The WeChat video number, which is highly anticipated by Tencent, will focus on three directions in 2023.
Source: media scrolling
21st century business herald reporter Bai Yang reports from Beijing.
On January 10th, the annual WeChat open class arrived as scheduled.
Compared with previous years, this year’s WeChat open class has no offline venue, and it has turned into a pure online class. At the same time, Zhang Xiaolong, the founder of WeChat, will not show up this year, but as an important window for the outside world to understand the WeChat ecology, the WeChat open class still attracts much attention.
According to the practice of previous years, the first business that appeared in the WeChat open class was the business that the WeChat ecology should focus on at present, and this year, the first one was the WeChat video number.
In the past year, the video number has become a well-deserved star project of Tencent Group, not only in the financial report meeting, but also repeatedly mentioned by Tencent management. Ma Huateng, founder, chairman and CEO of Tencent, even called the video "the hope of the audience" in his internal speech at the end of the year.
Although WeChat officials did not disclose the latest user data, according to the statistics of Quest Mobile, a third-party organization, in June 2022, the monthly activity of WeChat video number exceeded 800 million, while that of Tik Tok was 680 million and that of Aauto Quicker was 390 million.
The video number that has been online for only 3 years, backed by WeChat ecology, helped Tencent hold the short video position. Next, according to the content of WeChat open class, the development of video number will focus on three aspects, namely short video, live broadcast and e-commerce.
Spending time is close to friends circle.
According to Liu Zelin, a lecturer of WeChat open class, at present, the total usage time of video number users has exceeded 80% of the circle of friends, and the video playback volume based on recommendation algorithm has increased by 400% year-on-year. At the same time, the activity of video number creators is also growing, and the number of daily creators and the average daily video uploaded have both increased by more than 100%.
In 2021, the video number began to try to broaden the product boundaries, which enabled users to see the video number when chatting and brushing friends. In 2022, the video number continued to exert its strength on the scene, and the video number was integrated into the subscription number, applet, enterprise WeChat, etc. As a basic component, there were more ways for users to enter the video number, and there were also more connections between creators and users.
Thanks to the improvement of product capabilities, the creators of video numbers have become more diverse, and the content ecology of video numbers has also been enriched. Liu Zelin said that the video number has changed from a form dominated by pan-information content in the past to a platform for universal consumption with rich content and multiple symbiosis. For example, in 2022, the broadcast volume of video number pan-entertainment related content increased by more than 185% year-on-year, and the broadcast volume of pan-life related content increased by more than 291% year-on-year.
In terms of creator motivation, video number mainly encourages creators to continuously optimize content from two aspects: traffic and honor. In terms of traffic, in 2022, the video number upgraded the Polaris plan and the video number MCN recruitment plan, providing richer traffic incentives to creators with wider coverage. In terms of honor, the video number helps the creators to record one milestone after another through their creative achievements, and at the same time, it helps the creators to summarize their weekly growth and changes through the function of the author’s weekly report.
In addition, the tool ability of the video number was also updated and iterated in 2022, which made the creator’s creation clearer and more organized. For example, when you don’t know what to publish, the creator can check his "exclusive growth task"; When you want to get a flow boost, you can choose the "heating tool" of the video number; When the account flow fluctuates, you can know the recent status and problems of the account through "illegal inquiry".
Liu Zelin said that the video number hopes that high-quality creators can not only get attention in the video number, but also get considerable income. Therefore, in 2022, the video number also made some adjustments to the creator’s realization work, and provided a more comprehensive form, a more mature model, and more creators’ realization business and product capabilities.
For example, in 2021, the video number developed the liquidity of mutual selection advertisements for creators with more than 10,000 powder, and provided the liquidity of live rewards and live delivery for new authors with zero powder. In 2022, the video team found that there was a lack of liquidity for the creators in the range of 100% to 10,000%, so last year, the video team provided liquidity such as shopping carts and video tasks for these creators.
In addition, in terms of original protection, in 2022, the video number suppressed the traffic of the handling account more strictly, canceled the platform rights of the handling account, and transferred the released traffic to the original author. In addition, the video number has also launched the original declaration ability to further protect the creators.
The data shows that in 2022, the original content of video number increased by 350% year-on-year, the number of creators with 10,000 powder and above increased by 308%, and the explosive content of 10W+ increased by 186%. For 2023, Liu Zelin said that the video number will continue to optimize the video number ecosystem in terms of product capabilities, author services and ecological regulation, so that creators can better record and create on the video number and let everyone be seen.
The scale of watching and broadcasting increased by 300%
In 2022, there are two keywords in the live video number, namely content and individual. Zheng Wei, a lecturer of WeChat open class, said that around these two words, the video number regards the live broadcast room as a content field, which carries the creation of content and shows the talent of individuals.
In the past year, the video number combined product infrastructure, traffic orientation and operation strategy, which enabled users to get a better experience of watching and broadcasting, and also met the demands of the anchor. For individual anchors, the video number has designed a growth system, so that talented individuals can better carry out cold start and realize growth and income.
The data shows that in 2022, the watching scale of live video number will increase by 300%, and the watching time will increase by 156%. At the same time, the high-quality broadcasting will increase by 614% and the broadcasting time will increase by 83%. Zheng Wei said that the video number adheres to the principle that every individual can pick up his mobile phone to broadcast and show himself, so the anchor scale of the market is constantly improving, and the growth of high-quality anchors shows that the guiding nature of the video number live broadcast ecology is developing healthily.
In the past year, people have seen more and more live video content in the circle of friends, covering more and more fields. What needs to be pointed out in particular is that the concert that was screened many times last year was broadcast live. Zheng Wei said that the concert is actually a very heavy chain. It is necessary to carry out the overall planning of artists, the activities planning of organizers and co-organizers, etc. Finally, to move this content to the screen, it is necessary to comply with some rules of the Internet platform.
After many explorations, the video number has now turned the live concert into a mode that can be followed up every day. "After the whole mode runs through, the team has also found an operation mode that can cover the cost, so this year, we can enjoy more live broadcasts in the video number live broadcast room," Zheng Wei said.
In the past year, the traffic of live video number has increased by 108%, which means that more people use live video number as a daily recording tool. Last year, the video number invested 4 billion traffic in operators, pushing the number of anchors to increase by 101%, while the total revenue of anchors increased by 447%.
In 2023, the main work of video number live broadcast is still to encourage more individuals to start broadcasting, and let them get a cold start, grow up and earn income in the video number ecology. Among them, in terms of cold start, the video number will increase the intensity of operating expenses, and it is estimated that 5 billion traffic will be invested to encourage new anchors to broadcast; In terms of growth, the video number will provide detailed operation plans in different fields according to the characteristics of anchors in different track fields; In terms of revenue, the video number will continue to iterate over the infrastructure tools with goods and launch more incentive plans.
E-commerce GMV increased by more than 8 times
For the video number, e-commerce is the top priority of its future development. Ma Huateng also proposed earlier that he hoped that the video number would be closer to the transaction and the e-commerce closed loop would be completed.
The data shows that in 2022, the GMV of video number live broadcast with goods increased by more than 8 times year-on-year, and from the perspective of the whole year, the scale of GMV also maintained a trend of monthly growth.
Tao Jia, a lecturer of WeChat open class, said that the growth of the platform scale was driven by the increase of the number of users and the improvement of the platform efficiency. "This is mainly due to the increasingly perfect video number ecology, which brought about the rapid growth of the public domain scale. At the same time, it also reflects our continued attraction to quality goods and content. "
According to Tao Jia, while maintaining the scale growth, private domain transactions of video numbers also maintained a high proportion. More and more merchants and talents have linked their community users, WeChat official account fans and video number scenes, precipitated and expanded their private domain users, and achieved sustainable and stable operation.
From the perspective of the composition of consumption categories, the top three categories of video number e-commerce are clothing, food and beauty makeup. In the portrait of users, the proportion of consumer users in the first, second and third tier cities exceeds 60%, and the ratio of male to female buyers is 1: 4. The age distribution is slightly mature, and the overall consumption power is relatively strong. Therefore, the customer unit price of video number e-commerce companies remains at a high level in the industry, surpassing 200 yuan as a whole.
Tao Jia said that in the past year, video number e-commerce continued to exert its efforts around users, merchants and service providers, focusing on three aspects: First, it continued to build a unified and orderly platform to ensure the purchasing experience of C-end users and cultivate users’ consumption mentality in video numbers; The second is to continuously optimize the ability, open the safe and controllable B-side business tools, improve the business performance ability, and optimize the quality and scale of the supply chain; The third is to continue to refine the service provider system, build industry benchmarks, and build a business growth ecosystem.
"As a platform for widely connecting C-end users, we always put the user’s buying experience in the most prominent position. Our gradually unified purchase process for C-end users is based on the unified product details page and product window page of the platform, which not only carries the official guarantee of the platform for the whole purchase process, but also effectively ensures the consistency of the user’s consumption experience, which is conducive to cultivating users’ stable consumption mind. " Tao Jia said.
For the merchant side, the video number provides a unified user identity system, allowing merchants to get through their user identities in various channels including applets, public accounts, video numbers, and small shops in the WeChat ecosystem, which is convenient for unified management. At the same time, the video number has opened up various functional interfaces and tools for merchants, and also built a service matching platform for merchants and service providers.
In order to better support the operation of brand merchants, VideoNo. will release an incentive plan for brand merchants in the near future, and provide various rights and interests including cold start of traffic, brand labeling, exclusive services, etc. to brand merchants who have settled in videoNo. stores. At the same time, the video number will continue to encourage businesses to settle down and expand their own private domain users, and through upgrading the private domain traffic incentive plan, continue to carry out greater traffic incentives for the transactions of private domain scenes identified by the platform.
For service providers, in the past year, Video Number has gradually established a set of recruitment and operation systems for investment training guidance, account incubation, and service providers. Up to now, more than 1,000 service providers have become the official cooperative ecological partners of video number, contributing more than 30% of GMV to the market.
In 2023, the video number, which was highly anticipated by Tencent, said that it would continue to increase its support for service providers, and continue to focus on identity authentication, traffic incentives, and operational tools, so as to double the overall traffic incentives. In addition, the video number will also focus on the three directions of industrial belt service providers, brand operation service providers and alliance investment leaders.
Although relying on the WeChat ecosystem, the video number has surpassed the goal that other platforms took longer to achieve in just three years, for the video number, some basic work still needs to be done in a down-to-earth manner, such as completing product capabilities and building infrastructure tools. At the same time, the challenges faced by competitors and the video number are also unavoidable. How to keep the creators’ continuous creation, how to weigh the content and business, how to guarantee and manage all aspects of e-commerce transactions, etc. These are all problems that need to be answered urgently.
(Author: Bai Yang Editor: Zhang Weixian)