In the past year, live streaming with goods is like riding a roller coaster, experiencing peaks and valleys. Now still in the center of the storm, platform players are facing the shuffle with full horsepower, and the situation is unpredictable.
Author | Zhang Chao Edited | Luo Lijuan
The Internet is always challenging and full of life. This is especially true for live streaming at the center of the storm.
Looking back on the past year, the situation of live streaming with goods is unpredictable, accidents are coming, and the hustle and bustle is still there.
After nearly 30 years of groping in the education and training industry, Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental, changed careers at the age of 59 and stepped on the tail of 2021 to plunge into the live streaming industry in the wind outlet.
With the personal IP popularity accumulated in the past and the inclined traffic of the platform, although Yu Minhong's live broadcast debut with goods is only 3 hours, according to the statistics of the third-party platform Gray Dolphin, the cumulative number of viewers in the live broadcast room has reached 1.82 million, the sales volume is 4.81 million yuan, and the sound wave income (tip) is between 100,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan.
The tide always rises and falls, the "back wave" rises, and the front wave falls. Almost at the same time as Yu Minhong brought goods (on the evening of December 28), Zhang Ting, a celebrity with more than 33 million Douyin fans, who was known as the "godmother of micro-business", thundered. His cosmetics company with her husband Lin Ruiyang was exposed to be suspected of using the Internet to engage in pyramid schemes and was investigated and punished, and the frozen funds for property preservation reached 600 million yuan.
This is not the first anchor to "fall" with goods, nor is it the most influential one. Before Zhang Ting, Taobao's two major anchors, Wei Ya and Sydney, had been fined for tax evasion, and the social platform network account was blocked and disappeared in the live broadcast room.
Not only is the loss of the "super head anchor", but the external environment of Taobao live broadcasting is also more cruel. Followed by the development momentum of Douyin and Kuaishou, platforms such as video numbers and B stations are also eager to try, looking forward to breaking the old order and breaking out of the new world.
If 2021 is the year when live streaming breaks stereotypes, then 2022 may be a turning point in the industry's maturity.
1
2021 with big ups and downs
To sum up the words of 2021 live streaming with goods in one word, that is, ups and downs.
In the first half of the year, the limelight of the entire industry was almost snatched away by Douyin, and even some insiders regarded it as the only platform that could compete with Ali.
At the beginning of 2021, the Douyin e-commerce business was exposed to have a full-year GMV target of 1,000 billion yuan, double that of the previous year, equivalent to the total transaction volume of the "e-commerce upstart" Pinduoduo in 2019, shocking the oligarchic market of live streaming with goods.
In the second half of 2020, douyin, which was only built in the closed loop of e-commerce transactions, became the industry's largest "dark horse".
With the concept of "interest e-commerce" proposed, Douyin e-commerce seems to be sitting on the rocket, not only all kinds of celebrities and star anchors emerge in an endless stream, but also launched the "brand flagship store" function, and vigorously supported the brand to open stores.
According to Yiou, as of the beginning of April 2021, more than 1,000 brands have settled in the Douyin brand number, and more than 220 brands have configured the "brand flagship store" function. Official data shows that after the launch of the brand flagship store, compared with the simple product window display stage, the product exposure click rate increased by 250% month-on-month, and the conversion efficiency of the home page traffic funnel increased by 30% month-on-month.
In the first two years, the trend was that merchants poured into Taobao Live to open official stores and open live streams with goods; by 2021, this wind will blow to Douyin, and merchants tacitly want to catch the express train of Douyin, and Douyin has a tendency to catch up later.
The report released by Ping An Securities pointed out that from the perspective of GMV in 2020, Taobao Live GMV reached 400 billion, Douyin Live GMV was about 500 billion (of which GMV of Douyin Xiaodian was 100 billion+), Kuaishou Live GMV reached 381.2 billion (2021Q1 Kuaishou Xiaodian GMV accounted for 85%), and the overall live e-commerce showed a three-legged competition pattern; but in 2021, the year-on-year growth rate of Douyin E-commerce GMV has significantly exceeded that of Taobao Live and Kuaishou. In July 2021, the GMV of Douyin e-commerce creators with goods increased by 392% year-on-year, and in Q2 2021, Kuaishou e-commerce maintained a rapid growth rate of about 100%, and the growth rate of Taobao live GMV in August 2021 was only 55%.
Image source: Ping An Securities
Until the arrival of the Double 11 Shopping Carnival, Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi refreshed the single transaction record of live streaming with goods with amazing transaction data, and Taobao Live once again showed that the "super head anchor" was far better than the ability of other platforms to carry goods live, and the scenery was unique for a while.
There are even more than 2 million anchors with Douyin fans, who are blunt in a live chat, and the daily part of the goods is also cost-effective, but during the double 11 period, it is definitely not able to spell Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, "directly lie flat on it."
On November 22, the Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation issued an announcement that through the analysis of tax big data, it was found that Zhu Chenhui (network: Sydney) and Lin Shanshan, two network anchors, were suspected of evading taxes, and the two pursued taxes, collected late fees and fined the two.
Sydney and Lin Shanshan belong to the same MCN organization, and they mainly use Weibo, Xiaohongshu, WeChat public account and other platforms to preview live broadcasts, expose products, and then go on Taobao live streaming to bring goods.
Only one year after entering the live broadcast with goods, Sydney's sales performance in Taobao Live has jumped rapidly, becoming second only to Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi; Lin Shanshan's Taobao store has also maintained a top 10 in the women's clothing category.
With the two being investigated, their accounts such as Weibo, WeChat public account, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Taobao store were quickly blocked.
Just a month later, the same incident happened to Taobao Live Broadcast "First Sister" Wei Ya. This time she was seized even faster and fined more.
Although Taobao Live did not speak out on this matter, in the short term, the two generals were folded, and the impact was foreseeable.
After Wei Ya was punished, Li Jiaqi, who is also the "super head anchor" of Taobao Live, has attracted much attention. In the past few days, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room has poured into a large number of consumers, in addition to cheering him up, but also reminding him to abide by discipline and law.
After the storm, the outside world speculated that Li Jiaqi could undertake traffic from Weiya and Sydney live broadcast rooms, and Taobao live broadcast or be spared from the impact. But contrary to expectations, after a slight increase, the number of views in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room fell back to the previous average, and there was a faint downward trend.
Li Jiaqi live broadcast number of views before 2021 double 11 (left) vs the end of December
And this is obviously not a problem of Taobao live broadcasting a platform, nor is it just a problem of tax evasion. Mushroom Street, which was once very popular and took the lead in live streaming with goods, was exposed at the end of 2021 due to business adjustments, laying off about 30% of employees. The company, which has lost money for five consecutive years and has lost more than $1.4 billion in market value in three years of listing, has had a significantly less difficult year.
The entire live streaming industry, up to the platform, down to the participants of all links, 2021 is like riding a roller coaster, the mood ups and downs.
2
New variables grow
The tide rises and falls, thousands of trees and sails, and the surging live broadcast with goods has no shortage of new variables.
According to the data obtained by All-Weather Technology from Tencent Music, the number of two-hour reservations for QQ Music's official concert exceeded 3 million, and the number of 16 hours exceeded 5.55 million, and as of 12:00 on December 31, 2021, the cumulative number of reservations for QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and National K Songs on the four platforms of TME Tencent Music Entertainment Group has reached nearly 10 million.
For a long time, Tencent's short video applications have been ridiculed as "unsupportable A dou", even if backed by Tencent's strong social DNA, still tried and failed, repeatedly failed, failed to have a real "anti-hit" product, and finally can only choose to use the App "family bucket" way to combine to cope with external competition, but with little effect.
The video number of this online concert may be a key application that can help Tencent sweep away its shame and turn the situation around.
In fact, before the Mayday concert, the video number also co-hosted an online concert with the Westlife group. Because it evoked the memories of countless people's youth, the concert successfully swept the major social networks and climbed the popular charts.
According to incomplete statistics, the live broadcast attracted more than 20 million views and more than 130 million likes. Even after the official singing, many netizens still stayed in the live broadcast room to watch the rehearsal tidbits and did not want to leave, which is also another successful work of the video number after millions of people watched the Gemini meteor shower in 2020.
Zhuang Shuai, an analyst at Bailian Consulting, believes that the essence of the video number is to improve user activity through large-scale marketing events such as online entertainment activities and cultivate the habit of users watching video numbers; at the same time, the platform can also explore multiple business models such as live broadcast rewards and event sponsorship.
Since the second half of 2020, Tencent has devoted all its efforts to supporting the video number, giving the latter enough "noodles" -
Hang up the video number entrance on the WeChat "Discovery" page, add the function of sharing the live broadcast room at the top of the circle of friends, and also achieve two-way communication with the public account, and even add the video account to the public account information flow, so that users can perceive and reach the video number from all corners of the WeChat ecology.
WeChat video accounts join the official account information flow
Even if the user's mind of the video number has not yet been fully established, Tencent can't wait to explore the path of commercialization, and one of the most important ways is to live stream the goods. Since the launch of the "live broadcast task" in April last year to help creators monetize, Tencent video number has been able to achieve one-click store opening, user tips, live streaming with goods and other functions, and is currently testing the "short video shopping cart" function in grayscale.
At the Ninth Anniversary Ecological Conference (November 2021), Youzan CEO Bai Crow said that he firmly supports the video number and is optimistic about its development, "The video number has gradually begun to have a common domain, and the growth of the video number in the past three months is very fast, and we believe that it will grow well in the next year." ”
According to the "2021 Youzan Micro Mall Star Product Inventory", the video number has achieved "accelerated fast running" in the past year, since the Spring Festival in 2021 to the inventory release, the transaction volume brought by the live broadcast of the video number has reached nearly 1 billion, as of November 2021, the number of merchants who have traded with the video number has increased by more than 6 times month-on-month; the GMV of the merchant has increased by more than 7 times month-on-month; and the monthly increase of the live broadcast time has exceeded 8 times.
In recent years, station B, which has gradually broken the circle and its market value has risen sharply, is also eager to try. In order to help more UP owners realize traffic monetization and enrich the platform business model, Station B first won an Internet payment license through public bidding, and recently launched the "Little Yellow Car" function, allowing users to shop while watching. Coupled with the previous live broadcast function, Station B is one step closer to fully opening the live broadcast with goods.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2021, the average monthly active users of Station B reached 267 million, an increase of 35% year-on-year; the monthly active users of the mobile terminal increased by 36% year-on-year to 250 million; and the average daily active users reached 72 million, an increase of 35% year-on-year. In addition to showing the characteristics of highly active community users, Station B also showed high stickiness, and the average daily use time of users in the quarter increased to 88 minutes, a record high; the average number of monthly interactions exceeded 10 billion, reaching 10.2 billion times, an increase of 86% year-on-year.
Combining the scale of traffic and the value of traffic, Station B is also competitive among many players. By establishing a live streaming channel for UP owners, it is probably one of the ways to exert the value of traffic and realize the company's turnaround.
3
Where does 2022 go?
The competition and change of new and old forces means that the pattern of live streaming with goods or will usher in a new round of reshuffle. How big will be the gap between Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou, and players such as video number and B station that are damaged to varying degrees?
Zhuang Shuai analyzed that the "fall" of anchors such as Sydney and Weiya is a normal business development process, from the perspective of the proportion of sales they create, whether it is on Taobao Live or Ali itself, the impact is very small; secondly, since march 2020, Taobao Live was exposed to organizational structure adjustment, the platform has been supporting businesses to broadcast, the current brand live broadcast is gradually getting better, "closing the big anchor live broadcast room will not have a big impact on the platform, because the core goods are still on Taobao, and users are still on Taobao." ”
According to Alibaba's financial report, in fiscal 2021, the commodity transaction volume (GMV) of Alibaba's ecosystem, including China's retail market (US$1.144 trillion), cross-border and global retail markets, and local life services, was 8.119 trillion yuan (US$1.239 trillion). It is worth noting that Taobao Live's GMV in fiscal 2021 exceeded 500 billion yuan, but it only accounted for 6.16% of Alibaba's large market, less than one-tenth.
Even in the Taobao live streaming market of more than 500 billion yuan, Wei Ya, Sydney and others are only a relatively small part of it. According to the "2020 Live Streaming Red List" released by the Phoenix Network E-commerce Research Institute, Wei Ya won the championship with a GMV of 20.208 billion yuan; Sydney dehydrated sales of 4.233 billion yuan, ranking sixth in the whole network; lin Shanshan was not seen in the top ten of the whole network. If calculated according to this, the sales of Wei Ya and Sydney accounted for only 4.89% of Taobao Live's sales.
Image source: Phoenix E-commerce Research Institute
A clear feature is that even if the "super head anchor" attracts a lot of platform traffic, with the development of business, consumers' dependence on the anchor is limited. This means that if the future live broadcast with goods wants to become bigger and stronger, the way of relying on the IP of the master may not work, or it is necessary to return to the live broadcast room and brand.
In the process of adjusting the development strategy, there may also be some new opportunities. On the whole, industry insiders believe that there may be three variables in the future of the live streaming track:
First, driven by technology, virtual anchors may have new developments. Its main role is to assist live anchors to extend the live broadcast coverage time and increase the live broadcast coverage scene;
Second, the video number may usher in an outbreak. All indications show that Tencent is more patient with the video number this time, so from a long-term perspective, the variable of the video number also has a chance;
"According to industry estimates, the future scale of the live streaming market will reach ten trillion, of which Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou will account for a larger share, which may be half or more; the remaining one-third or so will be divided by platforms such as JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Video Number." From this point of view, the video number does have a great opportunity. Zhuang Shuai said.
Third, there may be business cooperation between retail and live streaming in the same city. For example, live broadcasting is linked with physical stores to launch offline merchants to do live broadcasts.
Today's live streaming with goods, even if it is in the wind outlet, can still only be regarded as a half-big "child". It is normal for growing "children" to make mistakes, make mistakes, and get sick, which requires the help and reminders of "adults".
Judging from the results, supervision has not hit the enthusiasm of anchors and platforms, on the contrary, the increasingly perfect rules and regulations have promoted the progress and maturity of the live streaming industry, and also improved the comprehensive quality of anchors to a certain extent.
One "Via" has fallen, and thousands of "Via" are on the rise. What has changed is only the story of people and platforms, and the pace of live streaming with goods will not change.
It's just that in the crowd of people standing on the cusp, who is the last person to laugh? The answer is yet to be revealed.