Plenty of Vietnamese shop owners pour their entire ad budget into Facebook and then complain that the cost per message keeps climbing, while the one channel almost every customer opens dozens of times a day sits untouched. This article walks through the seven Zalo ad formats, how the system charges, and a starting budget small enough to test without pain.
Quick summary: Zalo reached 79.6 million monthly active users as of the end of December 2025, effectively covering every adult smartphone owner in Vietnam. Zalo Ads offers seven main formats - Website, Form, OA Article, Official Account, Video, Message and Commerce - each serving a different goal. The system runs on an auction so there is no fixed rate card; agencies quote a lowest CPC bid around 440 VND and daily budgets starting near 50,000 VND depending on campaign type. For a small business the real value of Zalo is not the first click but the fact that a customer who follows your Official Account can be messaged again later.
Why Zalo deserves a test before you raise the Facebook budget
The decisive number is reach. As of the end of December 2025, Zalo reported 79.6 million monthly active users, up nearly 2 million year on year, with more than 2.1 billion messages sent daily. The midpoint of 2025 stood at 78.3 million. In a country of roughly 100 million people, that is essentially the entire adult smartphone population.
Reach is not the most important part though. What sets Zalo apart is its position in Vietnamese daily life: it is where people message family, receive bank notifications, and deal with schools and government offices. A message from a shop landing in that inbox is read in a completely different frame of mind than an ad scrolling past on a social feed. The flip side is that mistakes are punished harder - spam inside Zalo gets you blocked immediately.
Some context on timing: Zalo Ads updated its advertising policy effective 1 January 2026, and business messaging was consolidated around template based messages. If you ran Zalo campaigns a few years back and gave up, both the rules and the interface have changed, so read the current policy before topping up an account.
The seven Zalo ad formats and what each is for
Picking the wrong format is the fastest way to burn money. The table pairs each one with the goal it genuinely serves:
| Format | How it appears and what it does | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Website | Sends the user to your website | You already have a solid landing or sales page |
| Form | Customer fills in order details inside Zalo | Collecting phone numbers, bookings, consultations |
| Official Account | Invites users to follow your shop's account | Building an audience you can message long term |
| OA Article | Promotes an existing post on your Official Account | New product announcements, brand storytelling |
| Video | Vertical video running in the user feed | Awareness, showing off the physical store |
| Message | Opens a conversation with the business directly | Categories needing advice before purchase |
| Commerce | Targets people who regularly shop on Zalo | Retail with a clear product catalogue |
List based on the Zalo Ads format documentation. Not every format is open to every industry, so check the category rules in the ads manager before planning.
If your shop has no decent website yet, do not start with the Website ad. The Form ad is usually the best entry point: the customer never leaves Zalo, never waits for a page to load, and you receive a real phone number - far more valuable than an anonymous session.
Commerce ads target people already used to buying through their phone, closer to counter behaviour than to brand advertising. Stock photo (CC0).
How Zalo charges
First thing to accept: Zalo publishes no fixed rate card. The system runs on an auction, so the cost per click depends on how many advertisers are bidding for the same audience at that moment. The same creative will cost noticeably more in the year end peak than in a quiet month.
The pricing models in use:
- CPC - per click. The most common model, applied to Website, Form, Official Account and OA Article ads. You pay only when someone clicks.
- CPM - per 1,000 impressions. Suits campaigns where being seen matters more than an immediate click.
- CPCV - per completed view. Used for video ads, charging only when the viewer watches through.
- CPF - per follow. For Official Account ads, charging by the number of people who follow your account.
On entry level pricing, the figure Vietnamese agencies most commonly cite in 2026 is a minimum CPC bid of about 440 VND per click with daily budgets starting near 50,000 VND; Commerce ads are quoted at a minimum around 500 VND per click. To be clear, these come from intermediaries rather than an official rate card, and some campaign types demand considerably more, with sources quoting 500,000 VND per day. The safe move is to open the Zalo Ads manager, select the exact campaign type you intend to run, and read the minimum the system actually applies - do not build a financial plan on a number heard secondhand.
If you hire an agency to run campaigns for you, management fees typically land between 15 and 30 percent of total ad spend. Below roughly 10 million VND a month that fee rarely pays for itself, and running it yourself will go further.
A starting budget plan for a small shop
The common mistake is loading a large sum and running a single creative for thirty days. Splitting it up to learn faster works better:
- Week 1 - build the base. Set up the Official Account, finish the cover image, description, product catalogue and reply scripts. Run zero ads.
- Week 2 - test two Form creatives. Run two variants differing in offer or image, equal budgets, both small. The goal is to find the cost per real phone number.
- Week 3 - back the winner. Switch off the weaker creative, double the budget on the stronger, and add an Official Account campaign to start accumulating followers.
- Week 4 - measure through to orders. Match the phone numbers collected against orders actually closed, and calculate cost per order rather than cost per click.
The metric to watch is not impressions but a chain of four numbers: cost per click, cost per phone number collected, the rate at which numbers convert to orders, and finally cost per order. If the first three look good and the last one looks bad, the problem is in your callback and closing process, not in the advertising. Building that tracking sheet is covered in measuring ad performance for SMEs: which numbers are enough, while splitting the total budget across channels is covered in the SME advertising budget guide.
For Website ads, tag every destination link with UTM parameters from the very first creative, otherwise by month end there will be no way to tell whether an order came from Zalo or somewhere else. A tidy naming convention is laid out in UTM tracking for SMEs: knowing where orders come from.
Cafes, bakeries and clothing shops gain the most from Zalo because their customers live nearby and buy repeatedly. Stock photo (CC0).
The overlooked half: keeping customers after the first click
This is where Zalo differs sharply from other ad channels, and where most small shops leave value on the table. When someone follows your Official Account they become an audience you can message later. Bringing back an existing customer costs far less than finding a brand new one.
The tool for that is ZNS, Zalo's notification message service. Its strength is that a business account can send transaction and care notifications even to people who have not followed the Official Account, with very high delivery within seconds. From 1 January 2026 transaction and notification messages were consolidated around templates, so content has to be approved against a preset structure rather than written freely.
Sensible use for a small shop: order confirmations, delivery notices, appointment reminders, periodic maintenance reminders. These are messages customers want. Turning ZNS into a weekly promotions channel, by contrast, is the fastest route to being blocked. If incoming messages outgrow what you can answer by hand, the automated replies can be handed to a chatbot, which we cover in Zalo OA chatbot for business; the technical connection side sits in sending Zalo OA messages via API.
Five mistakes first time Zalo advertisers make
- Advertising while the Official Account is still empty. A customer clicks through, finds no image, no description and no posts, and leaves. Finish the account first, advertise second.
- Copying Facebook content straight over. The tone inside Zalo is closer to personal messaging than to a promotional post. Long paragraphs, heavy emoji use and capital letters grate far more here.
- Nobody staffing the inbox. A customer messages at 8pm and hears back at noon the next day - the ad spend is wasted. If you cannot cover evenings, set an auto reply that states your response hours clearly.
- Measuring by impressions. A pretty report with no orders behind it is a meaningless report. Always resolve down to cost per order.
- Swapping creatives every two days. Turning an ad off before there is enough data to judge it. Give each creative at least a week, or enough budget to produce a few dozen conversions.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum budget to run Zalo Ads?
Zalo Ads publishes no fixed rate card because the system runs on an auction, so prices move with supply and demand at any given moment. According to rate guides published by Vietnamese agencies in 2026, the lowest CPC bid sits around 440 VND per click and daily budgets can start from roughly 50,000 VND, although some campaign types require more, with figures of 500,000 VND per day quoted elsewhere. Before committing a budget, open the Zalo Ads manager and read the minimum that applies to the exact campaign type you plan to run.
Which Zalo ad format should a small business start with?
It depends on the goal. To collect phone numbers for orders, choose the Form ad because the customer fills it in inside Zalo without leaving the app. To send traffic to an existing website, choose the Website ad charged per click. To build an audience you can message later, choose the Official Account ad charged per follow. For retail shops, the Commerce ad targeting people who already shop on Zalo is worth testing.
How many people use Zalo in Vietnam?
As of the end of December 2025, Zalo reported 79.6 million monthly active users, an increase of nearly 2 million year on year, with more than 2.1 billion messages sent daily. The figure was carried by several Vietnamese news outlets and puts Zalo in position as the country's most used messaging app, meaning its audience covers close to every adult smartphone owner in Vietnam.
Sources: Zalo's announcement of 79.6 million monthly active users at the end of December 2025 as reported by Znews and Người Đô Thị, and the 78.3 million midpoint figure via Tri Thức - Znews; Zalo Ads documentation on ad formats, pricing models and the policy update effective 1 January 2026; minimum bid and budget figures from rate guides published by Vietnamese agencies in 2026, offered as reference only.