"Gaotu Group will stop the delivery of information feed advertisements."
At the recent analyst meeting after Gaotu Group's financial report, founder and CEO Chen Xiangdong directly pressed the "pause button" of the information flow business. At the same time, he also made it clear that the huge traffic growth brought by the launch in the future will no longer apply to the education and training industry, and the overall focus of the industry will shift to "operation".
The "abrupt end" of Gaotu Group happened suddenly, but it was actually "expected" of the development trend of the online education industry.
In January of this year, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection "named" the online education industry with intensified competition and serious internal friction. Subsequently, the heavy hammers of supervision continued one after another. Many leading companies such as Beijing Xueersi Online School, Gaotu Classroom, and Yuanfudao have been notified one after another. Criticize or impose administrative penalties. The dominoes were also toppled. According to 36Kr report, education companies affiliated to Homework, NetEase Youdao, and ByteDance will usher in a wave of layoffs. This summer, the number of job cuts in the online education industry may exceed 100,000.
Half a year ago, online education companies were still marketing frantically, and ten companies could invest more than 10 billion yuan in just two months. And now, this ups and downs of the marketing war, has rapidly approached the end stage.
1. Crazy kryptonite, reckless
The marketing war of online education started in 2018. At that time, the continuous influx of capital brought the online education track to the forefront. Players with sufficient ammunition tried their best to "burn money" to make this crazy marketing The battle has continued until this year.
The reason why it will grow in the way of crazy buying is naturally closely related to its customer acquisition logic.
You must know that online education companies will go through a long decision-making link of “building brand awareness—purchasing low-priced courses—purchasing regular-priced courses” before they can realize the transition from traffic to users. The link may seem simple, but in reality it is full of dangers, and every link has a high probability of losing potential customers that have been cultivated so hard. For this reason, covering brand advertisements and performance advertisements on every conversion point of advertising reach, usage and real download has become the growth solution sought by online teaching companies, and this is also the reason for the high marketing expenses. .
Before guiding potential customers to the final step of "purchasing regular-priced courses", advertising low-priced courses in information flow channels has become the first and largest customer acquisition method adopted by online education companies.
Since the transition from low-priced courses to regular-priced courses will test the subsequent marketing capabilities, brand products, operational services, and other capabilities, all these uncertain factors make online education companies have to invest more chips in customer acquisition. Betting on the strength of information flow advertising, the intention is to win as much traffic as possible with the strongest exposure.
Information feed ads are generally priced according to the CPC (Ad Click Cost) method. Whether or not they can win the bidding depends on the eCPM value of the ad (ad revenue per thousand impressions), and the bidding and ad quality are the most important factors that affect the eCPM value of the ad. factor. Online education companies know that the quality of telemarketing list advertising is uncontrollable, and only raising their "bids" is the only way for them to gain the initiative. Therefore, in order to achieve high exposure tasks and continuously increase the eCPM value of advertising, the information flow optimizers of online education companies will not set a budget limit for the background of their information flow advertising accounts.
At the same time, according to industry insiders, because the advertising space and traffic pool of Internet platforms are always limited, in order to gain more exposure, online education institutions will also open multiple accounts with a number of agency companies in one traffic pool. At the same time, do advertising without a budget cap and chase advertising resources. Therefore, what is finally presented to users is the "ubiquitous" scene of online educational institution advertisements.
In addition to information flow, the main source of customer acquisition, online education also invests heavily in brand advertising.
From the perspective of online channels, the naming rights and patch advertisements of major variety shows, TV dramas, and evening parties have long been occupied by online education companies. According to Duojiao Entertainment Investment, there will be as