The Xiaohongshu Advertising Ecosystem: Every Tool & Partner You Need to Succeed
Date Published
Table Of Contents
1. Why the Xiaohongshu Advertising Ecosystem Is Different
2. The Foundation: Your Professional Account (专业号)
3. The Six Official Marketing & Advertising Tools
• 1. Juguang (聚光) — Full-Scale Paid Advertising
• 2. Juguang Lite (聚光Lite) — Self-Serve Simplified Ads
• 3. Pugongying (蒲公英 / Dandelion) — Influencer Collaboration Platform
• 4. Shutiao (薯条) — Content Amplification Tool
• 5. Chengfeng (乘风) — E-Commerce Marketing Platform
• 6. Lingxi (灵犀) — Brand Analytics Centre
1. Your Creator Partners: KOLs vs. KOCs
2. The KFS Model: How All the Tools Work Together
3. What International Brands Need to Know Before Starting
Understanding the Xiaohongshu Advertising Ecosystem
Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote or Little Red Book) is not a platform where you simply buy ad space and watch the traffic roll in. With over 300 million monthly active users, it sits at a unique intersection of social media, search engine, and e-commerce — and its advertising ecosystem is built to reflect exactly that. Every tool, every partner type, and every campaign format exists to serve a single purpose: moving a consumer from discovery to trust to purchase, entirely within the platform's walls.
For international brands entering the Chinese market, this ecosystem can look bewildering at first glance. There are six official marketing platforms, two distinct creator partner categories, a proprietary advertising framework, and a set of compliance requirements that differ significantly from anything you'd encounter on Meta or Google. But understanding how the pieces fit together is what separates brands that merely exist on Xiaohongshu from those that genuinely scale on it.
This guide breaks down every layer of the Xiaohongshu advertising ecosystem — from the tools Xiaohongshu has built for brands, to the creator partners you need to activate them, to the strategic framework that ties it all together. Whether you're planning your first campaign or trying to understand why your current approach isn't converting, this is your map.
Why the Xiaohongshu Advertising Ecosystem Is Different {#why-different}
Most advertising platforms are built around reach. Xiaohongshu is built around trust. The platform's entire commercial infrastructure is designed to preserve the authentic, peer-recommendation culture that makes it so effective — which means ads that look like ads, or partnerships that feel transactional, consistently underperform.
This philosophy shapes everything about how the advertising ecosystem is structured. Paid tools are designed to amplify content that has already proven itself organically, not to replace it. Influencer partnerships are formalised through an official platform that enforces disclosure and content quality standards. Analytics tools are built to track the full journey from inspiration to purchase, because Xiaohongshu users rarely convert on the first touchpoint. The result is an ecosystem that rewards brands willing to invest in genuine content and long-term community building.
For international brands, this represents both a challenge and a significant opportunity. The challenge is that you cannot shortcut your way onto Xiaohongshu with a media budget alone. The opportunity is that brands that do invest in the right way benefit from a conversion rate that most Western social platforms simply cannot match — Xiaohongshu delivers a 21.4% conversion rate for global brands, well above the typical benchmarks on Instagram or Facebook.
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The Foundation: Your Professional Account (专业号) {#professional-account}
Before any advertising tool becomes accessible, you need a verified Xiaohongshu Professional Account (专业号). This is the commercial gateway to the entire ecosystem — without it, you cannot access Juguang, Pugongying, or any of the other marketing platforms.
Overseas entities can register a Professional Account directly without needing a Chinese subsidiary. You'll need a valid overseas business licence (translated into Chinese by a certified agency), a trademark registration certificate (Chinese or international), a responsible person's ID or passport, and a Chinese phone number for verification. The annual verification fee is CNY 600, and the review process typically takes five to seven business days.
Once verified, your Professional Account acts as the anchor for all your marketing activity on the platform. It unlocks access to analytics, grants credibility with users who see a verified badge, and is the prerequisite for every tool covered in this guide. Getting this step right — and understanding what your account type allows and restricts — is the most important first move you'll make.
For international brands: Foreign entities cannot open a Juguang advertising account directly. This requires a Chinese entity and is typically handled through a local operating partner. See AllXHS's expert Xiaohongshu marketing services for how we help brands navigate this step.
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The Six Official Marketing & Advertising Tools {#six-tools}
Xiaohongshu offers six integrated marketing platforms that cover the full spectrum of brand activity on the platform — from influencer partnerships and paid advertising to content amplification, e-commerce conversion, and analytics. Understanding each one, and when to use it, is essential for building an efficient strategy.
1. Juguang (聚光) — Full-Scale Paid Advertising {#juguang}
Juguang is Xiaohongshu's flagship advertising platform and the most powerful tool in the ecosystem for brands with serious commercial ambitions. It supports two primary ad formats: Feed Ads (信息流广告), which appear natively within the content discovery feed, and Search Ads (搜索广告), which appear within Xiaohongshu's search results when users are actively researching products or categories.
Feed Ads are designed for the discovery phase of the consumer journey — surfacing your brand to users who haven't yet searched for you but are likely to be receptive based on their interests and browsing behaviour. The most effective approach is to identify your best-performing KOL or brand content (high save rates, strong engagement, positive comments) and use Juguang to amplify it to broader, look-alike audiences. Content that has already resonated organically consistently outperforms untested creative in a paid environment.
Search Ads target users at the highest point of purchase intent. Xiaohongshu processes over one billion search queries monthly, and users who search on the platform are typically in a research or buying mindset — making search placements particularly valuable in competitive categories. Together, Feed and Search Ads form the paid layer of Xiaohongshu's official KFS marketing model (more on this below).
Juguang operates on a prepaid model and supports both pay-per-click and pay-per-impression pricing. It also integrates AI-powered creative tools that help generate ad copy and optimise targeting in real time. Campaign approval requires all ads to pass Xiaohongshu's content review process, with regulated categories (cosmetics, healthcare, food, financial services) requiring additional industry certifications before any ads can go live.
Best suited for: Enterprise brands and established businesses with dedicated marketing teams, higher budgets, and complex campaign objectives spanning awareness through to conversion.
2. Juguang Lite (聚光Lite) — Self-Serve Simplified Ads {#juguang-lite}
Juguang Lite is a simplified, app-based version of Juguang designed for brands that want to manage straightforward paid campaigns without the complexity of the full platform. It provides access to the core Feed and Search ad formats with a more streamlined interface, making it a practical entry point for brands new to Xiaohongshu advertising or running lean in-house teams.
The trade-off for simplicity is reduced flexibility. Juguang Lite supports fewer targeting options, creative formats, and campaign objectives than the full Juguang platform. It is best used for quick ad investments, content boosting, and early-stage testing — not for sophisticated, multi-objective campaigns that require granular audience segmentation or advanced bidding strategies.
Best suited for: Brands early in their Xiaohongshu journey, or those running time-limited campaigns where speed and ease of setup are priorities.
3. Pugongying (蒲公英 / Dandelion) — Influencer Collaboration Platform {#pugongying}
Pugongying (literally 'Dandelion') is Xiaohongshu's official influencer marketing platform and one of the most important tools in the entire ecosystem. It is the designated channel for formal, paid collaborations between brands and Xiaohongshu creators — and using it is not optional for regulated categories. Sponsored content not booked through Pugongying in industries such as healthcare, cosmetics, and supplements can be flagged by Xiaohongshu's review team and have its traffic limited or removed.
The platform connects brands with a network of over 100,000 verified creators spanning more than 30 interest categories, from beauty and fashion to travel, food, parenting, and technology. Brands can search for collaborators using over 200 filtering criteria, including audience demographics, engagement rates, historical conversion performance, content style, geographic location, and creator persona. This level of granularity makes Pugongying far more precise than traditional influencer outreach.
Beyond discovery, Pugongying manages the entire collaboration workflow — brief creation, contract processing, content review, performance tracking, and payment. All sponsored posts are automatically reviewed for compliance with Chinese advertising law, which requires clear disclosure of paid partnerships using '广告' (advertisement) or '合作' (collaboration) labels. This built-in compliance infrastructure is particularly valuable for international brands unfamiliar with China's digital advertising regulations.
Pugongying also features a performance optimisation mode that provides a guaranteed baseline impression level for sponsored content — useful for time-sensitive campaigns around product launches, seasonal events, or major shopping festivals.
Best suited for: Any brand running influencer-led campaigns, product seeding programmes, or content that needs to be amplified into Juguang Feed Ads.
4. Shutiao (薯条) — Content Amplification Tool {#shutiao}
Shutiao is Xiaohongshu's lightweight, self-service content boosting tool. It allows brands and creators to pay to extend the reach of an already-published organic post, increasing its exposure to a wider audience without transforming it into a formal ad. Unlike Juguang, there is no campaign structure to build — you simply select a post, choose your promotion goal (views, engagement, followers, or product exposure), set a budget, and let the tool run.
Shutiao is not designed for hard commercial campaigns. It cannot include transaction links, external redirections, or overt commercial calls to action — posts boosted through Shutiao must comply with Xiaohongshu's organic content standards. This makes it most useful for brands in the early stages of building a content presence, where the goal is visibility and audience growth rather than direct conversion.
A practical use case: a brand publishes ten posts over its first month and three of them significantly outperform the others. Shutiao can be used to give those high-performing posts a second wave of exposure, extending their lifecycle and reaching new users who may not have seen them organically. It is also a low-cost way to test content appeal before committing budget to a full Juguang campaign.
Best suited for: Early-stage brand accounts, organic content amplification, and content testing on a limited budget.
5. Chengfeng (乘风) — E-Commerce Marketing Platform {#chengfeng}
Chengfeng is Xiaohongshu's integrated e-commerce marketing platform, designed specifically for merchants who operate a Xiaohongshu store and want to close the loop between content discovery and in-app purchase. Where Juguang focuses on awareness and discovery, Chengfeng focuses on conversion — driving users directly to product pages, live streams, and store storefronts within the platform.
Launched in 2023 and fully opened to merchants in late 2024, Chengfeng consolidates the e-commerce advertising functions that were previously spread across other tools, giving merchants a single interface to manage product-level campaigns, live stream traffic, and conversion-oriented placements. It links directly to Xiaohongshu's in-app store infrastructure and leverages e-commerce data (browsing behaviour, purchase history, product interest signals) to serve ads at the point of highest purchase intent.
Brands using Chengfeng alongside a content and influencer strategy have reported strong returns — the platform's e-commerce data signals enable more precise audience targeting than brand awareness tools, and the direct link to in-app purchase removes friction from the conversion path.
Best suited for: Merchants with an active Xiaohongshu store looking to drive product sales, scale live stream audiences, and optimise conversion ROI.
6. Lingxi (灵犀) — Brand Analytics Centre {#lingxi}
Lingxi is Xiaohongshu's brand marketing analytics platform, and it serves as the measurement layer across the entire ecosystem. It tracks product-level (SPU) performance, content effectiveness, keyword share of voice, audience growth metrics, and the impact of ad placements from initial exposure through to final purchase. In short, it answers the question that every brand eventually asks: is any of this actually working?
Historically, Lingxi was only available to large brands on an invite-only basis. From 2025 onward, Xiaohongshu has significantly lowered the access threshold, making it available to a much wider range of merchants and businesses including small and medium-sized enterprises. This democratisation of analytics data is a significant development for international brands that need to justify marketing spend and make data-driven optimisation decisions.
Lingxi is particularly valuable when running multi-tool campaigns across Pugongying, Juguang, and Chengfeng simultaneously — it provides a unified view of how each element is contributing to the overall consumer journey, allowing brands to allocate budget where it is generating the most impact.
Best suited for: Any brand running active campaigns who needs to measure performance, attribute conversions, and optimise strategy over time.
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Your Creator Partners: KOLs vs. KOCs {#kol-koc}
No amount of paid advertising will work on Xiaohongshu if the underlying content doesn't feel authentic. The platform's users are highly attuned to content that reads like a brand advertisement, and they scroll past it. This is why influencer and creator partnerships are not a nice-to-have in the Xiaohongshu ecosystem — they are structural.
There are two main creator categories to understand:
• Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are established creators with typically 10,000 or more followers who produce professional, high-quality content within a specific niche. They command premium fees (ranging from ¥5,000 to ¥300,000+ per post depending on tier) and are most effective for product launches, building brand authority, and generating broad awareness in competitive categories. Head KOLs with 500,000+ followers drive reach; mid-tier KOLs with 50,000–500,000 followers often deliver the strongest ROI for niche categories.
• Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) are everyday users with smaller but highly engaged audiences, typically between 1,000 and 50,000 followers. Their content feels more like a genuine recommendation from a peer than a sponsored post, which drives significantly higher trust and engagement rates (8–15%, compared to 3–8% for head KOLs). KOCs are more affordable, scalable, and highly effective for building the searchable content base that Xiaohongshu's algorithm rewards.
The most successful brand strategies combine both. A common approach is to use 2–3 mid-tier KOLs to create the credibility-building 'halo' content, supported by 30–50 KOCs who generate the volume of authentic, searchable posts that consumers find when they research the brand. The KOL content captures attention; the KOC content answers the questions that turn interest into a purchase.
All formal, paid KOL and KOC collaborations should be managed through Pugongying. This ensures compliance, protects both the brand and the creator, and makes the resulting content eligible for amplification through Juguang Feed Ads — a critical step in maximising the return on your influencer investment.
For industry-specific guidance on creator selection and campaign strategy, explore AllXHS's industry-specific Xiaohongshu marketing strategies, covering verticals from beauty and fashion to F&B, mother and baby, and more.
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The KFS Model: How All the Tools Work Together {#kfs-model}
Xiaohongshu's official KFS Marketing Model — standing for KOL/KOC content, Feed Ads, and Search Ads — is the platform's recommended framework for brand growth, and it is the lens through which all six tools make the most sense.
The model maps to three sequential stages of the consumer journey:
1. The Browsing Stage (浏览场) — Build Awareness with KOL/KOC Content. Creators publish authentic, high-quality notes that introduce your product to their audiences. This content plants the seed of discovery — it tells your brand story in a way that feels native to the platform and builds initial trust.
1. The Discovery Stage (搜索场) — Amplify with Feed Ads. Your best-performing KOL and KOC content is amplified through Juguang Feed Ads to reach broader audiences with similar profiles to those who engaged organically. This phase scales reach without sacrificing the authentic feel of the original content — because the ads are the content.
1. The Purchase Stage (消费场) — Capture Intent with Search Ads. As awareness and interest build, users begin actively searching for your brand or category on Xiaohongshu. Search Ads ensure your content appears at this critical moment of intent, intercepting users when they are closest to making a decision.
The power of KFS lies in treating these three stages as an integrated system rather than separate tactics. Running KOL content without Feed Ads means your best material never reaches its potential audience. Running Feed Ads without Search Ads means you generate awareness that doesn't convert when users go looking. Running Search Ads without underlying KOL content means users find your brand but see no social proof to support their decision.
Chengfeng supports conversion at the purchase end of the funnel for merchants with in-app stores. Lingxi measures the performance of each stage. Pugongying manages the creator relationships that fuel the whole model. Every tool in the ecosystem has its role within this framework.
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What International Brands Need to Know Before Starting {#international-brands}
Marketing on Xiaohongshu as a foreign brand involves a few structural realities that don't apply to domestic Chinese companies, and understanding them upfront saves significant time and money.
Entity requirements. Overseas businesses can register a Professional Account directly, but they cannot open a Juguang advertising account. Juguang requires a Chinese entity. This means most international brands either need to establish a Chinese subsidiary or work with a local partner who holds a Juguang account under their entity.
Compliance obligations. All advertising on Xiaohongshu must comply with the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China and the Administrative Measures for Internet Advertising. Key requirements include clear labelling of all paid content, a prohibition on superlative claims ('best', 'number one', 'most effective'), and specific documentation requirements for regulated categories. Pugongying's built-in compliance tools help, but they don't replace the need for a thorough compliance review before any campaign goes live.
Content localisation. Xiaohongshu users have a low tolerance for content that looks like it was translated from an English ad brief. The platform's culture is built around authentic, detailed, visually rich posts that feel like peer recommendations. All content — whether brand-produced or creator-led — needs to be written natively in Simplified Chinese and adapted to the aesthetic and tone of the platform, not simply translated.
The algorithm and the long game. Since Xiaohongshu's 2025 algorithm update, accounts with fewer than 180 days of consistent activity receive limited organic visibility. This means international brands cannot treat Xiaohongshu as a campaign-by-campaign channel. Building a sustained content presence is the foundation on which paid tools perform — without it, even a well-funded Juguang campaign will underdeliver.
For practical resources, templates, and data-driven guidance on every aspect of Xiaohongshu marketing, explore AllXHS's free Xiaohongshu resources library, covering 20+ verticals with 378+ industry reports and 25+ ready-to-use tools.
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How AllXHS Can Help {#how-allxhs-can-help}
Navigating the Xiaohongshu advertising ecosystem as an international brand requires more than a list of tools — it requires cultural fluency, platform expertise, and an understanding of how the pieces fit together for your specific category and goals.
AllXHS is the leading English-language resource hub for international brands marketing on Xiaohongshu. Whether you're in the research phase, planning your first campaign, or trying to scale an existing presence, our resources and expert consultation services cover every layer of the ecosystem described in this guide:
• Strategy and planning: Industry-specific reports, campaign frameworks, and the KFS model applied to your category
• Creator partnerships: Guidance on KOL/KOC selection, briefing, and Pugongying campaign management
• Paid advertising: Support navigating Juguang access requirements, campaign setup, and optimisation for international brands
• Content localisation: Tools and templates for creating platform-native content in Simplified Chinese
• Analytics and measurement: Using Lingxi and third-party data platforms to track performance and improve ROI
Explore AllXHS's expert Xiaohongshu marketing services or browse industry-specific strategies tailored to your sector.
Getting the Ecosystem Right
Xiaohongshu's advertising ecosystem is more complex than most international brands anticipate — and more rewarding for those who take the time to understand it properly. The six official tools, the KOL/KOC creator landscape, and the KFS framework are not isolated features. They are an integrated system designed to mirror the way Chinese consumers actually discover, research, and buy.
The brands that succeed on Xiaohongshu are the ones that invest in authentic content first, use paid tools to amplify what works, maintain a consistent and compliant presence, and measure the full consumer journey rather than just the last click. Getting any one element right is not enough — but getting all of them right, in the right sequence, is what makes Xiaohongshu one of the highest-converting marketing channels available to brands targeting Chinese consumers today.
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