How the largest auto community Drive2.ru works - traffic, monetization and user-generated content
Drive.ru and Drive2.ru are the largest media about cars and the community, where users write about everything related to cars. Both projects use recommender Relap.io technologies . We asked Yuri Belousov, the director of project development, how they all work.
What they talked about:
- About the history of the project.
- About traffic and traffic.
- About money and advertising.
- About user content and media 3.0.
- How DRIVE2 helps sell cars.
- About what has been achieved and plans.
How appeared "Drive" and DRIVE2
Many, many years ago, in the mid-2000s, “Drive” appeared. The approach was this: it was something incredibly beautiful, content about cars without a huge amount of advertising, as on many resources now. At the start, there was no advertising at all. Everything is so clean, neat, single-column layout.
Then we could afford the lack of advertising, because we had our own advertising tweeter Rorer. At that time, Rorer was almost on a par with Yandex.Direct.
There was something that brought money, and Drive appeared as a project for which one wants to live. “Drive” is the media that the editors make, journalists write, take test drives.
At some time, DRIVE2 appeared. This is what all car forums should have become.
The story is simple. We have Anton Bolotov, the owner and founder of all projects. Someone once upon a time had a Hyundai Getz. He was in a club, in a forum, everything was cool. Then he sold Hyundai Getz and realized that he seemed to have a different car, I wanted to talk with former friends, and it seemed like I wanted to join a club about a new car.
He came up with the idea of how to combine these two clubs. And where 2 clubs are combined, everything else is combined there. So DRIVE2 appeared, where people communicate in the same way according to their interests. Now DRIVE2 is a UGC platform where users write about themselves and their cars, such a community of cars and people, and a huge interesting structure that has grown around it.
There are 30 of us in total. There is a publisher, there is a sales department and there are techies who are involved in development, plus managers. Less than 10 people are involved in news and test drives. There is a team of newsmen, test drivers, corrector and artistic director. Photographers and cameramen are outsourced, and we do video production ourselves.
About traffic
DRIVE2 has more than 15 million unique users per month. Conversions from search engines are in the region of 40–45% of traffic, direct visits are another 30–35%, and the rest are links on sites and social networks. That is, basically, people go from search and directly to DRIVE2.
Why so much of the search - suppose you have a Smart, cool machine. You do not start it, you need to change the battery. You come in front and understand that it does not open. You go somewhere in Yandex or Google and drive in “How to replace the battery with Smart?” So, you will get to us. Just because DRIVE2 has UGC content. Millions of users, and everyone writes about his car, where he went, what he did. People write what interests others, in those words that they understand.
On the news "Drive" more than 1.7 million unique users per month. Direct visits - about 60%, from search engines - in the region of 25%, everything else is also links to sites, social networks.
From the big DRIVE2 to the first news “Drive”, we have only been leading users through Relap in recent months. And there’s generally some kind of sweetie when we are driving DRIVE2 from the catalog in the “Drive”. But this is traffic that is almost invisible on DRIVE2 radars.
Monetization and advertising
What makes the money “Drive” and DRIVE2:
- This is a display ad that we sell ourselves.
- These are automatic networks that I set up and experiment.
- These are payments by users who pay to show their car or pay in order to promote their record.
- These are small businesses. For businesses on DRIVE2 there are business accounts. There are several thousand of them.
- And non-standard formats like buttons.
What are business accounts ? A user comes to us and writes: "I am engaged in such a business, make me a business account." This product is for people who are engaged in any business that is closely related to cars. Basically, these are services, tuners of completely different formats, from sewing rugs to body kits and engine alterations.
There they create their own business page and write in the company’s blog: “We did it”, “We work with this.” They can promote these records and gain new customers. They are shown to the user in the stream, he can comment, write a personal message or subscribe. Accordingly, businesses invest, promote records, and get subscribers. And if a person subscribes to you, then everything that you write to him is shown in the tape for free. In contrast, by the way from Facebook, where you can have a group of 10 thousand people, and 100 will see your new publication.
About three weeks ago, we had a cool product for such business accounts - “pay-per-click advertising”. The beautiful thing is that we provide an average CTR for all campaigns of more than 12% and offer unique targeting for the automotive business - this is not offered at all by anyone. We know exactly which car the user drives, because he indicates this data during registration.
CPC is such a block in the tape. You clicked on it and went to the advertiser's page. And he moved not only inside DRIVE2 - you can take the user to any link: to your site, to your page on VKontakte, anywhere.
The advertisement is good because there are many people who are engaged in fine automobile businesses and cannot or do not want to write about it. And to make an advertisement, you simply add a picture, link and title. This is very little text. It is within the power of everyone.
For example, a business comes to us that deals with chip tuning and writes an ad: “Chip tuning for your $ car (the brand and model of the user's car are substituted for $ car) for 10 thousand rubles” and chooses who to show, that is Owners, for example, Ford Focus and all Volvo - have different targeting. And when the user sees the advertisement, we ourselves substitute the name of the car in the header.
For example, I drive a Volvo C30 and see: "Chip tuning for your Volvo C30 for 10 thousand rubles." Accordingly, businesses that add good images, headlines and target suitable users can get a CTR of 50%.
For example, I am serviced by our business account. As it turned out, approximately 95% of the clients of his service with DRIVE2. That is, a person just built his business on DRIVE2.
We decided that if you live on DRIVE2 as a business, then all DRIVE2 becomes specifically for the business so that nothing distracts you. When you become a business account, your entire social life disappears. There is no tape, there is no main one, but there is the addition of records and the creation of advertisements.
A business account is all that is needed to work. These are simple graphs: how much audience you have, how many subscribers. For each blog post promotion, there are impression statistics, CTR, clicks, likes, that's all. For an ad, there is a click price, CTR, impressions, and budget spent.
We are experimenting with Google ads and Yandex. We have a lot of traffic and we are ready to experiment with it. I get all the beta that go to the Yandex ad network. A couple of weeks ago, all partners in Russia were told about the new interface of the advertising network, and so I had it in January again. And I am the first of the partners who sent Yandex several lists of bugs and nuances that would be good to fix. On DRIVE2, technologies are tested and new products are polished (a little background: in September, I came to Drive from Yandex).
What experiments give. Getting started is easy. If you didn’t have any advertising or had the usual Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords, then the most obvious experiment, which, unfortunately, is not carried out by everyone, is to try to install RTB. This is an auction that has not only text ads, but also display.
The second type of experiment is the most interesting. You can give Yandex all the traffic, and you can tell him “buy back more expensive than X rubles.” And this ill-fated X rubles is the goal of all experiments. You need to find the moment when you get as much money as you want, and give Yandex as much traffic as you want.
The following experiments on understanding are to give all the traffic first to Google, and then, if it doesn't pick it up, to Yandex, or vice versa. In what proportions? What are the minimum bids?
My wish is to give as little traffic as possible to Google and Yandex and earn as much money as possible. Linear dependence, when I gave more traffic and received more money, does not work here. No matter how obvious it sounds.
Non-standard advertising formats - for the guys who are engaged in banks and insurance, there are buttons. That is, on "Drive" there is a rather large catalog of cars with all sorts of prices and other things. So there is a button "calculate casco" or "apply for a loan." This is a pay per click button, it is also loved.
Own advertising panel, targeting, CPC in the tape - this is such a long-playing story. Conventionally, CPC, pay-per-click advertising, was technically done by a couple of guys. The first 97% came in two weeks: the targeting and the mechanism for getting into the feed were ready and used to promote the records, made an interface and technical stuffing.
Later we did extended CPC statistics and an internal auction - we compete for one place and CPC in the tape and promotion of records.
But it’s rather difficult to say that we are done because the process of improvement is eternal.
About User Content and Media 3.0
Media goes to the point where users generate the bulk of the content, and the editorial staff filters and directs. We now have UGC and there are many. People write about everything: about new laws, about new cars and concept cars. For example, we have a user who writes about cars that are many years old with minimal mileage. For example, the 1986 Porsche 911 with a mileage of 743 kilometers. And he builds up stories from this, takes photographs. These are 20 photos and several pages of text. This is tens of thousands of views. We have people who work in automobile factories, in city administrations, in the traffic police. DRIVE2 - this is a section of the Russians associated with cars, they all share it.
It turns out Media 3.0, when you have millions of browsers and filtering. The filtering is semi-manual, interesting we place on the main page for registered users, plus, using the recommendation system, we show recommendations inside posts.
We have more than 12 thousand publications added per day. The average visibility of the Relap widget in the middle of the page is more than 60%. The widget goes at the end of the article before the comments. The beauty is that we can have up to 20 photos and an unlimited amount of text in our record. This visibility of the widget suggests that people actually read all the content.
On average, a guest on a site looks at more than six pages per session. Registered user more than 13 pages, premium more than 18 pages, that is, these are people who read. Which for Twitter and VKontakte seems not very typical.
About selling cars
We have a sale of cars. On the machine’s page, if it’s on sale, there is a die with all the contacts and data.
And we have something that no one has - the logbook, the history of the car. You can tell in three words how I sold my last three cars. I once had a Hyundai Accent. About him, the life story was from 40 thousand kilometers to 102 thousand. All THAT, trips, in general everything, even as I hit a post.
How I was selling a car. A man called me and I say, go to any search and type in “Hyundai Accent Cursor” - there you will read the whole story for the last 70 thousand kilometers. For many cars, this is a lifetime. My potential buyer called me in 2 days. He arrived, saw my car, walked around it and said "I am buying." He did not start it, we did not go to the service, but why? The whole history of the car is on DRIVE2.
We devote little time to this direction, because first of all we solve other tasks and user needs. And in the sale of cars there are competitors who have an impressive headquarters of people and resources. And we understand that to achieve their level we need to spend a lot of time. We made the sale of cars because we had a huge number of users asking for this opportunity.
However, at the end of the year we launched the Flea Market. Just imagine a bulletin board without unnecessary advertising, with good filters and sections. Also made by people who understand cars.
About achievements and plans
We have business accounts that we will develop. Interfaces will be better, more opportunities, additional services for businesses.
