---
title: "Terminal Media: Easy to Use, but Not Everyone Can Use It Well"
description: "Subway station ad spaces are increasingly vacant, and the once grand alcohol brand ad campaigns have long lost their aroma. Even the previously diverse outdoor screens and elevator ads are now often filled with public service content about environmental protection, animal care, and health. Does this mean front-end media advertising is no longer needed? Of course not. Under the strategic premise of deeply operating target audiences and focusing on marketing conversion, broad-traffic front-end media ads are no longer pleasing clients. Some might say it's because there's no money. Unfortunately, it's possible to lack money for benefits, but there's always money for advertising; clients have simply shifted their affections."
author: "车阳"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-06-08"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/terminal-media-easy-to-use-but-not-everyone-can-use-it-well-29e69fa1.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/WD9HMoi5GnY-Dy7x2ukg2Q"
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---

# Terminal Media: Easy to Use, but Not Everyone Can Use It Well

> Subway station ad spaces are increasingly vacant, and the once grand alcohol brand ad campaigns have long lost their aroma. Even the previously diverse outdoor screens and elevator ads are now often filled with public service content about environmental protection, animal care, and health. Does this mean front-end media advertising is no longer needed? Of course not. Under the strategic premise of deeply operating target audiences and focusing on marketing conversion, broad-traffic front-end media ads are no longer pleasing clients. Some might say it's because there's no money. Unfortunately, it's possible to lack money for benefits, but there's always money for advertising; clients have simply shifted their affections.

Subway station ad spaces are increasingly vacant, and the once grand alcohol brand ad campaigns have long lost their aroma. Even the previously diverse outdoor screens and elevator ads are now often filled with public service content about environmental protection, animal care, and health.
Does this mean front-end media advertising is no longer needed? Of course not. **Under the strategic premise of deeply operating target audiences and focusing on marketing conversion, broad-traffic front-end media ads are no longer pleasing clients.** Some might say it's because there's no money. Unfortunately, it's possible to lack money for benefits, but there's always money for advertising; clients have simply shifted their affections.
After waiting long, the day has finally come: terminal media has ousted the primary choice and risen to become the top pick for clients, receiving all the monetary favor.
Signs have been evident since 2018, when front-end brand advertising business volume declined by at least 20 percentage points. The 2020 "China Digital Media Ecosystem Map" further confirmed the value of terminal media through statistical results.
**Terminal media has existed for a long time, and its complete and sustained marketing value has been fully demonstrated. However, in terms of cognition and application, some issues have also surfaced.**
**-01-**
**Not everything attached to a terminal is terminal media**
Based on a simplistic understanding of terminals, one might think the core of terminal media is spatial proximity to target audiences. **The closer the distance, the more it can stimulate consumption desire. If understanding of terminal media stops at this level, then everywhere is a terminal.**
Returning to the fundamental purpose of terminal media: to facilitate purchase. Clearly, spatial proximity alone cannot achieve this, or rather, proximity is only a non-essential condition. Under what circumstances can purchase be facilitated? As is well known, when consumer needs are clear and desires urgently require satisfaction, the opportunity to prompt target audiences to buy products and services increases. This can be encapsulated by the concept of consumption scenarios.
**Therefore, complete terminal media must meet two conditions: the basic condition is proximity, and the core requirement is to hit the target audience's consumption scenario.** In simple terms, appear right in front of them when they are most likely to need it.
Clearly, terminal media meeting the core requirement is relatively scarce, but there are typical representatives both online and offline. Online, platforms like Douyin and Toutiao use big data to deeply analyze user profiles and content preferences, then push relevant product and service ads, linked to e-commerce, to drive purchases.
For mobile terminal media, the most classic case is a cosmetics marketing campaign that earned 9 million yuan in a month. Through Douyin ads, it precisely reached target audiences, used mini-program malls to carry traffic, and layered promotional activities to accelerate viral growth, quickly driving purchases. This fully tapped the potential of mobile terminal media, making it a textbook play.
Offline, brands like Jiangxiaobai, Xiaolangjiu, and Fenjiu use advertising menus. By leveraging the inevitable interaction point of the menu, they convey product and service information to diners. Since over 90% of dining needs stimulate the generation and expansion of alcohol needs, advertising menus lock onto consumption scenarios, influence purchase decisions, and induce paid purchases.
To seize the top spot in the bare-bottle liquor market, Bofen used advertising menus to deeply operate restaurant channel traffic. In Xiaogan, Hubei alone, Bofen sales increased by 26 percentage points in the fourth quarter of last year. After rolling out advertising menus nationwide this year, as of the first half, it has maintained at least a 6 percentage point growth rate monthly.
In a competitive landscape that dazzles the eyes, the use of advertising menus shows Bofen's deep understanding of the strategy to gain advantage by being close to the water.
**-02-**
**Terminal media is a universal marketing strategy**
Given the obvious advantages of terminal media, can one rely solely on terminal media strategies? **A certain proportion of tilt is necessary, but complete dependence on terminal media is not a rational or wise choice, whether from a systematic marketing perspective or considering the characteristics of terminal media itself.**
**First, although terminal media can provide a certain amount of coverage and aid brand building, its sensory dynamism is slightly lacking.** Ultimately, a brand becomes a spiritual symbol. Branding is more about creating sensory momentum.
For example, a year of continuous advertising on Toutiao, compared to a month of print or large-screen ads in a city's core area, delivers completely different sensory impact to target audiences. If the former feels like a caring sister, the latter is a domineering queen. For brand building alone, one would choose the latter.
This is also related to the attributes and environment of terminal media. Compared to front-end advertising media, terminal media is relatively simple in composition—nothing more than virtual pages, links, or low-value offline materials.
**Second, the main purpose of terminal media is to shorten the consumption path, bridge the last mile to paid purchase, and promote conversion.**
From a customer operation perspective, it also aids in traffic generation, viral growth, and word-of-mouth. Apart from efficiency, online terminal media can be monitored and analyzed through data, while offline terminal media is relatively cheap and easier to achieve coverage, which are exactly the inherent shortcomings of front-end media.
For example, Douyin and Toutiao allow self-service ad accounts with flexible budget control. Through agency purchases, 1,000 impressions cost around 25 yuan, and 1 million impressions cost only 24,000 yuan.
Through ads, users can directly enter linked mall platforms to make purchases. Bofen's advertising menus reportedly cost no more than 10 yuan each, and since Bofen products are stocked in stores, customers can also pay directly.
**The main value of terminal media lies in harvesting; for brand building and enhancing brand momentum, terminal media's energy is somewhat insufficient.**
**-03-**
**Link offline terminal media to drive traffic online**
Seize structural traffic, drive offline traffic online, connect online and offline, and capture more market share. At first glance, this seems sound, and many are confident of achieving gratifying results. Especially catalyzed by the pandemic, many brands have accelerated the pace of terminal media coverage.
The vision is beautiful, but the final result, as revealed by Hema Fresh's promotion staff, is that those who should be online are already online; those not online are accustomed to offline methods. Forcibly pulling them online mostly results in "zombie" traffic, which contributes only data and has almost no commercial value.
The awkward outcome is mainly due to two reasons:
**First, online and offline consumption scenarios differ greatly.**
Taking alcohol as an example, purchasing through offline terminal media has strong immediacy. In that context, alcohol is not just a product but more about experience and service, with urgent needs to be satisfied. Purchasing through online terminal media is mainly for gifting or personal stocking, with low immediacy requirements.
**Second, each terminal media has its corresponding sales loop.**
Offline terminal media corresponds to physical stores; traffic is directed to stores, and payment is naturally convenient there. Online terminal media corresponds to e-commerce platforms; traffic conversion and payment are more convenient through those platforms.
**Conclusion:**
The rise of terminal media is not accidental. Whether in terms of structural traffic or conversion efficiency, it is a mainstream media strategy for the present and even the next decade. However, **each medium has different attributes and roles; being mainstream does not mean everything, nor does it negate the value of other media.**
**The greatest pressure falls on marketing decision-makers.** If terminal media is the protagonist, the marketing decision-maker is the director. In applying this protagonist, one must recognize its strengths and also its weaknesses.
Industry and product attributes determine channel focus, which directly affects the application of terminal media. Therefore, it is necessary to **clarify brand strategy, understand the current situation, and arrange a suitable script for terminal media, fully and continuously tapping its potential, rather than dabbling or blindly following.**
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan upon adoption.


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