WeChat Unveils Details of its Self-serve Advertising System

WeChat began testing a self-service advertising system for subscription accounts last month. According to Guangdiantong (GDT), the self-advertising system for Tencent services that is supporting the WeChat one too, dozens of accounts joined the trial for ten days and the click-through rate is 3.5%.

Those accounts are operated either by freelance writers or media. Text link ads at the bottom of WeChat mobile pages will direct users to the pages by advertisers. More formats of ads will be added later on, GDT said.

To encourage subscription accounts to get on board, GDT doesn’t take revenue shares for now, said Peter Zheng, head of GDT and VP of Tencent.

The account with the highest click-through rate, 13%, is run by a former TV producer and anchor at state-own TV station — it’s unclear how many team members he has behind the widely popular account. His account received more than 10,000 yuan (roughly USD1664) in the ten days.

There has been more than 2 million official accounts on WeChat, including subscription accounts and service accounts. Subscription accounts are used by media or other kinds of publishers to send content, text, voice messages or videos, to subscribers while services accounts are for businesses.