Taobao Live, after losing a super anchor

Wei Ya's suspension of broadcasting may not change Taobao live broadcasting.

Wen 丨 祝莹丽

Edited by 丨Guan Yiwen

On the evening of November 11, 2021, Double 11 is still a few hours away. At the media exchange meeting in Alibaba's (NYSE:BABA) Xixi Park, there were five questions thrown at Yang Guang (flower name: Blowing Snow), then vice president of Alibaba and vice president of Tmall Business Group, of which two were about super anchors.

Yang Guang neither affirmed the huge turnover brought by the super anchor, nor regarded it as a sticking point. He avoided positive answers, defining the phenomenon of Taobao live traffic gathering at the heads of two anchors as "an effort and full market behavior", which he believes is difficult for the platform to intervene.

This passivity and avoidance are still reflected when Via was sentenced to a huge tax fine a month later and had to stop broadcasting.

Taobao Live officially refused to answer the platform's attitude and emotions. A private comment by a Taobao live broadcast employee explained this dilemma, "You can neither say (we) are happy nor unhappy. ”

Some Ali employees told LatePost that Jiang Fan, who was the president of Taobao Tmall in 2019, repeatedly mentioned the problem of super anchors accounting for too much in the turnover in the middle-level meeting. Although the two super anchors have shaped the habit of users watching live shopping on Taobao, their right to speak has increased indefinitely, and the right to speak on the platform will inevitably decline.

According to the report of big data company Star Map Data, Wei Ya's sales during the double 11 period in 2021 were 19.987 billion yuan, and Li Jiaqi was 21.761 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 8% of Tmall's "Double Eleven" full-stage sales of 540.3 billion yuan. According to the data of the e-commerce big data brand Data Wei, in the 19 days before Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, she and Li Jiaqi brought a total of 390 million goods, accounting for 41% of the live broadcast sales of the Tmall platform.

After Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, how to fill this big gap and who can fill it is a matter of concern to the participants of this game, and it is also a turning point for Taobao Live to face the future.

Some Alibaba employees may not be able to complete the KPIs

When industry benchmarks are punished at sky-high prices, the emotion of shock is often the first to arrive.

The super anchor group trembles. The head of an agency with a Tao super anchor stressed to LatePost that they were "business as usual" and repeatedly told them not to disclose the name of the agency. The message of a sentence is first typed and conveyed, then withdrawn, and then personally instructed by WeChat telephone.

Smaller live broadcasting agencies also received signals, and they restrained the impulse to brush orders, post war reports and water injection data, "The Sydney thing tells everyone that it is time to rectify the industry; The matter of Via tells everyone, don't take chances." The idea of paying back taxes is circulating in the industry, and the people in the circle are talking about paying taxes quickly.

Shocking the past, filling the big hole of Wei Ya has become the common driving force of all characters in the live broadcast ecology.

Li Jiaqi is the first choice that everyone thinks of. On the night of Wei Ya's blocking on December 20, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room with an average of 25 million viewers per show ushered in 38.05 million views, and the number of people continued to rise the next day, reaching 49.28 million, and then fell slightly; other super anchors also increased in the next few days, and the regular traffic was visible to the naked eye, such as Lie'er Baby, which began to exceed 5 million viewers from December 20, and exceeded 10 million on Christmas night.

This is an opportunity for some mid-rise-up MCN (Multi - Channel Network) agencies that connect content and platforms. The head of investment promotion of an institution that mainly relies on the Taobao platform said, "There will be a period of prosperity for small and medium-sized anchors. The facts also confirmed this judgment, two weeks later, he saw that the overall traffic of his anchor background increased by 30-50%; the efficiency of delivery was also improving, and the same cost, the traffic was also doubled compared to before; the transaction increased by 50%.

For brands, the mixed feelings are mixed. Some of the brands that originally set the broadcast period in the viva live broadcast room to find new institutions and new channels, a merchant who made daily necessities said that he had prepared 100,000 orders in advance, originally wanted to sell out at once, and now had to pay extra energy, "Selling should be able to sell, but it is very uncomfortable." ”

There are also brands that passively unbind and feel re-seen. A merchant of a live broadcast agency on the Jitter fast platform chatted with these merchants, summarizing that they were "the world has been suffering for a long time".

He explained that the control of super anchors is very large, and some brands are in a dilemma. No, there is no amount in the live broadcast room; it does not make money, and it also restricts cooperation with other anchors, "it is very uncomfortable." Now [brands can] automatically jump out of this pit. ”

A variety of mixed brands, talent agencies of the investment group is more lively, the anchor selects the release of good goods, the unbound brand to find a new anchor, the choice is more, "after all, Wei Ya occupies too many resources."

Platforms are also trying to match. 10 days after Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, a conversation was underway in Starbucks next to Ali Xixi Park to find a new anchor for Wei Ya's hometown and Anhui specialties.

"The most influential is definitely the food category. A few died in a hurry, grabbing the offline market, doing group buying, doing vibrato, and only selling one or two hundred thousand. "You pull up the list of merchants, what goods are on the plate, and then we will help dock the institutions in Hangzhou."

This is Alibaba employees connecting merchants with new anchors and new institutions. There is more than one similar scene, and "Via" and "live broadcast" have become frequently mentioned keywords in this space in the last 10 days of 2021.

Because of KPI pressure, they had to do this. Some practitioners in the live broadcasting industry expect that this winter Taobao live broadcast and some categories of P6, P7 level employees are the most unhappy, "because Weiya could have allowed her categories to achieve a guaranteed turnover, but now they may not be able to complete their own KPIs." ”

An employee of Alibaba Word-of-Mouth confirmed this statement to LatePost, saying that among all the categories of Word-of-Mouth to the store, medical beauty is the most profitable, and the suspension of Sydney alone has caused them a great blow.

Taobao live's employees did not mention their current actual response, but responded that their healthiest mentality is to accept the reality and then solve the problem, "With Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi and them both, I will consider how to expand the increment; the two of them are not there, and the part of the people who come to them are not coming, so I will consider what kind of way to attract everyone." ”

Super anchors have made Taobao live broadcasts

It has also become a problem for Taobao live broadcasting

The platform needs to attract more people into this industry, and the head is a demonstration and a benchmark.

In 2016, Taobao internet celebrity Zhang Dayi sold 19 million goods in two hours of live broadcasting; in 2017, Wei Ya brought goods for a fur shop once, with a turnover of 70 million; in 2018, Li Jiaqi and Ma Yun sold 15,000 lipsticks in 5 minutes at the speed of lipstick on the double eleven day.

These are all the benefits of the head effect on the platform until one day the traffic is excessively concentrated in the hands of several people.

A person in charge of mcN institutions who grew up with Taobao Live told LatePost that in 2018, Wei Ya was already a sister of Taobao Live, and Li Jiaqi also had signs of a brother, but the traffic gap between the two live broadcasts and others continued to widen, "We also know that (the platform) has to support the benchmark, but the difference is too big." ”

With the departure of Gu Mo, then head of Taobao live broadcast operations, and joining the Weiya team, the speculation of the crowd has increased.

2019 is a dividing point: Li Jiaqi is on fire in Douyin. A former Ali employee recalled that "holding" Li Jiaqi was the biggest case before the departure of Zhao Yuanyuan, the former head of Taobao live broadcast operations, "He talked about it every time he met, saying that I communicated with Li Jiaqi's team, saying that you want to send your own live broadcast slices to vibrate, you see the last by vibrato, Li Jiaqi was on fire outside the station." ”

After Li Jiaqi, Ali employees who are familiar with Taobao live broadcast summarized several key methods that she is familiar with the public, one is to bind Li Jiaqi in all channels; the other is to carry out off-site delivery, especially Weibo hot search, "Wei Ya spent tens of millions of dollars a year to put on, 'Wei Ya' and other related keywords on more than 300 hot searches"; the third is to create personal IP, such as Doraevia - the image of a treasure chest.

From the perspective of Taobao live broadcasting, they need "Ali is doing live broadcast with goods" This matter is known to more people, Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi are not the only candidates who have been selected to support, and Wei Ya's similar Lie'er Baby, Li Jiaqi's other offline shopping guides in the same period have been officially supported.

But in the view of a former Taobao live broadcast operator, it is not that they are doing a good job, but that Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi's own ambitions, efforts, and talents have made them run out, "Ali has carved a piece of land and wants to cultivate this land, and as a result, two seedlings have grown barbarically in this field." ”

Another Ali employee also corroborated the passivity of Taobao Live broadcasting as "going with the flow", mentioning that at that time, there were less than 10 people in the team of Taobao live broadcasting to dock the masters, and there was not much that could be done in the incubation of anchors.

In the face of the epidemic, Taobao live broadcasting is growing at a faster rate, but the deeper the dependence on Weiya and Li Jiaqi, the head phenomenon has become a significant problem by 2020, according to the statistics of star map data, the double 11 of that year, Taobao live broadcast with goods is 72.9 billion yuan, of which Weiya and Li Jiaqi total 22.1 billion yuan, accounting for more than 30%.

More high-quality and low-cost goods are still sent to the ultra-head live broadcast room. According to a rough estimate of a former Tmall operator, more than 60% of the cooperation between brands and Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi is pushed by the platform Xiao Er to go to the merchants, "as long as you cooperate with Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, you need to sign the lowest price insurance agreement with them." ”

More fans and traffic are still flowing into the hyper-head live broadcast room through Alibaba's official channels. In 2020, Alipay opened wufu activities in the Spring Festival and Weiya linkage, as long as you pay attention to Weiya live broadcast room can receive Fuka, "Weiya spent tens of millions, less than 100 million, Alipay and Taobao sold more than 40 million fans to Weiya." ”

A Taobao live broadcast mid-level recalled that in 2019, when Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi were out of the circle, Ali thought about doing ecological balance in supply chain and traffic, "but it has not been able to do it." ”

Jiang Fan also saw the dividing point at the end of 2019, in various middle and high-level conference rooms, he proposed several times to incubate more anchors, "including setting a stable GMV and income as a standard, how many such anchors to do a year." ”

But it still can't be done. The above Taobao live broadcast middle-level summary, there are two reasons:

One is that large companies always want both and again. It is necessary to use the two major anchors to promote transactions, not to restrict them; but also to incubate small anchors, "it is difficult to have both in the case of limited traffic." ”

Some former Ali employees vividly compared the flow to water, believing that this means of incubating small and medium-sized anchors is like not scooping water from the two large water tanks of Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, but scooping it up and down in other small water basins.

This constitutes a delicate relationship between Taobao Live and Chaotou - daily support for small and medium-sized anchors, and great promotion and dependence on super anchors.

Another reason is the problem of organizational division of labor. As mentioned above, a typical example is the live broadcast and short video team. Ideally, short videos can help small anchors warm up in advance, and then achieve the final conversion through live broadcasting. However, within the department, there is no cooperation between the two.

For example, operations and products, both of which are facing KPIs of transaction scale and user scale, and finally the two roles that should cooperate upstream and downstream began to compete with each other, "Screw always wants to do the work of the nut." ”

The division of labor problem is also reflected in the unclear boundaries between the rights and responsibilities of new and old employees, especially after Taobao Live expanded the team, a new employee was transferred to the live broadcast team, and people from other teams should have looked for him to dock, but the result was cut off by the old employees in advance, telling other teams to find him. After the confrontation, the other party said that it could be done together.

There are middle-level estimates of leaving, starting in 2020, transfer to Taobao live P8, P9, P10, and finally often leave or transfer jobs after working in the department for no more than 1 year, "In Ali, after the transfer, everyone is still running to work for at least two years." ”

6 years online

The emphasis has changed three times

Taobao Live was launched in 2016 and was originally one of the attempts under Alibaba's community-based and content-based grand strategy.

But in the second year, in Taobao's ecological division, live broadcasting did not get more resources than graphics and short videos. Chen Lei (flower name: Wen Zhong), the general manager of the business unit at the time, positioned the Taobao live broadcast of selling goods as a "live broadcast of life consumption", and envisioned it as a "carrier of the community economy".

This idea directly determines that Taobao Live's initial business focus is on talents. This is related to Chen Lei's own experience, before the birth of Taobao live broadcasting business, he has been in charge of the social product line, but also the person in charge of Tao Girls and Taobao talents.

Chen Lei mentioned in an interview with the "Live Broadcast List" in 2018 that he is more willing to see users actively form demand and realize purchases in the interaction with the anchor, so he will avoid excessive sales behavior and avoid Taobao Live becoming an online hypermarket.

This can explain the starting point of Taobao's live broadcast head ecology, and an MCN agency leader believes that one of the characteristics of super anchors is the community atmosphere - those who rush to Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and even Simba are to some extent paying for trust.

In 2019, "Taobao live broadcast can bring goods" has become a consensus internally, and the live broadcast business has also become independent in this year, starting to get more resources from personnel and traffic.

In July of that year, Chen Lei, the former head of Taobao Live Broadcasting, was transferred to the Idle Fish Division, and he was replaced by Yu Feng (flower name: Xuan De), senior director of the former Alipay User and Platform Division.

After Yu Feng took office, the focus of Taobao live broadcasting was adjusted from "content" to "e-commerce" itself.

In October of that year, he mentioned in an interview with "Chuangyebang" that the platform will pay more attention to allowing more merchants to do business through live broadcasting and content ecology, and another major change is to adjust, optimize and grow the structure of ecological roles.

This corresponds to Taobao Live's action of vigorously developing store self-broadcasting in 2020. In addition, the idea of "e-commerce" preceding "content" is also reflected in the anchor of the middle waist. In an interview with Sina Technology, Yu Feng said, "The outside world thinks that the biggest problem of mid-waist anchors is that there is no traffic, but in fact it is not. The biggest problem encountered by this part of the anchor is the problem of commodity investment, and Taobao Live is using the ability of the entire Ali to give them more goods. ”

The idea itself may not be a problem, until now, Taobao Live is still repeating these strategies: traffic tilt on the product, goods support on the supply chain, support for store broadcasts and mid-waist anchors on the object.

But strategies and ideas only determine the direction, and effective implementation is needed to achieve the goal.

By the second half of 2021, the problem has undergone qualitative changes because of external competitors such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and traffic that was not originally a problem has become the biggest problem at this moment.

"Taobao Live is essentially e-commerce, it is consumption in itself. When consumed, there must be a source of traffic. Tang Xing, then head of Amoy's product and platform ecology, said in an interview with China Entrepreneur last July.

In the same period, Cheng Daofang, the person in charge of the original short video product Vmate, was promoted to the person in charge of the entire Taobao live broadcast after taking over the Diantao APP, and the independent Diantao App became the next focus of Taobao Live, and received more support from human, financial and other resources. The business focus is again on "traffic".

By September last year, Diantao announced that the proportion of traffic reached half of Taobao's live broadcast as a whole, which is equivalent to the number of people who opened the Diantao App to watch the live broadcast and the number of people who clicked from the Taobao App to watch the live broadcast. According to the statistics of Aurora Big Data, the daily active users (DAUs) of Diantao in September were 11.23 million.

Taobao Live is difficult to have the next Weiya

After Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, the industry has a type of view that the suspension of broadcasting is only a short-term pain for Ali, and it is good for the long term. But Taobao Live is facing more than just head problems.

Solving the problem of super head is very simple, shut down the live broadcast room. But for Ali, this will lose the fairness of the platform, and at the same time, it will not be able to fundamentally solve the problem.

In the earnings call for the third natural quarter of 2021, Daniel Zhang, chairman of the board and CEO, said that Taobao Live is a new type of sales method, believing that it is only an integral part of the overall digital operation of merchants, "Live broadcasting is an important way, but not all." ”

A middle-level Taobao live broadcast told LatePost that the CEO conveyed to them that the live broadcast is more responsible for marketing attributes, "a bit of a sense of taking over the baton and getting a good deal." ”

This explains the relationship between Chaotou, Taobao Live and Taobao e-commerce, that is, although Chaotou siphoned the traffic of other anchors to a certain extent and kidnapped Taobao Live, from the perspective of transaction scale and efficiency, it still contributes more to Ali e-commerce than harm, and is a "marketing role" that promotes transactions.

Vertical comparison, when Ali Quick Knife cut off the external traffic of Mushroom Street and Rebate Network, it was because they affected the traffic source of the entire Tao e-commerce, and now, the GMV traded through live broadcast is only part of Ali E-commerce, not all.

In horizontal comparison, Kuaishou clearly restricts the traffic of tens of millions of fan anchors, and has also repeatedly "cut the domain" on Simba, one because of Simba's risk operation of wiping the edge ball, and because in Kuaishou e-commerce, almost all the transactions from live broadcasting are complete.

Some Ali employees believe that the head problem encountered by Taobao Live is essentially a problem of fairness and efficiency.

Taobao Live has put more chips on efficiency and not taken into account fairness issues, which has also led to many talented people fleeing a few months ago, especially when there are more opportunity platforms outside.

A person in charge of an agency that does live clothing on Douyin believes that in her impression, Taobao Live has no talents, only Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, two super anchors. Because Douyin relies more on the distribution of algorithms, the anchor has a more even traffic distribution.

At present, among the top ten beauty anchors on Douyin, Zhang Kaiyi and Zhang Mofan are all from Taobao Live. Beauty guru Beibei Rabbit signed a contract with the head MCN agency Qianxun last year, and the original plan was to bring goods on the Taobao live broadcast platform, and the latter would do supply chain support. Nowadays, the cooperation method has not changed, but the live broadcast platform has been replaced by Douyin.

A Diantao employee said that they had realized the problem of the loss of small and medium-sized anchors in the survey two months ago, "The boss went to the big institutions in the industry and walked around, asking the institutions if they were interested in coming to Taobao Live as a newcomer?" Ten of the ten agencies did not want to come. ”

In August 2021, the platform launched a traffic incentive plan to support small and medium-sized anchors, and it is said that each account has millions of traffic rewards per day, and some Taobao live broadcast employees said, "It may be the biggest one I have seen." But in the anchor consultation group known as the "Pilot Program" established under the plan, there are only more than 200 people. After the only live online communication meeting, the group was quiet and few people inquired.

Taobao live broadcast employees feel that the root cause of the problem of attracting small and medium-sized anchors is the lack of traffic on the platform.

Douyin's daily active life exceeds 600 million, according to the proportion of traffic allocated to the live broadcast room, some industry insiders said that the daily life of the douyin live broadcast room will exceed 100 million at the end of 2020. A Taobao live broadcast employee expects that after the current weight of Diantao and Taobao live broadcast, the daily active life is about 30 million, which is slightly lower than before.

For Taobao Live's employees, attracting more traffic becomes a more important task.

"Store self-broadcast", this official form of live broadcasting that has been repeatedly exported to the outside world, even after the growth driven by the epidemic in 2020, the current growth is not obvious. A former Taobao live broadcast employee revealed that the store team did not complete the KPI in several big promotions.

After Wei Ya stopped broadcasting, Taobao Live did not need a mature mid-waist anchor to undertake orders and attract traffic more than now. A Taobao live broadcaster told "LatePost" that after 618 in 2021, the overall broadcast volume of Taobao live broadcasting has almost zero growth, traffic and marketing have all gone downhill, and the GMV growth rate of Taobao live broadcasting has been lower than that of Douyin and Kuaishou.

There are also Ali employees who express optimism, some say that the platform is like the sea, what wind and waves will soon be absorbed, some say that Taobao live broadcast has done a good job, continue to obtain good resources, this time Weiya stop broadcast is "dangerous" is also "opportunity".

On January 6, Alibaba integrated Taobao Tmall into three centers, and the two business status of Taobao Live broadcasting and shopping were upgraded, and the person in charge reported directly to Dai Shan. The higher status of the organization may not be because of how well Taobao Live has done, but more like a way for Ali to deal with challenges.

No matter how big the giants, there are many local defensive failures, and if the situation cannot be reversed, the variables may occur in a shorter period of time.