Analysis of social advertising marketing on Japanese social network mixi

About Mixi

Mixi is the earliest Internet company in Japan to provide SNS services, and is currently the largest SNS in Japan. Celebrities, artists, politicians, writers and other people of different identities are active on Mixi. Since its listing in September 2006, Mixi has been exploring a path that suits itself in the fierce competition, and at the same time, it has been constantly exploring new social product forms. Today, through its new product Mixi page, Mixi will show its continuous attempts and efforts in the field of social advertising.

New product mixi page

Today, we will introduce the [ Display Participant Banner ], which is an advertisement format displayed on the mixi page. The mixi page is a new feature that mixi launched on August 31, 2011. Any ordinary user can open a page on mixi, or open a page as a partner after submitting a written application to mixi and getting confirmation. Enterprises and users do not have to worry about their information being stolen, and can safely conduct related promotion operations through the mixi page.

At the Mobidec conference held in Meguro Ward, Tokyo on November 25, 2011, according to a speech by Masataka Tsuji, director of mixi media business division, the number of mixi pages opened has exceeded 150,000, of which more than 35% are opened by enterprises and institutions, and the number is on an upward trend.

According to the monitoring of user usage, the search function of mixi page was enhanced after it was launched, which smoothly increased its usage rate. The users who use mixi page also roughly reflect the overall user attributes of mixi, especially female users born after 1980 are the main user group. The figure below shows the user attributes of mixi page and mixi as a whole.

Among them, Lawson (a 24-hour convenience store similar to 711 in Japan) which is a partner of mixi page in the corporate page, has 71,000 fans on its mixi page, with good number ranging from 700 to 1,300. Compared with the Facebook page with 180,000 fans (the good number of Facebook page is in the range of 200 to 500), it has very high activity and presence. The following figure shows the ranking of mixi page, with celebrities and artists ranking relatively high; although compared with Facebook, the number of fans of corporate page is relatively small, it does not hinder the activity of users at all.

Mixi's social advertising service overview

According to media materials in December 2011, Mixi released a new banner advertising service - [Display Participant Banner]. This product is a new form of advertising tried on Mixi page, the purpose is to allow users to log in and use it, which is undoubtedly a very powerful solution for Mixi page owners with a small number of followers (fans). In addition, the limited-time trial product - [Eye-catching Mixi Page] launched on December 7th only requires 1 million yen in advertising fees. Compared with the minimum advertising fee of 3 million yen for [Display Participant Banner], it only costs 1/3 of the fee to post an advertisement. For users who are strict about advertising costs, this is a very rare opportunity.

Show participant banner

The so-called "display participant banner" is, as the name suggests, a method of displaying the number of participants in the mixi page on the banner. People who have used or seen Facebook ads must have a basic understanding of this concept, which creatively displays the number of friends who have participated in the mixi page advertisement dynamically on the advertisement banner.

Although Mixi's social advertising cannot be segmented based on attributes such as age and gender, it is published to three terminals at the same time: PC, multi-function mobile phone, and smart phone. Judging from the advertisements published through mixi's own advertising system, the banner showing the number of participants has increased the CTR (click-through rate) by 2 to 30 times compared to the previous ordinary banner. In addition, there are two versions of the banner showing the number of participants, namely: (1) showing the total number of fans of the mixi page (called the [showing the total number of fans version]); (2) showing the number of friends participating in the mixi page (called the [showing the number of friends version]). The latter has a CTR increase of 1.5 to 3 times compared to the former. (The CTR usually used as a benchmark is about PC: 0.07% Mobile: 0.05% Mixi touch 0.2%)

It is worth noting that in order to use the more effective [Display Friends Version], the friends of the advertising target must become fans of the mixi page. When publishing an advertisement, it is more important to expect to get a good advertising effect than to expect to gather a large number of fans.

The eye-catching mixi page

The advertising banner is a trial advertising service provided by Mixi for a limited period of time. The minimum advertising fee for the above-mentioned [Display Participant Banner] is 3 million yen, and the [Eye-Catching Mixi Page] will be launched on December 7, and the service is limited to

Between 2012/1/2 and 2012/4/2, the fee is only 1/3 of the [display participant banner] fee, which is a very favorable event for companies trying to advertise on mixi.

From: socialbeta