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Where did Via's traffic go?

Where did Via's traffic go?

Image source @ Visual China

Text | Kaiboluocaijing, author | Su Qi, Editor | Golden Dragon

"Only Li Jiaqi can see it." This sentence has become a true portrayal of the direction of Taobao live traffic after the Sydney and Weiya incidents.

On December 20, the first night that Wei Ya's entire network account was banned, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room welcomed more than 30 million viewers. After the day of the snack festival, the number of viewers in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room was once close to 50 million, and some fans were keen to maintain order in the comment area, "don't brush irrelevant remarks that don't buy, go to other places", and more netizens complained on social platforms, "Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room can't grab things these days."

In contrast, Lie'er Baby and Chen Jie Kiiki, two anchors who were originally in the Taobao TOP5 camp, appeared a little quiet. The number of viewers in the live broadcast room has not changed much, and even the merchants have said, "As long as Li Jiaqi is there, they will not have a chance."

Some people originally thought that Sydney and Wei Ya had "fallen" one after another, the head fell two times, and the Taobao middle-waist anchor could get a piece of the pie, but they did not expect to aggravate Li Jiaqi's "monopoly" position, which once again triggered businesses and practitioners to worry about the ecology of Taobao live broadcasting.

Li Jiaqi, the only Taobao head anchor, was also more nervous. On December 23, the Consumer Protection Commission of Zhejiang Province released the live broadcast consumption of the five platforms of Taobao, Pinduoduo, JD.com, Kuaishou and Douyin during the "Double 11" period, of which Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room was named because it was found that a batch of commodity labels were not standardized. More people rushed into his live broadcast room to remind him of "paying taxes according to law."

In the eyes of some industry insiders, in fact, the super head is not so important, and Taobao should be more worried about the follow-up growth of mid-waist anchors and store broadcasts.

This is indeed a concern for many businesses. In the face of the successive negative news of large anchors, some merchants have difficulty finding more suitable anchor cooperation in a short period of time, and have said that they want to switch to brand self-broadcasting. A merchant told Kai Pineapple Finance, "But what will happen in the future, there is really no way to predict, it depends on how the Taobao live broadcast ecology will change in 2022." ”

"We can only look at Li Jiaqi"

On December 20, the day that Wei Ya was exposed to tax evasion, Li Jiaqi, who is also a top anchor, became the focus of the whole network.

That night, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room poured in more than 30 million people, the live broadcast room style suddenly changed, and the comment area was full of messages of "frank and lenient, resisting strictness", "paying taxes according to law, we only have you" and "can't live without Jiaqi, Old Man Li is stable".

Where did Via's traffic go?

Screenshot of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room

The situation in which the comment area of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room became a "large-scale legal popularization program" was repeated for several days. This also made many fans stand up and maintain, "Everyone be quiet! Listen to the explanation" "If you don't buy something, you can go somewhere else." Unlike in the past, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast playback only shows a small part of the content of the comment area.

The sudden influx of traffic set off a brief rush of buying in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room. Kai Pineapple Finance observed that on December 21, the number of viewers in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room reached 38.953 million at 10:30 pm. As soon as the product was on the shelves, it was sold out, and then a batch of inventory on the shelves was quickly sold out, Li Jiaqi kept urging in the live broadcast room, "It's off the shelves again!" The boss moves faster! ”

Where did Via's traffic go?

At 10:30 p.m. on December 21, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room was viewed by more than 38.95 million people

Many fans of Li Jiaqi complained on social platforms, "Can you still grab something in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room in the future?" "Usually, 10 or 20 million people, now the working day has soared to more than 30 million, which makes it more difficult to grab goods."

Zhao Fangfang, VP of the Media Center of The Times, believes that Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room instantly poured so much traffic, some of which are to "see the hilarity", and there is randomness in this part of the consumer's order. She said that because li jiaqi and Weiya have some differences in personality, personality, and goods categories, "iron fans" are different types, and the possibility of Weiya fans transforming into Li Jiaqi fans is not very large.

The data confirmed her view. Kai Pineapple Finance observed the traffic in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room for the next few days, the time was also selected at 10:30 pm, December 22-23, the number of viewers in its live broadcast room gradually fell to 22.97 million and 21.567 million, and by December 26, that is, nearly a week after the Weiya incident, its live broadcast room traffic fell back to 14.24 million, restoring the normal level of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room.

A brand e-commerce head Boyan believes that in the past, Weiya and Li Jiaqi can still balance each other, and now there is only one super head anchor left, but Taobao can support a Weiya, it is unlikely in a short period of time, the gap between the head anchor and the middle waist anchor is gradually widening, Li Jiaqi will only be more "monopolistic", and it will only be more difficult for the new brand to want to go to the head live broadcast room in the future.

"How to develop in the long run depends on the policy changes of Taobao Live." Zong Sheng, CEO of a cutting-edge consumer goods brand, said that at present, the core anchor still looks at Li Jiaqi, as long as he does not have an accident, the traffic pattern of Taobao live broadcast will not change, and the aggregation effect of the head anchor will become more and more obvious.

Platform de-traffic centralization or de-heading has been more common, Kuaishou "cutting the domain" of the six major families, Douyin from the beginning is the anchor "take turns to sit in the village". Boyan pointed out that Li Jiaqi suddenly became the only TOP1 on Taobao, and the relationship with the platform will inevitably become more tense.

Taobao is difficult to have a second Via

What merchants care about is that the "fall" of the super anchor will benefit the Taobao mid-waist anchor?

Theoretically, Via is banned, and the traffic pool left for mid-waist or vertical anchors will become larger, and they themselves should work harder to fight for traffic. However, according to the opening of pineapple financial observation, the middle waist or vertical anchor in a short period of time, whether it is the number of viewers, message area interaction, live broadcast room selection, there is not much difference from before, but the gap with the first place Li Jiaqi is getting bigger and bigger.

Also at 10:30 p.m. on December 21, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room was viewed by 38.953 million people, Lie'er Baby was 4.0237 million, Lin Yilun was 3.5817 million, Chen Jiekiki was 2.3258 million, and Ji Jie was 1.2339 million. Among them, Lie'er Baby and Chen Jiekiki have both entered the Taobao anchor TOP5, Lin Yilun is the star anchor of Qianxun, and Ji Jie also has a good reputation. Even so, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast views are 9.7 times, 10.9 times, 16.7 times and 31.6 times, respectively.

In the following days, Lin Yilun's live broadcast data at 10:30 p.m. rose to about 4.5 million, reaching 8.158 million on the night of his 28th Explosive New Year Festival, but the gap with Li Jiaqi was still very large.

Lie'er Baby tried to expand the category, in addition to the clothing category that was previously good at, it successively opened a special session in Xinjiang, a special session for fashion, a special session for foodies, and a special session for cats (Tmall supermarket), and the number of viewers has increased, close to doubling.

In contrast, Ji Jie continues to be "small and beautiful" model, the data is the lowest among these anchors, the comment area interaction is the most, and many fans are also supervising Ji Jie's "serious tax payment, cheer up and hold on".

Chen Jiekiki's response was more flat, neither making a breakthrough in the category, nor did fans and users express similar "concerns" in the comment area.

This seemingly unchanged situation is due to the limited traffic of the Taobao APP itself. In the past, The two super head anchors of Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi mainly drained Taobao live broadcast from outside the station, and once again "sucked" to their own live broadcast room. Now even without Wei Ya, the user's first choice is to go to Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, and has not developed the habit of watching and interacting in other anchor live broadcast rooms before.

Zong Sheng said from the perspective of the businessman that anchors such as Lie'er Baby, Chen Jie Kiki, Ji Jie and Lin Yilun still have a big gap compared with the big anchors, and these anchors will only consider them if they first do their own traffic.

A merchant who has cooperated with one of the above anchors revealed to Kai Pineapple Finance that the fixed pit fee of Lie'er Baby is 40,000 yuan, and the pit fee of Chen Jieki is between 40,000 and 55,000 yuan, and the commission ratio of the two is generally 20%. "The output of the two is not even 1/5 of that of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, but the pit fee is half of that of others."

"Even if the traffic is transferred from the head anchor camp, who will pick up the traffic, how to pick it up, and whether it can be caught is a problem." Broadin said. Because it is difficult to do traffic on Taobao, it is difficult to do other live e-commerce platforms. The anchors of Douyin and Kuaishou can rely on content and personality to attract traffic, and then do live broadcast conversion, Taobao live broadcast is purely dependent on the supply chain, with products and prices to attract traffic.

At present, fans and merchants have a preference for Li Jiaqi, which is obviously more. Zong Sheng told Kai Pineapple Finance that after Wei Ya's accident, his first reaction and many peers was to consult and dock with Li Jiaqi's team, and should not consider "down" in a short period of time. He believes that after the Via incident, the traffic will not fall on the mid-waist anchor in the short term. "As for the future, it remains to be seen whether Taowei will change the traffic rules to make it more conducive to the growth of mid-waist and vertical anchors." Broadin said.

For the current choice of merchants, Zhao Fangfang is not surprised. She suggested that if merchants consider live streaming as a medium- and long-term goal, they may wish to focus on cultivating or deeply cooperating with a potential mid-waist anchor from now on, growing with it, or building their own KOL matrix.

Big anchor, not that important?

At the end of the year, Taobao Live Broadcasting's three members will lose two of them. But Sydney and Via stopped broadcasting, and Taobao's live broadcast ecology has not changed significantly, and this result points to an unexpected trend - big anchors may not be so important to Taobao.

The proportion of GMV of the previous head anchor has confirmed this. The target GMV of Taobao Live in 2020 is expected to be 500 billion yuan, but according to Alibaba's fiscal third quarter performance report in fiscal 2021, by the end of 2020, the GMV of Taobao Live broadcasting will only reach 430 billion yuan. According to the "2020 Live E-commerce Industry White Paper", Weiya's annual dehydration GMV with goods was as high as 20.208 billion yuan, and Li Jiaqi's dehydrated GMV was 12.922 billion.

"The combined sales of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya account for less than 8% of the total GMV of Taobao Live, and the impact is relatively small." Zhuang Shuai, an expert in the retail e-commerce industry and founder of Bailian Consulting, said.

"Brands have core advantages in products, brand power, supply chains, channels and other links, and the fall of a big anchor has little impact on the platform." Zhao Fangfang analyzed from the perspective of integrated marketing and came to the same conclusion. She believes that the head anchor only appears in a certain link of the brand promotion node, and the marketing links such as grass planting, celebrity endorsement, and channel delivery in the early stage, and the transaction links of other channels have nothing to do with the big anchor.

For merchants, there is no big anchor, which is a good thing in the long run. "If Taobao traffic is no longer so aggregated, and the anchor's ability to reduce prices declines, won't merchants and brands have to be kidnapped by the 'lowest price' all the time?" Zong Sheng said.

"I don't want to cooperate with big anchors, I want to pay high pit fees, and it is easy to cause price breakage and be pigeons released." In the later stage, we mainly laid out multi-platform self-broadcast. A person in charge of a home textile brand told Open Pineapple Finance.

A daily necessities merchant said that he does not consider cooperating with big anchors at all, "Several times of cooperation have not earned money, why do you have to go to this muddy water?" "Before Sydney did not broadcast well, the performance was not ideal, we wanted to contact her for rebroadcasting, but then she had an accident, fortunately we got the deposit back."

Before the cooperation with the head anchor of the business, many people expressed to the opening pineapple finance that they "do not want to touch the big anchor again, switch to self-broadcast", now is the opportunity, more and more businesses began to pay attention to self-broadcasting.

Where did Via's traffic go?

Source / "Herborist Collection Yanxi Palace Zhengchuan" Douyin live broadcast room

Zhao Fangfang said that price is not the only criterion for consumers to judge brand self-broadcasting. In contrast, the popular "Niangniang Live" and "Bundi Live" on Douyin have attracted a large number of users by differentiating the content.

"As early as before the accident in Sydney and Weiya, many brands were building anchor matrices, self-broadcasting, turning to Kuaishou and Douyin, and even going to WeChat video numbers to do private domains." Zhuang Shuai said that the opportunity always belongs to professional MCN institutions and third-party service providers.

They believe that in the future, a number of service providers may appear on Taobao to help brands do differentiated content and professional self-broadcasting, which is also one of the opportunities for the future live streaming industry.

From another point of view, some views believe that even if the head anchor is not there, the importance of merchants to Taobao live broadcasting will not drop significantly. Zhuang Shuai said that Taobao live broadcasting is still used as a customary channel by brands, because even if the brand does not do well in self-broadcasting, the brand's store is also here, and consumers' consumption habits will remain in Taobao.

However, in Zongsheng's view, with the gradual improvement of the e-commerce infrastructure of Douyin and Kuaishou, it may cause some brands to shift their operational focus out of Taobao.

If you look further ahead, the "fall" of Sydney and Via this time just gives merchants the opportunity to seek new traffic.

Zhao Fangfang, who has experienced several changes in marketing channels, said, "The development of live e-commerce to this stage, whether it is Douyin Kuaishou or Taobao, it is already a battlefield of stock, and the dividends and increments of traffic have gone in the direction of virtual worlds such as the meta-universe." No matter how the traffic channel changes, the brands that can stay must learn to precipitate their own brand assets, do private domains, and do self-broadcasting. ”

*At the request of the interviewees, Zongsheng and Boyan are pseudonyms.

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