interest example: fashion apparel and accessories, travel, mom & kids, pets, news, electronic devices.  

Behavior example: gaming, dining, daily services, education, furniture, and home decor.

Each interest & behavior category contains several more specific interest & behavior keywords. Thus, advertisers can select relevant granular keywords to focus on accurate audiences. For example, you can choose specific keywords such as fast fashion, streetwear, K-fashion, vintage style, and others under the fashion apparel category.   

Douyin Ads also provides System Recommendation keywords to help you automatically target users that might be interested in your brand or services based on big data.

KOL Targeting

Like Weibo Ads, Douyin Ads also enable you to target KOL’s followers or users who engage with these KOLs. You have two options: 

1. Target at a broader level by types of KOL, for example, followers of fashion KOLs, lifestyle KOLs, ACGN (Anime, Comic, Game, Novel) KOLs, food KOLs;
2. Or target specific KOL’s followers. You can select up to 30 KOLs. 

Advanced Targeting with DMP – Data Management Platform

Douyin DMP provides a lot of labels or tags to create a highly customized target group.

DMP Advanced Labels

You can filter the users by consuming capacity forecast, content consumption preferences (for example, celebrity content, reality shows, short videos), and recommended labels by vertical (such as beauty & cosmetics, automobile).

Private audience 

Once you have done Douyin Ads, you will unblock this function. It includes your historical advertising audience, APP audience, and landing page audience. 

Special seasonal labels

DMP also provides seasonal labels based on particular activities, recent hot trends, or Chinese festivals. For example, National Holiday audience, Spring Festival audience, trendy movie and series audience, gaming audience.   

Customize your target audience

Given all the targeting capacity above, you can customize your target audience either by taking the intersection or the union. You will be able to see the estimated audience size on Douyin or other ByteDance APPs once you complete the selection. 

How to run sufccessful Douyin Advertising Campaign

Define your campaign objective

Depending on your campaign objective, you might want to use different placements (feed, search) and formats (In-Feed Ad with CTA, Native Ads…) that lead to various measurement models (CPM, CPC, CPA…). 

If you are looking for eCommerce conversion, Douyin In-Feed Ads, Native Ads, and Search Ads will be your best choice. You can also combine In-Feed Ads and Search Ads to cover the entire user journey. 

If your main objective is massive awareness, Douyin TopView and Brand Takeover will guarantee maximum exposure to impact your target audience. It’s a common practice for big brands to leverage branding ads for official launches, new collection releases, brand ambassador announcements, and others. 

If you are unsure where you should start for your brand, please refer to the below chart with different phases and find our recommendation.  

Define audience mapping and target strategy

You might already have an idea of your ideal customer that fits your brand image and positioning well. For a quick start, you can collect the interest & behavior & keywords that you are using probably for Facebook/Instagram Ads and find its equivalent in Douyin. You can also refer to all the segmentation capacities that we explained earlier. 

However, China is such a vast country with a massive audience size, so you might need some local experts to “translate” your target audience into China’s context. If you need any help defining your audience mapping and targeting strategy, don’t hesitate to reach us for a tailored solution.

Customize your creatives for Douyin

Make it short and eye-catching

Douyin users are impatient. Video Ads rhythm should be quick, short, and concise; otherwise, Douyin users will easily swipe up if the content does not catch their attention in the first two or three seconds. 

Below is an example of C-beauty brand Perfect Diary. It starts with a question: “still wondering how to do your makeup for Chinese New Year?” Then quickly show seven types of makeup with fast-paced electronic music. The whole video is only 5 seconds but strong enough to make a user click “like” and probably go to the business account to know more. 

Make it Chinese-user friendly

Localize your content for Chinese users. Adapt your creatives by adding a subtitle (if the audio is in English) or voiceover in Chinese, or create some video content optimized for Douyin. If the content contains a conversation or a plot, adding subtitles is common even if the conversation is in Chinese. 

Adapt to Douyin style

Just like traditional video creatives that work for Instagram Feed might not work well for Tiktok or Reels, the best practice is to spend some time on Douyin to get a sense of the platform “style” and know what users are expecting. 

We can help you adapt your assets or produce video ads that Douyin users expect. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

Key Success Factor of Douyin Advertising Strategy

Like all the programmatic ads, the critical success factor for Douyin Ads is data and accurate targeting. However, programmatic advertising in China has one significant difference from its western “equivalent”: Most Chinese consumers will not go to official websites for shopping; instead, they rely on marketplaces such as Taobao, Tmall, JD.com. 

As a result, individual brands do not have easy access to their audience behavior or performance, which can use for advertising. On Facebook, it’s pretty easy to target your valuable audiences, such as website visitors, add-to-cart users, or shoppers for different campaign objectives. In China, however, it’s simply not easy because most of the traffic will not go to your website. Therefore, you will probably need to rely on Tmall data for retargeting ads. 

Therefore, you can rely on Ads for pure awareness or branding purposes without any problem. But for conversion-oriented campaigns, we’d recommend it to brands and advertisers with more than 400k RMB monthly GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) or provide retargeting data for better performance results. 

Therefore, for brands in an early stage in China, we suggest you consider Douyin Ads after several months of organic operation and feel confident about the market. It’s better to start by testing your market fit with influencer seeding/gifting and then begin advertising on social media to scale your brand.

A few steps to launch Douyin Advertising Campaign

Check if Douyin Ads permit your industry for advertising

Before considering Douyin Ads, check if Douyin permits your industry/vertical for advertising. Douyin Ads welcome verticals such as fashion, luxury, beauty, jewelry, F&B, childcare, home appliances, consumer electronics, and daily usage products.   

Here are the verticals not permitted for Douyin Ads due to regulations and law: 

• Cigarettes, including electronic cigarettes 
• Medical instruments, medical organizations, or apps  
• Competitor products such as online community apps, online video apps, video editing tools, music apps, etc

*source: https://jzt.jd.com/school/course/detail?contentId=3113

Here is a list of restricted industries. Douyin needs to review case by case and might whitelist some top brands that meet the platform’s requirements.

• Wine and alcohol 
• Health care products
• Medicine 
• Gaming (depending on types of games)
• Fintech
• Crowdfunding 

*source: https://www.opp2.com/76958.html

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us, and we will help to review case by case. 

Timeline and workflow to launch Douyin Ad camapign

We estimate roughly three weeks of preparation before launching your first campaign on Douyin. It includes two weeks of advertising account creation and verification, three weeks to define campaign objectives and strategy, audience mapping and targeting, and creative design. At around week 4, we will launch the first test and leverage the actual results and learnings to improve future campaigns.

We summarize the whole process as below chart:

Different approaches to leverage Douyin Advertising

Splash and Sustain

Step by step

Almost the opposite of Splash and Sustain, brands can start with in-feed ads for pre-warm, initiate hashtag challenge collaborating with KOL to generate engagement and co-creation, then leverage Brand Takeover and TopView for the most potent exposure on the big day.

Measure and improve your Douyin Advertising performance

Brand Lift / Conversion Lift

Similar to Facebook Ads and many other western platforms, Douyin also enables brands to measure the effectiveness of the ads with a data-driven method. It works just like A/B testing: among your target audience, the system will divide your audience into two groups, one will get exposure to your ads, and the control group will not. However, both groups could still receive ads from your competitors. At the end of the campaign, Douyin will provide a detailed report of how this campaign has benefited your brand by comparing test and control group results regarding brand recall, favorability, and likelihood to purchase.

Limitations: 

1. Time: you will need to run the campaign for at least two weeks to have a tangible impact on your audience. 
2. Cost: by intentionally dividing your target audience into two groups, you will have a smaller target audience, resulting in a higher cost of CPM. 
3. Therefore, it will be suitable for brands with a solid presence in China. It’s a way to measure how much advertising contributes to the brand quantitatively. We won’t recommend it for brands in a very early stage entering the Chinese market.

Dynamic Product Ads

Like Facebook DPA (Dynamic Product Ads), Douyin also provides Dynamic Products Ads for effective sales-driven campaigns. The logic is to use structured product data (brand name, product category, pricing) and let the product find its potential customer. 

You will need to connect your product catalog to launch dynamic product ads.

Douyin Advertising Specs

Douyin In-Feed Ad Specs

For any ad placements that appear in the feed, the requirements are as below: 

In-feed Ad Video requirement

• The video must have background music.
• The black screen area of ​​the first video frame shall not exceed 60%.
• Douyin supports vertical video or horizontal video. If you use horizontal video for in-feed ads, note that it does not support full-screen playback with a 90-degree rotation. 
• Video dimension: 540*960 (vertical), or 960*540 (horizontal). To ensure the best video resolution, Douyin recommends using 1080p videos. 
• Video format: mp4, mpeg, 3gp, avi format.
• Duration: 5s – 60s.
• Video size: no more than 500M.

In-feed Copy requirement

• The post’s title supports up to 55 characters, including hashtag challenge title (if any). Any Chinese character, letter, punctuation mark, and space all count as one character.  
• The title of the landing page supports up to 9 characters. It only applies if you need to build a separate landing page, such as a lead generation form.

Apart from these requirements, also keep in mind to avoid the screen area that might “overlap” with your account name and copy: there is a fixed information display area in the Douyin video, which may obscure part of the material content. Please avoid this area for the core elements of the creative.

Since different mobile phones have different occlusion ranges, the creative material might be cut or not showing completely. Therefore, we recommend avoiding the area of key elements in the video. Here is the mock-up of safety space provided by Douyin: 

You can also check the original file for more detailed information. 

Douyin Branding Ad Specs

For branding-oriented ads formats like Top View / Brand Takeover, the specs are as below: 

Branding Ad video requirement

• Dimension: 640×1136 / 640×960 / 480×800 / 750×1624 / 720×1280 / 1080*1920 / 1080×2340. To ensure the best video resolution, Douyin recommends using 1080p videos.
• Format: mp4
• Duration: 5s
• Size: no more than 5M
• No background music

Branding Ad copy requirement

• Title: supports up to 9 Chinese characters; additional characters could be cut off. 
• Source: supports up to 20 characters; Less than 12 characters will be optimal. (one Chinese character count as two characters; alphabet, punctuation mark, or space count as one character. This field serves as the back-end identifier of the ad delivery system. It will not display in actual delivery.)

If you want to know more about Douyin, here are several articles that may look interesting to you:

• How to create a Douyin verified account?
• How to create a Douyin store?
• What is Douyin Payment? A Simple Guide
• 7 examples of successful Douyin Marketing Campaigns

Conclusion

In summary, Douyin Ads leverage massive data from ByteDance to help your brand reach your accurate target customers in China. Chinese users are in love with short videos, and as a result, we still foresee a stable growth of user size and engagement on Douyin. 

If you have more specific questions about Douyin or Douyin Advertising, please feel free to drop a message to us, and we will be ready to help you.

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