WeChat ddsnnounced today that it plans to increase the number of advertisements in original articles posted through subscription accounts. For five months (July 1st to December 31st), the area at the bottom of articles in WeChat will be significantly bigger to host more ads.
The new measure means that authors could make up for some of their income decline from iOS devices caused by Apple’s decision to take 30% of all in-app purchases, including tips.
Voluntary tips through WeChat’s platform is one of the sources of revenue for authors posting through subscription accounts along with advertisements. Tipping also brought popularity to WeChat Wallet and gave authors and designers a reason to provide users interesting content. In April, Apple’s decision to tax tips prompted Tencent to abolish its tipping feature on iOS entirely.
With more ads at the bottom of the article, authors will be able to get higher returns, but the specific proportion of income authors can claim is still unknown. WeChat also said that it will protect copyrights of original authors in order to ensure their gains. The measure is aimed at ensuring higher quality articles posted on WeChat.
WeChat has also announced that its subscription accounts will finally be able to schedule the publication of their content. Previously, content creators had to manually send out their WeChat posts. The Official Account and Service Account back-ends have been difficult to use. This could be one sign that WeChat is finally taking steps make their features more user-friendly.