1.4 Advertising on WeChat Official Account

While academic studies have been focusing on usage, society, behavior and other particular issues in the mobility context, information promoters have also started to pay attention to the advantage offered by mobile social media such as WeChat. Compared with conventional mobile advertising methods such as sending SMS and MMS, now advertising through apps has become the trend. As discussed before, the advertising on WeChat is based on users’ strong ties. Marketers cannot depend on mass messaging to WeChat users, but take advantage of the users’ social connectivity for propagation. Therefore, the success of the advertising will depend on whether the advertising message goes viral.

For companies and information promoters, the official accounts of WeChat enable them to engage with WeChat users with a new method. Through WeChat official accounts, the company is able to approach WeChat users privately since all the conversations between them cannot be seen or commented on by others. Since WeChat official accounts are smartphone-based, users could read the messages anytime as well as forward them to Weibo, Moments, or friends or saving them in WeChat.

Starting from the 5.0 version, WeChat has made some changes. The most significant changes are that official accounts are organized into two different types: service accounts[5] and subscription accounts[6]. With these new features, the user will be less annoyed by the subscribed brand account and now is able to receive messages only if he or she wants them. On the other hand, information promoters will be encouraged to stop using WeChat as a broadcast tool the way they may do in other social media such as Weibo, Twitter or Facebook. Brands are required to provide more valuable information and a better interactive experience with users （Leung, 2013）. Some companies have already utilized WeChat to engage WeChat users: users can get useful and vivid information through instant interaction. Under such circumstances, the information flow is not superincumbent but mutual.

[1] This model will be further discussed in Chapter 3.

[2] In this book, smartphone is defined as a mobile phone equipped with application programming interfaces for running various third-party applications.

[3] Official account is a free service for individual, media, government and company to promote their service and product. It is widely used to raise brand popularity and develop positive brand images.

[4] Moments or Peng You Quan, refers to “friends’ circle”, which is one of the social functions on WeChat. Users can share texts, photos, articles and music to Moments. “Comments” or “likes” about the sharing is only visible to user’s friends.

[5] Service accounts aim to offer various services such as online payment and customer service. The company can apply a customized menu and connect to third-party platforms. Service accounts can only push four broadcast messages per month.

[6] Subscription accounts only push updated information about the company or organization. Subscription accounts can push one broadcast message per day, which may contain up to five columns.