Per reporter: Li Zhuo Per intern reporter: Yang Xinyi Per editor: Liu Xuemei
On the evening of March 21, Pinduoduo released its fourth quarter and full annual financial report for 2021 before the US stock market, which is also the first financial report since the company's CEO Chen Lei took office for a year.
According to the financial report, by the end of 2021, the number of active buyers in Pinduo for many years reached 869 million, an increase of 10% year-on-year, and about 1.4 million new in a single quarter. Looking back at Q1 to Q3 of 2021, the number of new users in a single quarter was 35 million, 26.1 million and 17 million, respectively.
On the earnings call, Chen Lei said that with the current user scale, it is unlikely to continue high growth. How to continue to serve existing users and meet their changing needs is a long-term concern of Pinduoduo, "In the past year, different platforms and e-commerce models have emerged in the market, which is what we need to learn more and learn more." ”
In the process of "learning from", Pinduoduo seems to choose to target the short video as a way out.
At the beginning of this year, some users found that the Pinduoduo client was upgraded again, and the "Duoduo Video" was launched to the first-level entrance at the bottom of the APP homepage, replacing the original live broadcast entrance. It is reported that the business is currently testing in grayscale.
Pinduoduo may be injecting entertainment content to get a piece of the "cake" of short videos and recreate new traffic entrances.
So, for Pinduoduo, is "Duoduo Video" really a good choice to develop new business? Can it help Pinduoduo recreate new traffic entrances? And, in the industry trend of e-commerce holding hands with short video, what kind of constraints will e-commerce platforms and short video platforms encounter, and how will they develop in the future?
New business: Can you eat all over the sky with a fresh move?
As early as the Spring Festival in 2020, the Pinduoduo APP launched the "Duoduo Video" function, which was only embedded in the "Personal Center" page, parallel to the pan-content functions such as "Duoduo Ranch" and "Duoduo Love Elimination". At the beginning of 2021, Pinduoduo moved the internal test function named "Big Video" to the first-level entrance of the home page of some users, which is where "Duoduo Video" is now located.
The "Daily Economic News" reporter learned that at present, "Duoduo Video" is still in the grayscale test stage, the current entrance is randomly open to some users, and the team research and development personnel are upgrading the product functions.
At present, the page of "Duoduo Video" displays two columns of "Attention" and "Recommendation", which is similar to the page settings of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. In terms of content, the video is divided into pure content to video and video with goods, the former's video content covers daily life, entertainment funny, film and television variety shows, etc.; the latter is directly to the merchant live broadcast room and related commodity links to drain traffic.
"I feel that the video style is between Douyin and Kuaishou, not so tall, and not very earthy", Xiao Yao (pseudonym), who has used Pinduoduo for 4 years, expressed his feelings about "Duoduo Video" to reporters.
However, Xiao Yao was more interested in the cash rewards than the video content. According to "Duoduo Video", users can get cash red envelopes or gold coin rewards by watching short videos, and gold coins can be exchanged for cash according to the exchange rate in the APP, and the single withdrawal threshold is 20 yuan.
The reporter browsed the "Duoduo Video" and found that when the cash accumulated to about 17 yuan, the reward for watching a video changed from 0.15 yuan cash to 150 gold coin rewards, and when the gold coins accumulated to 5600, the system prompted "Look at 14400 gold coins to exchange for cash".
After watching a few videos, it has been prompted "My cash is 9.30 yuan" Image source: Duoduo video screenshot
On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, there is no shortage of users sharing the successful withdrawal experience of "Duoduo Video", and some of them will spend 1 month saving gold coins to make up the amount of cash.
In addition to the cash incentives for users, Pinduoduo is even more generous in the recruitment of video creators. At the end of 2021, Pinduoduo launched the "Million Commission Assistance Plan" and the "Bole Plan" to attract video creators with dual rewards of cash and traffic, and the highest revenue showed "no cap".
Taking the "Bó Lè Plan" as an example, every time an inviter invites a new author to settle in and complete the level certification, he can get 300 yuan in cash, the bonus accumulation is unlimited, and the invitee can also get cash support ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 per month and up to 600,000 per day flow support.
It is precisely because of the existence of these users and video creators that "Duoduo Video" has now received considerable traffic. The "Daily Economic News" reporter found that most of the short videos in "Duoduo Video" have exceeded 1,000 likes, and the number of fans has reached 200,000, and the number of single videos released by big V has reached 500,000.
Relying on the tried-and-true routine of cash incentives, "Duoduo Video" is a low-key debut, but it has also achieved good results.
However, one trick, can you really eat all over the sky? Can "Duoduo Video" always rely on the subsidy model to make blood for it?
In the face of this problem, Li Chengdong, an e-commerce strategic analyst, said in an interview with the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the subsidy model is not a core strategy, and it is difficult to do a big business simply by relying on the subsidy model, "because the users attracted by subsidies are themselves sensitive to price." ”
Internet analyst Zhang Shule also believes that the subsidy model is effective in the content field, but in the long run, the model does remain to be seen, "cash subsidies are useful in the original accumulation of the early stage of the business, especially for Pinduoduo users." But in the later stage, you can't just rely on subsidies, this model is easy to imitate, such as Taobao's attempts on Taote. ”
Short video: A must-have option for Pinduoduo?
Why is Pinduoduo keen to try this unfamiliar new business?
In this regard, Zhang Shule analyzed, first of all, because of the current general traffic anxiety of the Internet platform.
According to the "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network" released by the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2021, the number of Internet users in China reached 1.011 billion. According to the financial report of Pinduoduo, as of the end of September 2021, the number of active buyers on the Pinduoduo platform has reached 870 million, an increase of 19% over the same period last year.
Limited room for growth will inevitably lead to a slowdown in the growth rate of users. According to the financial report, in 2021, the number of new annual active buyers in Pinduoduo in a single quarter was 0.35 billion, 0.26 billion, 0.17 billion and 0.014 billion, respectively, which has decreased quarter by quarter for five consecutive quarters, of which the growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2021 was the lowest growth point since 2019.
On the one hand, Pinduoduo has encountered a lot of resistance in customer acquisition growth, on the other hand, other e-commerce giants are also hunting pinduoduo's existing user groups.
In recent years, the sinking market has become another game field for e-commerce giants, and Alibaba and JD.com have successively launched the "Taote", "1688" and "Jingxi" APP, focusing on the traffic in the hands of Pinduoduo and accelerating the layout of the sinking market. According to Alibaba's financial report, as of the second quarter of fiscal 2022, Taote's annual active consumers have exceeded 240 million; according to JD.com's financial report, more than 80% of the 110 million new active users in 2020 came from the sinking market.
According to the financial report, Taobao live broadcast GMV exceeded 500 billion yuan in fiscal 2021; from January to September 2021, Douyin e-commerce GMV increased by 7.9 times year-on-year.
It is obvious that at this time, Pinduoduo urgently needs a higher moat to retain and meet the needs of new users.
As for why Pinduoduo chose short video as the traffic entrance, Li Chengdong analyzed to the "Daily Economic News" reporter that with the rapid growth of short video, the new model of "e-commerce + short video" has become an industry trend in recent years.
According to the "2021 Q4 Mobile Internet - Industry Data Research Report" previously released by Aurora, in 2021, mobile phone users will increase their time to watch short videos every day by 5%, and in the fourth quarter of 2021, the proportion of mobile netizens watching short videos every day continues to expand, reaching 32.3%, up 0.7 percentage points from the third quarter and 5 percentage points from 2020, and the proportion of other types of apps continues to be eroded.
Chart source: Aurora APP
Therefore, it is not surprising that major e-commerce platforms attach importance to short videos. Li Chengdong added that for e-commerce platforms, the proportion of live e-commerce is now increasing, and live e-commerce is also based on the development of short videos, and doing a good job of short videos is "killing two birds with one stone".
Looking back at the history of Pinduoduo's content ecology construction, it is not difficult to see that Pinduoduo did not prefer to vigorously develop content business, but relied more on external content platforms - advertising on traffic platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and reaching cooperation with Kuaishou in live e-commerce.
Chen Tao, senior analyst of the brand retail industry at Analysys, pointed out that Pinduoduo is not developing short videos for the sake of developing short videos, and the ultimate purpose of "Duoduo Video" is to strengthen user stickiness, enhance user activity, and promote users to trade on the platform.
"Super Huang", a well-known Internet researcher with ten years of product experience, also pointed out to the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the specific conversion path of "Duoduo Video" is still converted to commodity sales through the gold coin task and the means of inserting live broadcast rooms in the video stream, and its essence is to achieve user retention and conversion under the shell of entertainment.
Obviously, under the industry trend of "e-commerce + short video", due to the slowdown in the growth rate of internal users and the surge in external competitive pressure, adding "duoduo video" has become a move that Pinduoduo is eager to try.
What is the future development of "e-commerce + short video"?
In the story of "e-commerce + short video", there have been many e-commerce platforms that have entered the short video position to explore.
For example, in 2018, the Jingdong WeChat shopping circle launched a short video column of "Planting Grass TV". During the "Double Eleven" period in 2021, the "Discover" channel on Jingdong's homepage was upgraded to "Shopping", encouraging users to share their purchases in the form of short videos.
In addition, in September 2018, Alibaba launched a short video community app called "Deer Carving" for life consumption, on which users can share and exchange shopping experiences. At the beginning of 2021, Taobao once again announced the content APP of "Diantao" in order to complete the closed loop from planting grass to sales on the platform.
At the same time, short video platforms are also scrambling to start e-commerce business.
Since 2018, Kuaishou has reached strategic cooperation with platforms such as Youzan, JD.com, Taobao, and Magic Chopsticks to lay out e-commerce business. In March this year, Kuaishou officially cut off some e-commerce cooperation with Taobao and JD.com in order to become a self-reliant portal. Another short video giant, Douyin, also decided in October 2020 to prohibit third-party platform links from entering the live broadcast room, officially realizing the closed loop of the e-commerce ecosystem.
However, drawing scoops according to gourds is not an easy task. On the one hand, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Jingdong are still difficult to transfer users of Douyin and Kuaishou to their own short video channels; on the other hand, short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have also encountered related problems such as the return of some merchants to Taobao, supply chain, logistics and other related problems after cutting off external links.
In this regard, Chen Tao said that because the content platform has more advantages in traffic and user activity, while the e-commerce platform has advantages in the supply chain and operation, the two have their own strengths, and it is difficult to obtain each other's advantages in a short period of time.
Zhang Shule pointed out that although they are all in a seemingly similar "e-commerce + short video" model, e-commerce platforms and short video platforms are unlikely to evolve into the same economic form.
"Because the purpose of users entering these two types of platforms is different. When users click on Taobao, whether it is watching live broadcasts or short videos, their primary need is shopping. When choosing Douyin and Kuaishou, the user's purpose is to entertain and relax, so the conversion rate of goods will definitely be lower. Depending on their nature, the balance between commercial and entertaining content between the two types of platforms will also be different. Zhang Shule said.
At this point, Super Yellow added that e-commerce platforms are short videos introduced from defensive strategies – to avoid losing traffic themselves. And Douyin, Kuaishou and other content platforms for traffic monetization there are many ways, such as knowledge payment, live broadcast tips, brand advertising, etc., and are not limited to e-commerce business, "Douyin, Kuaishou can not have control over the supply chain, collect GMV commissions, will be relatively free, but e-commerce naturally need to use GMV to do conversion." ”
This also shows that compared with short video platforms, e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo have a more urgent demand for the "e-commerce + short video" model.
Talking about the future of "Duoduo Video", "Super Huang" said that to predict the prospects of "Duoduo Video", it is also necessary to observe how efficient the business is for traffic monetization through a certain period of observation, "because Pinduoduo itself is already excellent enough at the level of product cost performance, and then use short video logic to improve the monetization efficiency, I don't know if it is feasible." ”
Chen Tao also said that if the conversion rate performs well, "Duoduo Video" should be vigorously developed, but if the results are small, Pinduoduo may find other ways to promote the development of the platform.
All in all, Pinduoduo chose to find traffic and user solutions in the short video business this time, and the development of the story and the new changes in the future industry traffic battlefield are worth further observation.
Daily economic news