Audi launched its video ad campaign on WeChat Moments earlier today. What’s interesting is that the video played is an Infiniti ad.

Based on discussion from a WeChat Group of advertising professionals, Audi’s spending 30 million yuan working with Tencent Social Ads.

Tencent Ads has issued an apology and shared that the wrong ad creative launched at 9 am today was taken offline at 10:30 am. It was caused by an automobile service company’s careless mistake.

The ad generated 3,959 impressions with a total spend of 202 yuan according to Tencent. But the media coverage about this incident is growing; good news for both Audi and Infiniti.

Based on the provided figure, the CPM is roughly 51 yuan (US$7.2) and Audi’s campaign most likely targets lower-tier cities. As Beijing and Shanghai targeted video ads on WeChat Moments cost about 100-300 yuan on CPM.

And, some influencers are making fun of Audi on China’s social media, which drives more free coverage.

Shuangye, a Weibo influencer with over 1 million followers, published a post, “Audi is indeed a generous company, spending money in WeChat Moments for Infiniti China…”

Some companies are taking advantage of this incident, like Volvo:

#Audi Infiniti# has become a hot topic on Weibo with over 3.4 million views as of writing this post. But neither Audi nor Infiniti has responded yet. It’s a good opportunity for Audi to generate good awareness for its Q8 though the value from from the incident far exceeds Audi’s 200 yuan spent.

Fake fans and manipulations on China social media

Update: Infiniti responded in the evening via its Weibo account: