How to improve efficiency and optimize costs for Chinese Douyin advertising?

Short-form video now accounts for an increasingly significant share of feed-based advertising, and Douyin, as the most popular short-form video platform, offers immense value for cost optimization. Let’s explore how to improve efficiency and optimize costs in Douyin advertising!

1. Scaling Guide

In daily advertising operations, the first step is scaling guidance. Taking an example of increasing the budget from ¥20,000 to ¥50,000, there are three main scenarios:

The first step is foundational setup: in terms of account quantity, there are certain requirements for the number of new plans created daily, including weekly new additions.

The second step is multi-account parallel operation. Similar to investment principles, avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. Using multiple accounts helps distribute the pressure of scaling and is crucial.

The third and most important step is ensuring strong creative competitiveness. Many advertisers report that even after repeatedly replicating and duplicating ads they’ve seen, they fail to achieve better scaling results. This is often due to insufficient creative competitiveness. It’s essential to produce a large volume of creative materials to boost CTR and CVR, which in turn leads to positive and effective scaling.

2. Cost Considerations

Costs are highly influenced by historical conversion costs. The more stable the historical conversion costs, the lower the cost when scaling, potentially even lower than cost-controlled campaigns. If historical conversion costs are unstable, cost fluctuations can be significant.

Conversion cost is also an indicator of audience precision. In the initial stages of account advertising, it is not recommended to use this feature, as costs may be unstable and there is no compensation mechanism.

Since no bid needs to be entered—only the budget—it’s important to start with small budgets, such as ¥300 or ¥500, to gather data from a few campaigns. Monitor the consumption rate and conversion costs before gradually increasing the budget. When using this feature for the first time, such as for a live stream, avoid setting a budget of several thousand yuan, as it may lead to uncontrolled spending.

3. Cost Optimization

For daily cost optimization in advertising, here are three key aspects:

① Monitor campaigns in real time: For ad optimizers, real-time monitoring is crucial. Issues like exceeding costs or inefficient spending can be addressed promptly to minimize losses. It’s also important to maintain a consistent schedule for creating new plans, such as distributing ad setups across morning, noon, and evening to balance traffic.

② Scale first, then adjust bids: After scaling, gradually lower bids by 5%–10% to optimize advertising costs. Some may ask whether reducing bids by 20% or 30% is feasible. If traffic trends remain stable after increasing bids and exposure, and there is no significant drop in traffic, such a bid reduction is acceptable.

③ Ensure strong creative competitiveness: Only when ECPM, CTR, and CVR have improved do you have the leverage to lower bids. If these metrics remain low, reducing bids may lower costs but at the expense of scaling, which is not sustainable.