Text | Fang Ting
Edit | Yang Xuan
(Thanks to 36 authors Yan Hao and Wang Leibo for their contribution to this article)
Whirlpool center
At the other end of the negotiating table, there are at least 9 investment letters of intent and three BAT seats.
1 billion US dollars, 1.2 billion US dollars, 1.4 billion US dollars, to the last 1.6 billion, this interesting headline company, the valuation has been rising in the negotiations.
Interesting headlines most want to take Tencent's investment. Around the Spring Festival of 2018, the financing negotiations between the funny headline and BAT have entered the offer price stage. In order to wait for Tencent, it refused Baidu and Ali, and made a short period of time, specifically waiting for the reply of Tencent.
This product, which is also positioned as information flow information, took only over a year, and DAU (number of daily active users) exceeded tens of millions. Today's headlines can't be alarmed. In December last year, Zhang Yiming sent a picture of the fierce growth of funny headlines to the executives. There are rumors that today's headlines have also tried to invest in interesting headlines, but the head of the interesting head did not respond.
In the end, Tencent still won the deal, led by a valuation of 1.6 billion US dollars, the transaction amount of nearly 200 million US dollars, and the investment is also the capital, Shang Hao capital.
When traffic is getting more expensive and it is becoming more and more difficult to explode, the funny headline has come to the center of the whirlpool, regardless of reluctance.
"Investment interest is not necessarily Tencent's defense against today's headlines, but in the current situation, any large traffic portal can not be let go." Zheng Haole, CEO of Light Source Capital, said to 36. The light source is the FA of the current round of financing, and also served as a financing consultant for fast-handed and Harrow bicycles. Through the previous cases, the company realized the value of the sinking market in the third and fourth lines.
In first- and second-tier cities, everyone defaults to “headlines†= “today headlinesâ€. But in the sinking market, there is also a huge “headline†matrix, which refers not to the products of Beijing Weibo Company, such as vibrato, car, watermelon video, volcano video, but interesting headlines and benefits. Headline, Amoy News, Oriental Headlines and other information flow products with rebate subsidies as the main means of operation. The fun headline is one of the earliest and the fastest.
According to Tan Siliang, the founder of the fun headline, the penetration rate of the first in the industry in the third-tier cities and below has never exceeded 20%. “It’s not as exaggerated as everyone thinks.†The remaining 80% is left to the fun of the headlines, most of the users they are exposed to, there may not have been any news application in the phone.
"The headlines are actually to cover the ceiling of today's headlines. Now how big they are expanding, how low the ceiling of the headline in the sinking market will be in the future." An investor who asked for anonymity said.
But for entrepreneurs and investors, this is really good news.
At the beginning of April this year, in a closed-door meeting of a famous VC, the flow of sinking the market became the most popular topic in many roundtables. The more interesting and interesting headlines were the cases that were repeatedly analyzed.
Looking back at companies that have recently entered rapid growth, whether they are a lot of fun or interesting headlines, their common feature is that traffic comes from “sinking marketsâ€â€”those who seem to be ubiquitous in Taobao and today’s headlines.
This is a market of up to 560 million people. It has long been on the verge of the Internet world and is considered to be difficult to discover and “not worthwhileâ€. They are mainstream users over the age of 40 in third- and fourth-tier cities, as well as older users in first-tier cities.
Nowadays, someone has found a way to fix them.
Mentoring relationship and time cost performance
The reason why the fun headlines have to wait for Tencent is because Tencent is more tolerant post-investment management style. On the other hand, it is because the interpersonal communication based on WeChat and QQ is the key to getting “sinking†instead of the Internet world. A method of buying traffic for more than a decade.
"I didn't buy from these big platforms, but from a single person to form the flow, the individual will not pay a premium with us." Tan Siliang told 36, this is the reason why he was interested in doing things at the time. Before starting the fun headline, Tan Siliang was responsible for the online advertising platform business in Shanda Group. He was too aware of how the online traffic price went up.
Interesting headlines have tried to buy from the channels mastered by the giants, and the average customer cost is more than 10 yuan. For the left-handed user's right-hand advertising business, such a high cost is not enough to support a fast-growing company. What makes Tan Siliang even more worried is that if you rely on the distribution channels that the giants have mastered to get customers, the channels will only continue to raise prices, and the profits that belong to the startups will continue to be compressed.
To gain share in the sinking market, the key points have changed from mastering channels to understanding "people."
The 86-year-old Mrs. Wang began to hold her mobile phone all night, and her fingers slid on the screen from time to time. From 9:00 in the evening, she continued to pull until 2 am, and under the control of her son, she reluctantly put down her mobile phone. Before downloading the funny headline, her work was to go to sleep at eleven o'clock in the evening, but now, sleeping at one or two in the morning is also very common for her. She is motivated to earn more than 30 phone bills by watching the news in a month. She is happy to tell the news to others. The family knows that the headlines in her mouth all day long are not headlines today, but interesting headlines.
Before retiring, Mrs. Wang was an anesthesiologist in Lanzhou. She developed her interest in the headlines. She was the "master" in her previous stock market and her acquaintance in reality. The first time the recipient received 3,000 gold coins, the apprentice's reading income can also be tribute to the master. The master of Mrs. Wang has collected dozens of "apprentices."
The “Gold Coin†stimuli brought a lot of sharing behaviors in the WeChat group and friends circle:
Someone added me. B7PYYXXX, set up 1 yuan.
CRB8YFXXX, please copy the invitation code, enter one dollar.
News class, more than 3 yuan a person - probably because the invitation code is too slow, someone simply took out a screenshot, which contains several apps that read the gold coins.
If you look carefully at the 99+ messages that are added every half hour in these groups, you are unlikely to miss any new money-making platform on the market. Their names are so strange that they can earn 888 from watching the news, earning 888 for the apprentices, and grabbing red packets every day to help each other with their tasks. The owner responsible for operation and maintenance seems to be eccentric about this information, and there are few cases of kicking people.
Most rebate platforms hated the Machine Wool Party. The fun headline cleaned up more than 200,000 robot accounts in the early days of the venture. For a DAU platform that was just a million, it was a difficult decision at the time. But for those real users who want to lick wool, the platform is much more tolerant. Tan Siliang thought very well about this. "If he wanted to be greedy and cheap, these users are also very easy to be attracted by our integration mechanism. Later, we read and use algorithms to cultivate his habits."
Mrs. Wang also wanted to accept the apprentice, but was strongly stopped by her family. But the family did not object to her watching the news, and the pictures and videos that could be brushed down replaced the location of the TV and newspapers. When she followed her children and grandchildren from Lanzhou to Beijing, the news helped her to spend a lot of boring time.
The fission of the user volume is just beginning to happen.
On the leaderboard of the funny headlines, the number one user received more than 40,000 apprentices and won more than 80,000 yuan in promotion awards. In this way of directly giving money incentives, the fun headline completed the first million DAU, and also crossed the threshold of 10 million DAU.
The fissile infrastructure is that Mrs. Wang has used WeChat, will forward information to each other, will also send red envelopes and pay with WeChat. Whether it's a lot of fun or an interesting headline, their business model is inseparable from this series of basic functions. Previously, this group of up to 560 million "Internet marginal people", although there are smart phones, but in addition to WeChat and mobile phone pre-installed software, rarely take the initiative to download a new app.
The followers of the interesting headlines, whether it is Huitou, Taobao, and Oriental headlines, have followed the name of the mentoring system. This name has long been available in various online earning platforms. The fun headline is only used. The founding team believes that the mentoring system is easier to understand for users of the third line and below. But this name can not help people think of pyramid schemes, so the funny headline needs to explain to the outside world repeatedly, MLM is to collect money from users, and the funny headline is to pay the user, which is fundamentally different.
The mentoring system is equivalent to the new cost of the platform. According to the different rules of the platform, the "master" invites one "apprentice" to download and register, generally can get 2 to 8 pieces. A quota higher than 2 pieces usually needs to be returned in three times, and the trigger condition is the reading behavior of the “apprentice†on the platform. In other words, in addition to the invitation code to invite the apprentice to register, the master also needs to encourage the apprentice to read the information flow. Although there are also dazzling task systems such as open treasure chest (check-in), sun income (share link), reading information, quality reviews, etc., if you really want to rely on these apps to make money, pulling new users is the most effective means. .
Just put an invitation QR code in front of the stall, scan and download to send watermelon, the fruit stall owner is their ace push; the agent who sells insurance will also develop a dozen apprentices, and press the point on the WeChat group every day. The disciples read the news. They are quite active in real life, and they are all node figures on the real social network. Their "apprentices" will expand their teams through sharing with friends and sending invitation codes.
Relying on this method of communication, the fun headline reduces the average customer cost to 3-4 yuan.
Yu Hong, an old Shanghai native who had just retired, was also used by her "master" to play with interesting headlines. She started in the middle of her friend's circle of five or six food, plants, resorts, blue sea and blue sky, with a link to "watch the news, earn flowers, fill my invitation code: 24784XXX"; she spends an hour a day. To brush the news as a game, when the phone screen pops up with the icon of the gold coin, she and her "master" can have credit, although the conversion, on average, a few cents a day.
After downloading the fun headline for 10 months, Yu Hong’s total income is 60, and there are still 28 yuan in the account. She has already transferred her interest to the higher subsidy, and of course, follows her “masterâ€. Transfer together.
"I don't know how our first 1 million DAU was achieved." Mingu Kang, the founder of Huitou, thought for a long time and did not find the answer to this question. The foreigner who has been in business for a long time in China, Mandarin is very adept, but there is always a sense of excitement in his tone, especially when describing the results of Huitou.
The last product of this company is Huishang Screen, a rebate product that unlocks the mobile phone screen and jumps to the pop-up advertisement, which was launched in 2013. For a long time, Hui lock screen business was bleak, and it also caused problems of cash withdrawal and credit collapse. In essence, Huitou’s model is the same as Huishang Screen, which is based on rebates to obtain the attention of users in exchange for advertisers. In the case of Huihui lock screen, the entire Huaming Media did not report too much hope for Huitou.
Therefore, when Mingu Kang made the New Year KPI plan at the end of 2017, the goal set for Huitou was DAU reaching 3 million. At the time, Huitou was on the line for just two months. No one thought that just entering February 2018, 3 million DAUs were reached.
Accounting
Hui Lock screen failed in the past because the daily user time is only a few minutes and it is unable to attract enough advertisements. There are too few advertisements, and there are not enough rebates for users. This game cannot be rolled.
However, the information flow products are different. With the content that seems to never brush the bottom, the funny heads can stick the users on the mobile phone, and the gold coins are stimulated. The average user duration of these products is almost 60 minutes or more.
"These people are not so concerned about relative prices and are very sensitive to absolute prices." Sugar bean CEO Zhang Yuan said. The current DAU of jelly beans is about 3 million, which is the first in the square dance field. The people it cuts are also sinking markets, but they are more subdivided, mainly people over 40 years old, Zhang Yuan called "The town is middle age." This group of users can watch the news by swiping their mobile phones. Even if they can earn 20 yuan a month, it is an extra bonus.
In other words, they care more about how much they earn, not the price/performance between time and income. This contributes to the use of up to 60 minutes of use, as well as a steady flow of information.
After all, it will eventually fall to the point where you can count it.
"Although the absolute value of their wealth is not comparable to that of first-tier cities, their disposable time and disposable wealth are actually relatively large." Sugar bean CEO Zhang Yuan said.
More importantly, they have not been "washed".
Previously, the people who earned this part of the money were the TV stations that inserted a large number of special advertisements. They were TV shopping, and they were the salesmen who recommended the unknown brands in the town shopping malls.
"In the past two years, there have been more and more means of realizing, and the depth of realization has become deeper and deeper. The opportunity for this group of people is still very large." Cheng Tian, ​​a capital partner, said to 36. The means of realizing traffic has not changed, mainly broadcast, advertising, games, e-commerce, and depth refers to the daily income or monthly income that can be obtained from a single user.
This was originally a business divided by today's headlines and Baidu. In 2017, today's headline advertising revenue is about 15 billion yuan, and the KPI in 2018 is reported to have tripled to 50 billion (including all the current headlines products such as vibrato). Information flow is also the focus of Baidu's business in the past two years, even the Baidu cloud disk has embedded information flow module. The growth in the distribution of information flow business is also the focus of Li Yanhong and Lu Qi at the Baidu Financial Reporting Conference in 2017.
Today's headlines and Baidu cut off only one piece of the big cake. In the sinking market, the funny headlines and Huitou articles, the single-month highs have already broken 100 million yuan.
In a sinking market that has not been repeatedly "washed", effect advertising has more room to play than brand advertising, although compared to the latter, effect advertising is often in its rough form, and the inductive interface is considered to be quick success. But as far as the results are concerned, the effect advertisements with the conversion rate as the evaluation criteria are obviously more efficient.
"For these users, advertising is even part of the information." A senior information company pointed out to 36. Compared with the typical urban white-collar workers in the first and second lines, consumers in the sinking market do not have sufficient brand knowledge and consumption choices. They are relatively blind when making purchasing decisions, which makes the entire market appear to be characterized by advertising marketing.
Net Fun Headline Financing BP Screenshot
Instead of waiting for consumers to come to the door, it is better to push brands and products to them, so information flow ads have more opportunities to drive purchases than search ads. This is a prerequisite for the rapid rise of fun headlines.
According to Mingu Kang, in the process of Huitou's DAU from 0 to 5 million, the company did not use any of the company's stock funds, and almost started making money on the first day of the launch. The funny headline conveyed similar information. At least at this stage, the information flow advertisement for sinking the market is still a good business that looks stable and does not lose. The cost of the customer can be controlled below 5 yuan, and there is no need for today's headline, Baidu sales team like 10,000. For them at this stage, the ad network of the access agent is the best solution to digest traffic.
In the "headline" of the sinking market, of course, there are not only retirees, but women under the age of 40 are the mainstream users of these apps. Targeting their advertisers are both iQiyi, Xinxie, 58 City, Volkswagen, as well as "double eyelid liposuction price", "Drinking teeth will hurt?" - a variety of different levels of advertising mixed together, Waiting for the user to open the daily check-in gold coins and read all kinds of local news and entertainment short videos, then open them.
Headline competition
In Mingu Kang's current plan, Huitou's 2018 annual target has become DAU 20 million.
This is also the goal of Tan Siliang's next three to six months for the fun headline. The DAU lifeline in his heart is 50 million. In his opinion, only after this embarrassment, the funny headline is considered a safe area.
The number of people trying to squeeze into this new market is growing abruptly. Before, many people's attitudes towards interesting headlines were from incomprehensible to invisible, but when the company successfully won Tencent's investment, the wind became a follow-up.
Today's headlines are no longer reproducible, and the funny headlines seem to have a chance to pursue.
According to the official data of the funny headline, its registered users are 70 million, which is only about one-tenth of the third-wave demographic dividend of the 500 million people mentioned by the innovative workshop management partner Wang Hua. There is also a large number of sinking people whose commercial value is to be developed, which has not yet been reached.
Stimulated by the gold coin system, these “headline†products are characterized by high retention. Invite a friend to send gold coins, one dollar withdrawal - in the user group of Huitou, you can see an advertisement called Weiweitou from time to time. The product has been on the line for just over a month, and the micro-headline is already profitable.
Even today's headlines are also "copying" interesting headlines. First look and today's headline speed version is the two reading rebate products launched today, only the Android market search. They have the same apprenticeship system and gold coin gameplay as the fun headline, and continue the existing foundation of today's headlines in algorithms and content.
Today's headline version of the installation package is very small, only 2M, suitable for low-profile mobile phones, positioning inside the headline is originally a strategic product in the sinking market. After the explosion of the funny headlines, today's headline speed version also fully embraces the mentoring mode that the headlines rely on. According to QuestMobile's data, at the end of 2017, today's headline version has 20 million daily lives.
This is one of the reasons why the fun headline has set "50 million daily activities" as a safety line.
The irony is that everyone is learning the gold coin system, and the content is not the hardest step to make an information product. When the headline started today, Zhang Yiming was criticized for copyright issues, and even frequently filed a lawsuit. In the past six years, in this era of information redundancy, the platform does not even need to spend upfront costs. As long as you are willing to open up traffic and share advertising, you can easily reach more than 100,000 purchases.
The amount of content that is updated daily is 300,000, and the amount of single-day content of Huitou is 150,000. Even the first-time micro-headline, which has just been on the line for one month, can reach 100,000 daily updates. Most of their contents are purchased from content aggregation platforms such as Tencent and Baidu. After double review, the topic is based on local news, health and wellness information, and there is not enough “nutrition†but enough security. This number is enough to meet the needs of users covering 80% of hotspots. In contrast, no one has much advantage.
The seemingly simple and reproducible gold coin system is the key to determining the gap at this stage. Only the people who have done it know how many operational tricks are hidden.
30 yuan withdrawal -15 yuan withdrawal - 1 yuan withdrawal - no threshold withdrawal; forward link to send 30 gold coins - read to send 10 gold coins - click video 30 gold coins ... these app reward rules often change on a weekly basis, and some The rules are written on the open side, while others are the tricks that only the back-end products and operations know. For example, the ratio of gold coins to cash is not fixed, and the platform is commonly known as the “exchange rateâ€.
Comparison of the tasks of two rebate "headlines" products
"How much money you make every day to come in, how much to go out, you need to be very clear, this involves the setting of values, and even the knowledge of the financial system." Sun Jian, founder of Wei Weitou, said. The company with about 100 employees operates several products at the same time. The Chinese Perpetual Calendar is one of the most fists. In the past seven years, it has accumulated 300 million registered users. Because of its main function of the lunar calendar, there are many loyal users in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions and small counties.
If there is no such a sinking product in the Chinese calendar, Sun Jian will certainly not enter the melee of rebate information flow. Under the uncertain operating rules, the only certain point is that the threshold for doing this is constantly rising. Tencent's Daily Express has directly raised the new reward to 6 to 8 yuan, which is double the cost of the interesting headline and more than the reward of today's headline speed version.
Fortunately, this market is sinking. Because the volume is too large, the firing gun has just started, and it is not the winner’s situation. Otherwise it is just a boring story of who has more ammunition and who can win.
"The acquisition of traffic, the operation of content, and the competition in game design are a comprehensive result. Content is one of them." Shun is a partner, Cheng Tian said. Shun has invested in today's headlines, interesting headlines and a bit of information, and the share is not large. From different angles, the three apps cut out one of the cakes, but they haven't reached the stage of the short-term match, but one day, the hands that reach out to the flow will come together.
"The trend of traffic gathering is too obvious now, so everyone can't get the resources. When innovation comes out, it will be killed. At this time, only desperately to take down your place in this time, otherwise there may be no more Opportunity," said Sun Jian of Wei Weitou. Rebate reading is a micro-innovation in operational means, but its window period is only half a year to one year. Missing this time period, even if it is a funny headline, there will not be many advantages.
There is another typical characteristic of the sinking market. Once a user uses a certain product, the loyalty is often higher than that of the first- and second-tier cities. For users who are still in the white space of the Internet, move from one app to another. One is a troublesome behavior. This is how much time for the fun heads to take a breather.
After receiving Tencent's investment, the fun headline is still considered as ammunition for a while, and Tan Siliang said that building the content system will be the focus of the interesting section for the next period of time. According to one of the interesting headline investors, Yuan Wenda, managing partner of Red Point Ventures, introduced the technology team to improve the algorithm from Silicon Valley.
But compared to this, the industry is obviously more concerned about another gossip: the funny headline has dug a good buyer, and even the many founding teams are asking about the name of the person. The funny headline that has grown into one of the "sinking big three" is no longer as low-key as it was a year ago. There is no accurate statement about who this person is trying to dig and what they want to do.
But what you can see is that before using the existing experience of sinking the market to copy a lot of fun, the funny headline has been pulled up using the method of grouping.
Interesting headline
The fun headline is a lot of copying and copying itself. In many ways of building a moat, the replication of patterns is still the easiest to operate. One of the things that the headline is doing is encouraging users to download fun and tweak voices. The former is a short video product, and the latter's product description is an “emotional confession mutual help communityâ€. The same gold coin gameplay is applied to these two products. Huitou has also launched a similar Hui animation, the main purpose is to fill the entertainment time of sinking market users. Their goals are surprisingly consistent, in order to create a rich entertainment ecosystem, and try to occupy users as long as possible at low cost.
A new batch of targeted users and a new batch of companies entering the company are entering the process of being "washed."
(Editor: 娄在霞HN151)
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