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深入分析社交网络站点的广告价值

发布时间:2011-05-26 13:29:22 Tags:,,,,

作者:Andrew Chen

社交网络能赚多少钱?

近来,人们对社交网络带来的广告效应感到十分激动。你会看到MySpace宣称轮廓瞄准(游戏邦注:某种广告传播方式)使网站广告点击量(游戏邦注:下文简称CTR)提升80%,也有传言称Facebook的每千次印象费用(游戏邦注:网络广告定价模式,下文简称CPM)为4美元。而且,近期在Facebook应用中泛起的淘金热使得许多人积累大量用户,期待能够获得不可思议的收益。人们很容易认为社交网络拥有的用户信息也能够驱动如同Google般的盈利。

现在就让我们来探讨下这个问题,社交网络能否迅速带来收益?原因是什么?以下我列举了几个影响社交网络收益的因素,这对此次探讨有所帮助。它们是:用户参与度与CTR处于对立面;广告总量并不相同,而是呈金字塔形;别混淆兴趣和意向的概念;CPM不仅受目标价值影响,还受底层价值影响;品牌就是最大的王牌。

Facebook-advertising(from oracledigital.com)

Facebook-advertising(from oracledigital.com)

了解CPM公式

在我们深入探讨之前,先说说CPM是如何产生的。本次讨论主要关注的是直效广告,而非品牌效应。CPM的计算公式如下:CPM = CTR * 每次点击费用(游戏邦注:下文简称PPC) * 1000。比如:100万个印象 * 0.5% CTR * 0.25美元PPC = 1250美元/100万印象 = 1.25美元/千次印象 = 1.25美元CPM。

对于发行商来说,CTR、PPC或印象越高,就可以赚越多钱。对登广告的客户而言,你需要弄清楚的是底层价值。毕竟,即便广告获得大量点击,如果你无法将其最终转化为交易价值,你也不会考虑去花钱做广告。

CPM = CTR * (行动价值 * 转化率) * 1000。转化率指点击广告后购买产品的用户比例,可能是从你的网店中购买东西的人数或者填写借贷申请表的人数等等。你也可以用此替代社交网络或虚拟商品促销休闲游戏的终生价值(游戏邦注:以下简称LTV)。

现在让我们探讨不同动态如何影响这些不同变量。

1、用户参与度与CTR处于对立面

你知道MySpace和Facebook为何鼓励你每天登录网站点击广告并产生依赖性吗?这就是用户参与度,它可以带来很大帮助,尤其对于战略增长和竞争。尽管如此,缺点在于用户在站点上的访问页面越多,CTR就越低。以下是详细的图表:

2、广告总量并不相同,而是呈金字塔形

有时你可能会听说某个社交网络的CPM是XXX美元。这个数据是真实的,确实是某些人为广告总量所支付的价格。但从总体上来说,这并非发行商的总体收益。如果你细心观察某个用户周期,你会发现如下内容:

(1) 首个用户印象最有价值(10美元)

(2) 第2-5个印象代表品牌价值或高CTR值(3-5美元)

(3) 随后,你在该类别广告网络销售上逐步下滑(1美元)

(4) 再次,你占据的是广告网络剩余部分(0.5美元)

(5) 你得到的只是每次行动成本(游戏邦注:下文简称CPA)剩余网络(0.1美元)

这些只是示例数字。现在的问题在于,尽管人们时常引用盈利数字,但大部分的印象发生在低CPM剩余数字上。盈利广告位于主页、主渠道页面(如音乐、游戏等)上,而不在论坛概况页面等多数流行页面上。我认为顶级广告(比例可能在5%-10%)产生的收益是整体收益的50%。因而在经济预测中,别指望广告总量能有个高CPM。你反倒需要调整站点的不同板块,以及它们在广告总量金字塔中所处的位置。

3、别混淆兴趣和意向的概念

现在让我们来看看社交网络的概况数据,其价值究竟有多少呢?你或许期待通过“滑雪”或“旅游”等概况关键词来通过社交网络站点盈利。是否每个页面都跟Google相同呢?事实并非如此。

原因在于,兴趣和意向有所差异,“滑雪”兴趣与求购“滑雪票”完全不同。后者意味着你准备购买,而前者只表示你有可能购买。这对品牌广告来说很棒,但对直效广告CPM公式确实没有帮助。

通常来说,高意图驱动高转化率和CTR。从理论上来说,有兴趣但没有意图别什么都没有要好,但可能还有其他影响因素。比如点击广告只是出于兴趣而已,并非真正想购买产品。

facebook-ads(from incometricks.com)

facebook-ads(from incometricks.com)

4、CPM不仅受目标价值影响,还受底层价值影响

而且,为弄清楚CPM,你确实需要关注交易的底层价值。毕竟,底层价值带动PPC,随后带动整个CPM。换句话说,Mortgage lead与广告存在前后关系,因为Mortgage lead比没交易站点的价值高50倍。

以下是mortgage lead站点发挥作用的方式:人们输入合同信息,然后将其出售给4个贷款方,随后系统会让他计算出贷款额。每个lead可能价值10美元,但因为出售给4个不同的公司,因而总价值为40美元。

现在,滑雪票可能便与服务更有相关性,音乐订阅服务或其他某些大量用户的商品也是如此。但是CTR的增加完全抵消了mortgage lead的强大价值。

这样,目标价值就会对广告有所帮助,但发表广告的问题依然存在。

目标价值可能会增加CTR和转化率,但其效力未必会完全抵消价值的减少。人们主要对不会产生很多盈利的东西感兴趣,正因为此,你需要进行补偿。

5、品牌就是最大的王牌

当然,真正的万能牌(游戏邦注:在游戏中可以当任何一张牌用的特殊牌)是品牌广告,因为它真正遵循CPM公式。但是品牌广告的定价并非真正以逻辑为基础,它的价格基础是关系、威望、用户度量和其他无法确定的因素。所以当品牌广告用户从电视转向互联网,你会看到大量的品牌资金同样发生改变。这些品牌资金的动向很简单,它们永远跟随所有为人所欢迎的东西。所以,由于主要接口的增长似乎极为缓慢,甚至用户参与度已流失,我们就可以看到品牌资金投入到社交网络站点中。

但是,除非你的名字为人们所熟知,否则你不太可能获取这些资金。原因在于品牌广告是场“胜者为王败者寇”的游戏,只有能负担其大型销售团队的大型站点可以与Madison Avenue品牌广告代理展开合作。

当前障碍在于广告放不像UGC,它需要他们推广品牌。因而直到这种情况改变之前,无论是通过技术方式或态度上的改变,品牌都会偏向于购买主流媒体站点上的视频。

往后的发展

对社交网络广告盈利来说,目前的态势不全是坏事。CPM确实能够带来盈利,因为印象变得越来越大。这些站点无法通过广告效应组织起来。这也是为何你可以构建获得数亿盈利站点的原因所在,而且这个数值每天都在增长。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

5 things that make your social network monetize like crap

Andrew Chen

Are the social networks making tons of money?

People have been very excited about the advertising prospects of social networks lately. First you have announcements from MySpace about an 80% rise in CTR through profile targeting, as well as some claims of Facebook’s going rate CPMs being $4. Furthermore, the recent gold rush in Facebook apps has led quite a few folks amassing large userbases with dreams of incredible monetization. It’s quite easy, with all the profile information that social networks have, to automatically assume that this information is the same type that drives Google-like revenue and monetization.

So let’s talk about this… Are social networks making money hand over fist? Why or why not? To aid this discussion, I’ll go through a couple of the critical challenges that affect social network monetization: Engagement is inversely correlated with CTRs; Inventory isn’t homogeneous, it’s a pyramid; Don’t confuse interest with intent; CPMs are driven by underlying value, not just targeting; Brands are a big wild-card

Understanding the CPM formula

Before we jump in, let’s talk about how CPMs are generated. For the purpose of this discussion, I’m going to focus on direct response advertising, rather than branding (which we’ll get into later). Ultimately, CPM is a simple calculation that is determined by: CPM = Clickthrough Rate * Price Per Click * 1000. For example: 1,000,000 impressions * 0.5% clickthrough * $0.25 PPC = $1250 per 1 million impressions = $1.25 / 1000 impressions = $1.25 CPM.

This is from the publisher side – if you have a good CTR or PPC or Impressions, you make more money. Now from the advertiser side, you need to figure out what the underlying value is. After all, even if you get a ton of clicks, if you can’t convert them on your side and have a good transactional value at the end, you won’t want to pay a PPC.

CPM = Clickthrough Rate * (Value of Action * Conversion Rate) * 1000. Conversion rate means the percentage of people who do the desired “action” that drives value for you. That might mean the % of people who buy from your e-commerce store, or who fill out your mortgage lead form, or whatever. You could also substitute this for Lifetime Value for your social network, or LTV for your virtual goods-driven casual game, or whatever.

Now let’s jump into how different dynamics on your site drive these different variables…

1. Engagement is inversely correlated with CTRs

You know how MySpace and Facebook just encourage you to click-click-click and log in every day and are just incredibly sticky? That’s great engagement, and it helps with a lot of things, particularly growth and competing in strategic areas. However, the drawback is that the more pageviews people have your site, the lower the clickthrough rate gets. Here’s a great diagram:

2. Inventory isn’t homogeneous, it’s a pyramid

Sometimes you might hear the CPMs for one of these social networks is X dollars. And that’s true, it’s exactly the price that SOME people are paying for the inventory. But in general, that’s not how publishers end up managing their inventory. Instead, if you take the impressions for a user across their session, you’ll instead get something like this:

The first US impression in a session has the most value ($10)

Then impressions 2-5 have some level of brand value or high CTR value ($3-5)

Then after that, you’re hitting ad networks selling on category ($1)

Then eventually, you hit remnant ad networks ($0.50)

Finally, you hit pure CPA remnant networks ($0.10)

These are just example numbers. Now the problem is that while people often quote the premium numbers, the majority of the impressions happen in the low CPM remnant numbers. The premium ads happen on the homepage, major channel pages (like Music, Games, etc), but not in the most popular pages like forums, profile pages, etc. I’d expect the top inventory (let’s say 5-10%) end up generating 50% of the overall revenues. So in your financial forecasting, don’t expect to be able to multiply a big CPM against your ad inventory. Instead, you need to be nuanced about the different sections of your site, and how they sit relative to the ad inventory pyramid.

3. Don’t confuse interest with intent

Now to the profile data – how much is this worth? You might expect that by looking at profile keywords like “skiing” or “travel” or topics like that, you could make a ton of money on social networking sites. Every page should be like Google, right? Wrong. (unfortunately)

The reason is that interest in a topic is different than having intent. Having “skiing” on your profile is completely different than searching for “ski tickets.” The latter means you’re ready to buy, whereas the former simply means that you sometimes buy. This is GREAT for brand advertising, but really doesn’t help on the direct response CPM formula.

Having high intent typically drives a higher conversion rate (driving up the PPC) as well as driving up the CTR. Having interest but not intent should theoretically be better than nothing, but there might be other effects, like having more “looky-loos” click on your ad just out of interest, but not actually buy the product there.

4. CPMs are driven by underlying value, not just targeting

Furthermore, you really have to look at the underlying value of the transaction to figure out how the CPMs will turn out. After all, the underlying value drives the PPC, which then drives the overall CPM. In order words: Mortgage leads trump contextually relevant ads because Mortgage leads can be worth 50X more than a non-transactional site.

This is how a mortgage lead generation site might work: Person enters their contact info, which then gets sold to 4 lenders, which then call the person to work out the loan. Each lead might be worth $10, but because it’s sold to 4 different companies, it’s worth $40 total.

Now a ski ticket might be more contextually relevant service. Or maybe a music subscription service. Or some other mass consumer good. But the increase in clickthrough rate COMPLETELY offsets the powerful value of the mortgage lead, all you will see is LowerMyBills psychedelic peacock ads.

Now targeting really does help advertisements, but the problem with display advertising which shows as you are using a site is that the effects are not going to be as strong as high-intent areas.

In this case, targeting might increase CTRs and conversion rates, but it’s unlikely that it’s so powerful it’ll completely offset the value decrease. People are mostly interested in things that don’t generate lots of money, and because of that, you have to compensate.

5. Brands are a big wild-card

Of course, the real wild-card is brand advertising, because it really follow the CPM formula. Brand advertising is really not priced based on any logical way that follows a formula like that. Instead, it’s based on relationships, prestige, audience metrics, and other intangibles. So as the audiences for brand advertisers migrate from TV to the internet, you will see a tremendous amount of brand dollars move as well. These brand dollars will simply follow whatever’s “hot” – thus, because the major portals seem to be growing pretty slowly and/or actually losing engagement, you’ll see brand dollars chase the social networking sites.

However, unless your name is Tom or Mark, you’re unlikely to get your hands on too many of these dollars. And the reason is that brand advertising is sort of a “winner take all” game, where only the largest sites can afford large sales teams that can develop the deep relationships required to sell to Madison Avenue brand ad agencies.

The current hurdle is that advertisers don’t like UGC (er, CGM content) because it requires them to let go of their brand. So until that changes, through technological means or an attitudinal change, the brands are preferring buying video on mainstream media sites.

What’s next?

Now, it’s not all bad for social network ad monetization. The place in the CPM formula that’s really driving revenue is that impressions are getting bigger and bigger. What these sites can’t make up via advertising efficiency, they are making up through pure bulk. That’s why you can build sites with 100s of million in revenue, and it’s growing every day. The brand shift is also going in their favor.

More interestingly, I’m looking for native ad units to develop on the site which do work for advertisers. Months ago, I had written about “tag along widgets” which has quickly materialized as the Cost Per Install ecosystem on Facebook. Here’s the excerpt from “What’s a Facebook user worth, anyway?”

Another option would be for some sort of deeper integration to happen as hooks to another widget. For example, I could imagine a company (let’s say Apple) creating their own widget. If you as Mr. Travel Widget, when installed, would try to convince the user to also install an Apple widget, I think that’d be an interesting model. Basically tag-along widgets which advertisers pay some amount for every user that is brought along.

As these native ad units mature, I’d expect some new revenue opportunities to be built from scratch. Let’s see how it goes – it can’t be worse than display ;

UPDATE: Fixed CPM formula.. note to self: never add changes at 6AM when your brain is asleep! (Source: andrewchenblog.com)


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