Today, millennials in China have the main purchasing power and the consumer market has transformed from traditional e-commerce platform to a combination of social media and e-commerce. Word of mouth advertising gradually becomes the focus in e-commerce marketing. Being the largest lifestyle sharing platform in China, Xiaohongshu has a strong influence on millennials’ life and their buying decision.

Established in 2013, Xiaohongshu is a platform about millennials’ lifestyle that influences their buying decision. It allows users to share short videos and photos to record their life moments. It has now become the largest library of consumer word of mouth and social e-commerce platform in China.

Thanks to the millions of registered users and high-purchasing power demographic. According to Haitong Securities Data Report 2018, in the first quarter of 2018, China’s top 6 cross-border e-commerce platforms occupied 84% of total market share and Xiaohongshu was 1 of the top 6 platforms, holding 4.3% of the market. Its market shares steadily increase in the next 2 years. As of October 2019, Xiaohongshu has more than 300 million registered users and 60 million monthly active users. Most of the active users are those who born in the post-90s and post-95s. It is now one of the largest cross-border social e-commerce platforms in China.

Based on the current users’ profile, Xiaohongshu is suitable for cosmetics, skincare, fashion, food & beverage, tourism, hotels, home furniture, education, photography, etc. So far, Xiaohongshu has attracted more than thousands of brands to advertise on the platform.

The community operation of Xiaohongshu is mainly divided into 3 directions, i.e. monitor the actual reviews and shopping experience from consumers, nurture and create large amount of high quality UGC, and monitor the long tail effect from closed loop marketing. Through interactive content, partnership between brands and KOLs, and having a closed shopping cycle, Xiaohongshu provides valuable content and shopping experience to the users, hence, improves app stickiness.

Explore Page News Feed Ad

Explore page news feed ad is Xiaohongshu’s core marketing model for content marketing. Its main features are:

• High exposure and guaranteed ad delivery: The reason of Xiaohongshu can guarantee the ad delivery is because there are more than millions of users browsing the content on the explore page everyday
• Good ad nativeness leads to conversion: Xiaohongshu will place the ad into native content and display through the double-column feed on explore page based on users’ browsing behavior, hence, improves conversion
• Precise targeting: Xiaohongshu’s algorithm develops targeting strategy from multi-dimension; generates different home page for different user and target the ads to the most relevent users

There are 2 types of Xiaohongshu explore page news feed ads:

• Posts News Feed Ad – Content marketing through native post
• Video Big Card Ad (product banner) – Promote brands through video or banner

Posts News Feed Ad – Ad Formats & Buying Model

• Buying Model: CPM
• Ad Placement: 5 selectable positions (6^th / 16^th / 26^th / 36^th / 46^th post)
• Landing page: 1^st click to post content page, 2^nd click to topic page / lead generation form page / store page / campaign page / POI list
• Ad Frequency: 3 times per day for a single ad (to maintain user experience)
• Ad Targeting: For 26^th / 36^th / 46^th position, it supports basic targeting like age and gender; also, audience targeting like mother & baby

This ad format is very suitable for: convey brand’s story, promote festival with brand partnership, build awareness for product launching, promote any brand event.

The pop-up ad supports full screen or non-full screen design, and multiple types of landing page to fulfill the marketing objectives of advertisers.

Pop-up Ad Upon App-opening – Ad Formats & Buying Model

• Buying Model: CPT (up to 3 playing by turns per day)
• Ad Format: Static image (3s) / dynamic image (4s) / video (5s)
• Ad Frequency: 15-minute interval between 2 consecutive playing turns and 3 times per day for a single ad

In-app brand search – It has become a core user behavior that developed from the size of Xiaohongshu’s community. As of December 2019, brand search is up to 50 million searches and product related search is up to 30 million searches per day on Xiaohongshu. The average brand related search volume is up to 10 million.

The pop-up ad supports full screen or non-full screen design, and multiple types of landing page to fulfill the marketing objectives of advertisers.

Brand Zone Ad Formats

• Generate Traffic – Appear on the first search results page after users searched the keyword
• Display Ad – Accounts / store page
• Banner redirect – Official account page / post content page / lead generation form page (HTML5) / topic page / product information page / campaign page / store page
• Tab with multiple page selection – Official account page / post content page / lead generation form page (HTML5) / topic page / product information page / campaign page / store page / POI list

Topic ad is one of Xiaohongshu’s featured advertising formats. Through the exclusive brand topic community build by the brands owner, it can attract users to understand the brand and products, hence, facilitate users buying decision.

Custom Topic

Custom topic gets traffic from multi-channels and continuously maintaining the exposure of the topic.

The custom topic page can be a normal topic page or advanced custom topic page. Other than topic header, topic name or description and administrative access of topic posts, advanced custom topic page has higher customization that includes banner, topic videos, and topic list functions in addition.

Hot Topic

Custom made the topic content on search page to direct the traffic to topic page, search results page and brand zone, hence, increase the impressions.

Hot Topic Ad Specifications

• Buying Model: CPT playing by turns (up to 24 turns per day)
• Ad Placement: 2^nd position of hot topics
• Estimated Impressions: 42 million per day
• Topic content: Customizable ad copy (not more than 7 characters)

Xiaohongshu sticker ad is suitable for showing brand’s tone, increases interaction with users and improves content’s quality.

Sticker Ad Specifications

• Buying Model: Sell by unit and will be display for 7 consecutive days (maximum 4 commercial stickers online at the same time, first-come-first-serve basis)
• Ad Placement: 4^th / 5^th / 8^th / 9^th position on the first page
• Estimated Impressions: 12 million per week
• Sticker Format: Customizable – can show elements like products, ad copy, etc.

Stricker Ad Buying Model

• Buying Model: Price depends on in-app search volume
• Sales Cycle: Monthly
• Keyword List: Related brand keywords like brand keywords, brand category keywords, and product keywords
• Product Enquiry: Each brand needs to make a separate enquiry, and supports multiple enquiries
• Product Display: Allows change of materials during ad delivery and multiple sets of materials from the same brand online at the same time

The Octoplus team is passionate about creating innovative data-driven solutions that deliver.

Our founders have more than 10 years of experience in SEO, SEM and data analytics. Under their leadership, we have redefined the way that social media and influencer campaigns can be run to generate results for our clients.

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 Email bd@octoplusmedia.com