Xiaohongshu ads are bought through Juguang (聚光), RedNote's self-serve ad platform, where brands promote their own notes in the discovery feed or in search results. There is no public rate card, so costs depend on keyword competition and targeting. Overseas brands need a verified professional account first, and most run their campaigns through a China-side partner.

This guide covers how Juguang works, which ad formats matter, what agencies report paying, and a step-by-step lead-generation setup for hotels and travel brands.

What Juguang is, and the tools around it

Xiaohongshu launched Juguang on May 7, 2022 as a "one-stop" ad platform that brought feed and search advertising into one dashboard (CBNData). At launch it offered five campaign objectives: product seeding, product sales, lead collection, livestream promotion and category ownership (Jiemian).

Juguang is the core, but it sits alongside three other paid tools. Knowing which one does what saves a lot of confusion when an agency sends you a proposal.

Sources: AppInChina, Marketing China, Fashion China Agency.

One thing sets Xiaohongshu apart from Meta or Google: you don't build a separate ad creative. You promote a note that already lives on your account. That means the quality of your organic content decides how well your ads perform. A weak note stays weak no matter how much you spend behind it.

Who you reach with Xiaohongshu ads

Xiaohongshu reported 350 million monthly active users as of December 2024 (Xiaohongshu via PR Newswire). The more useful number for advertisers came at its WILL business conference in December 2025: about 200 million users a month come to the app looking for purchase advice, based on platform data from January to November 2025 (PEdaily). The same presentation said users open the app 16 times a day on average and publish more than 9 million notes daily.

For travel brands, that search behavior is the point. Chinese travelers use Xiaohongshu the way many Western travelers use Google plus TripAdvisor: they type a destination or hotel name and read what real people posted. Xiaohongshu's own data for January 2024 to June 2025 named hotels, attractions and department stores as the top new travel search trends for Dubai (PR Newswire).

The two core formats: feed ads and search ads

Feed ads

Feed ads (信息流广告) place your note in the discovery feed of users who match your targeting, marked with a small "广告" (ad) label. They support image, video and multi-image formats (AppInChina). Feed ads create demand: they reach people who weren't searching for you yet, which suits a new property, a new destination or a seasonal package.

Search ads

Search ads (搜索广告) show your note when a user types a keyword you bid on. Because the user is already looking, intent is higher. Marketing China reports search ad click-through rates at two to three times those of feed ads (Marketing China).

Brands can also buy a brand zone (品牌专区), a fixed placement at the top of results when someone searches the brand name (Fashion China Agency). For a hotel group, this protects your own name from competitors and OTAs bidding on it.

Feed or search? A rule Chinese practitioners use

Chinese ad buyers often decide by looking at where a note's organic traffic already comes from. A widely shared practitioner guide on Woshipm suggests that if around 90% of a note's natural views come from the feed, promote it in the feed. If 30% to 40% come from search, it is a search candidate (Woshipm, May 2024). The same author advises leaning on search before big sales periods and running feed campaigns day to day.

For hotels, a practical split looks like this:

• Search: your property name, your destination plus "hotel" or "resort," and package terms like honeymoon, family suite or Chinese New Year.

• Feed: inspirational notes that sell the experience, aimed at travelers who haven't picked a destination yet.

Campaign objectives, and the one hotels should start with

Of Juguang's objectives, lead collection (客资收集) fits most hotels best. It optimizes for users who open a private message (私信) with your account, which is how Chinese travelers usually ask about rates and availability before booking.

A 2025 practitioner guide on Woshipm recommends starting lead campaigns on a shallow goal, such as users who start a conversation, and switching to the deeper goal of users who leave contact details only after the account has gathered roughly 20 conversations (Woshipm, March 2025). Starting on the deep goal with no data tends to stall delivery because the algorithm has too little to learn from.

What Xiaohongshu ads cost

Xiaohongshu does not publish a rate card. Prices come from an auction, and Chinese practitioners describe the ranking formula as bid × predicted click-through rate × predicted conversion rate × 1,000 (Woshipm, March 2025). A better note can beat a higher bid.

These are agency-reported ranges, so treat them as a starting point, not a quote:

Source for the table: Marketing China, AppInChina.

Travel keywords sit at the expensive end. Jing Daily reported that prices for keywords such as "Japan" and "homestay" rose by up to 100% in 2024, with clicks on hot destinations like Xinjiang reaching several hundred RMB, as large OTAs including Trip.com bid aggressively (Jing Daily). For an overseas hotel, the lesson is to avoid head-to-head bidding on broad destination terms and win on specific ones: your property name, your area, and the experiences you offer.

Juguang is prepaid, so the account balance must be funded before a campaign goes live (AppInChina).

How overseas brands get set up

Step one is a verified professional account (专业号). Overseas companies can register without a Chinese subsidiary. AppInChina lists the documents as a business license with a certified Chinese translation, a trademark registration certificate, the responsible person's passport or ID, an application letter and a Chinese phone number, with review taking five to seven business days (AppInChina). We cover the full process in our guide to setting up a Xiaohongshu professional account.

Step two is the ad account, and this is where overseas brands most often get stuck. Public guidance is inconsistent on whether a foreign entity can use Juguang directly, and the answer can vary by category (Marketing China). In practice, the ad account is usually opened by a Chinese entity or an authorized partner (Fashion China Agency). The common route is to keep the professional account in your brand's name and run Juguang through an agency with an authorized ad account.

Whichever route you take, every paid note must carry the platform's ad or collaboration label (AppInChina). Superlatives such as "the best" or "guaranteed" are banned without supporting evidence (Marketing China), which matters for hotel copy that leans on "best views" or "most luxurious."

A lead-generation playbook for hotels

This is the process we used for a Bali resort that turned under $3,000 of Juguang spend into more than 350 private-message enquiries and about $52,000 in bookings. The full case study has the details.

1. Write several versions of the same offer. We published six versions of one package. Chinese marketers call this "horse racing" (赛马): let the algorithm pick the winner instead of guessing.

2. Promote only the winners. Watch organic data for a day or two, then put budget behind the top one or two notes. In the Bali campaign, a practical package round-up beat the prettier lifestyle posts with a 7.72% click-through rate.

3. Target by travel intent and timing. Narrow by age, city tier and interests, and launch ahead of peak booking windows such as Chinese New Year or Golden Week.

4. Pin a comment that invites a message. Woshipm's practitioner guide calls the pinned comment an ad placement in its own right; use it to offer a reason to message, like a package rate or an upgrade (Woshipm, March 2025).

5. Reply fast, in Chinese. We answered every enquiry within four hours. A slow reply wastes the click you paid for.

6. Move serious leads to WeChat. Hand high-intent guests to WeChat, where your team or reservations desk can send rates, take deposits and follow up.

7. Refresh creative regularly. Expect performance to fade over a few weeks and keep new notes in the pipeline. The same Woshipm author estimates creative performance drops about 10% a month.

If you are building a broader Xiaohongshu presence beyond ads, our Xiaohongshu marketing playbook for hotels covers organic content, creators and search.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Boosting a note that didn't work organically. Paid traffic amplifies what the algorithm already likes. Fix the note first.

• Bidding on broad destination terms. You will be competing with OTAs on their home turf. Own long-tail and branded searches instead.

• Optimizing for clicks instead of conversations. For hotels, a private message is the meaningful action. Likes and reads don't fill rooms.

• Translating Western ad copy. Notes that read like ads underperform. Useful, specific content wins: prices, room comparisons, what's included.

• No one to answer messages. Leads arrive in Chinese, often in the evening China time. Plan coverage before you spend.

FAQ

How much does it cost to advertise on Xiaohongshu?

There is no fixed price because Juguang runs on an auction. Agencies report feed ads at roughly RMB 1.5 to 5 per click and long-tail search ads at RMB 0.5 to 3, with competitive keywords reaching RMB 10 to 30 (Marketing China). A sensible first test is RMB 5,000 to 10,000 over two to three weeks.

Can foreign companies advertise on Xiaohongshu?

Yes, but usually not entirely on their own. An overseas company can verify a professional account without a Chinese entity, paying a RMB 600 annual fee (AppInChina). The Juguang ad account itself is typically opened through a Chinese entity or an authorized agency partner, which then runs campaigns that promote notes from your brand account.

What is the difference between Juguang and Pugongying?

Juguang is where you buy ad placements for your own notes, in the feed or in search results. Pugongying is Xiaohongshu's official marketplace for hiring creators to post about your brand. Many brands combine them: a creator posts through Pugongying, and the best-performing creator note is then amplified with Juguang. Chinese marketers call this mix of KOLs, feed and search the KFS model (Woshipm).

How long does it take for Xiaohongshu ads to work?

Expect a few days to judge a single ad and a few weeks to judge a campaign. One Chinese practitioner guide treats about three days as a test period for each plan (Woshipm), while Marketing China puts the algorithm's learning period at two to four weeks (Marketing China). Budget for that window before deciding whether ads are working.

What this means for your hotel

Xiaohongshu ads reward brands that already understand what Chinese travelers want to read. The platform's search behavior makes it unusually good at reaching people at the planning stage, and lead campaigns turn that interest into direct conversations you own, not OTA bookings you pay commission on. The catch is execution: native-sounding notes, smart keyword choices and fast replies in Chinese. If you want to know how your property shows up on Xiaohongshu today and where paid search could help, request a free visibility audit from our team.