Left-handed tipping, right-hand e-commerce, YY live broadcast should make a trade-off

Edit | Yu Bin

Produced by | Chaoqi Network "Yu see column"

On March 20, YY Live ushered in the 2021 annual peak ceremony, and the popularity value of the live broadcast room that night reached 8.52 million. According to the data, YY live mobile terminal monthly active users more than 40 million, the cumulative number of signed star anchors more than 1.5 million, more than 15,000 cooperative guilds, relying on the huge number of YY live fans and "tipping" mode, in the eyes of the head anchor and guild, YY live broadcast is still a big "money" way.

As a live broadcast platform with more than 150 million fans on the whole network, whether YY live broadcasting should deeply cultivate the main track of entertainment, or turn to live broadcasting all categories of e-commerce, from the current strategic planning of YY live broadcasting, it seems that there is no clear answer.

Can the "grassroots debut" YY play the "culture card"?

Recently, YY Live was successfully selected into the list of the first batch of "T50 My Favorite Guangdong Trademark Brand" in the 2022 "Guangdong 315 Evening", and has formed the "Torch Light Alliance", announcing that it will invest tens of millions of resources in cultural inheritance, rural revitalization, knowledge science, youth protection and green sustainable development.

Image source: YY Live Guild Ecological Conference poster

In 2021, YY Live co-hosted the "Academician Experts Accompany You to Fight the Epidemic" live broadcast activity, with a total of 2 million viewers. In 2021, a total of 4,481 positive energy columns were set up, with more than 630 million viewers watching live broadcasts, and more than 52,000 anchors participating in positive energy live broadcasts, covering anti-epidemic assistance, education assistance, psychological assistance and so on.

YY live broadcast in the promotion of their own public welfare impression of frequent efforts, but the anchor in order to traffic, in the live broadcast room words and deeds frequently fell below the lower limit, pornography, violence and other vulgar phenomena are still repeatedly prohibited, no bottom line of the fierce culture, vicious PK trend, tricking to brush gifts and other phenomena are still pervasive in the YY live broadcast room.

After the live broadcasting industry ushered in the era of the strongest supervision, YY Live had to wear a "public welfare" hat to reduce its own entertainment attributes. Rather than saying that YY Live wants to play its own cultural card, it is better to say that this is an extreme self-help for YY Live, but this is not an overnight achievement.

Strengthening the attributes of social welfare is indeed a trendy move, but it is really necessary to promote the deep integration of Internet platforms and public welfare charity, and the business model of YY live broadcasting is "innately untroubled". As long as there is a show gene, then YY live broadcast may not stop the noise.

In essence, it is the guild cooperation model of YY live broadcasting, the business model of virtual gift reward sharing, and live broadcast gameplay such as lianmai, gift PK, and multi-person team battles, which doom YY live broadcasting is not suitable for playing the "culture card".

In addition, the current YY live broadcast guild operation model also has many drawbacks, guild tasks cover the live stream, the start rate, which is an invisible shackle for the anchor, compared to the business model of other platforms, the guild model on the one hand can indeed help high-quality anchors to go to the bottom, but on the other hand, it also limits the growth ceiling of the strength of live broadcasting.

In order to strengthen its own multi-functional IP, in addition to increasing the public welfare attributes, YY Live has also added different functional modules such as PK, technology, entertainment, and social networking, but too many redundant functions are not only not conducive to creating content labels with independent IP value, but also easily lead to bloated platform functions and out-of-focus user interest points.

On the one hand, the "survival desire" full of YY live broadcast in the live broadcast content has been corrected, on the other hand, the platform's profit model is difficult to change in a short period of time, as long as the "tip" model is still the anchor's most effective live broadcast business model, then the cultural card of YY live may just be a flower shelf.

"Meta-gathering symbiosis" is difficult to become a new engine for YY live broadcasting

YY Live launched the "Yuanju Symbiosis" plan at the 2022 Guild Ecological Conference, the core of which is: refined operation, regional management, service upgrades, cash concessions, which is actually an upgraded version of the "billion subsidies + 100 billion traffic" plan in 2021, and it may be difficult to renew the new taste of old wine in new bottles.

Image source: Screenshot of the homepage of YY Live

First, refined operation is difficult to break the shackles of "aggregation effect". At present, YY live broadcast public will produce serious polarization, and the traffic agglomeration effect is obvious. This is directly related to the single monetization channel of YY Live.

It is precisely because of the lack of diversity of YY live broadcast platform monetization channels, the single profit model leads to the difficulty of monetization of the guild continues to rise, and the living space of the waist guild and the new guild is constantly squeezed by the head guild, which in the long run may lead to the loss of new vitality of the entire YY live broadcast ecology.

The main purpose of the "refined operation" in the "meta-gathering symbiosis" plan of the YY live broadcast is presumably to reduce the harm of the "aggregation effect" to the platform, increase the intensity of track segmentation for different types of guilds, and make the public generate new development centripetal force through traffic subsidies. However, if YY Live cannot optimize the platform's profit monetization mechanism, relying on traffic subsidies alone seems to be more like scratching the itch of a shoe.

Second, regional operation is difficult to become a breakthrough point in business. YY Live said at the 2022 Ecological Conference that it will link up local producers and open up all channels of local resources. Combining the guild advantages of the platform to take the regional operation route, this direction is correct and promising, but the implementation is equally difficult.

In terms of the sinking of live channels and the matching of services, the Douyin live broadcast endorsed by ByteDance as the strength is currently more channel and technical advantages than the YY live broadcast, which started with game voice interaction.

In 2021, the number of live broadcasts with goods on Douyin exceeded 75 million, an increase of 100% year-on-year, and the number of live streaming product links exceeded 390 million, an increase of 308% year-on-year. Kuaishou's live broadcast revenue in 2021 was 8.8 billion yuan, an increase of 11.7% year-on-year, while Alibaba, as the leading boss, had a Taobao live broadcast transaction scale (GMV) of more than 500 billion yuan, an increase of more than 90% year-on-year.

It can be seen that the Ali regional preferential series platform and the ByteDance system douyin with goods platform that have long begun to lay out live broadcasts have achieved obvious results and formed a complete commercial closed loop. However, the sales of YY Live's live streaming with goods are "not found in Baidu's financial report", and it is difficult to predict whether the e-commerce road of YY Live will succeed for the time being.

It is thought-provoking that Huanju Group released its 2021 financial report showing that after the divestiture of YY Live, the company achieved an adjusted annual net profit of $109 million and a net profit margin of 4.2% for the first time, compared with a net loss of $164 million in the same period last year, which can't help but be reminiscent of whether YY Live is currently spending money to make money.

Public information shows that the proportion of live broadcast revenue of YY live broadcasting has reached more than 92% for 11 consecutive quarters, and at this time, it may have been a little late to integrate the resources of the whole industry chain of urban live broadcasting. If you can't make your own distinctive characteristics in the subdivision track of regional operation, and can't stand the foothold of the sinking market, YY Live will be difficult to achieve the ideal revenue in front of major competitors.

"Content upgrade" is difficult to help YY live e-commerce transformation

YY Live, which has stood firm in the market against the game voice IP, has spared no effort in content upgrades, but years of hard work do not seem to have achieved a stable increase in the whole ecological field.

Image source: Screenshot of the promotion of the official website of YY Live

In 2021, YY Live's Internet celebrities achieved a 71 million increase in fans on the whole network, and in 2021, Douyin daily active users exceeded 600 million, and the daily search volume of videos exceeded 400 million, compared with other e-commerce live broadcasting platforms, YY Live's data is a bit chilly.

In addition, in 2021, the total number of guilds cooperated by YY live broadcasting increased by 24%, and the total number of star and gold medal artists increased by 18%, but according to media disclosures, most of the new head anchors in 2021 are pan-entertainment anchors. This may not be good news for YY Live, which has always wanted to enrich the platform content matrix and accelerate the realization of content upgrades.

In 2022, YY Live put forward three major upgrade plans in terms of content optimization: "Yan Xuan Plan", "Internet Celebrity Plan" and "Vientiane Plan", and once the news was sent, it did earn enough eyeballs, but after careful analysis, these three plans may not become the new profit engine of YY Live.

First, the "Yanxuan Plan" is contrary to the original intention of IP upgrading. In 2022, YY Live will create 500 high-value benchmark anchors in various categories. "Ensuring the supply of traffic, labeling the live broadcast rooms of various categories, and upgrading the high-definition live broadcast rooms" is just a vain appearance, and enhancing creativity and attractiveness is the cure.

Second, the "Internet celebrity plan" lacks development stamina. YY Live wants to explore the tracks of planting grass, exploring stores, wearing, short dramas and other tracks through the "Net Red Plan", and launch the "Vientiane Plan" to focus on pan-life content, involving new categories such as finance, real estate, food, board games, etc., and try pan-life live broadcast content.

However, with the same industry live broadcast giants have occupied the vast majority of traffic, YY live broadcasting at this moment to enter the full category may be too late.

In addition, YY Live said at the 2022 Ecological Conference that it will continue to increase investment in the recruitment of new anchors to improve the category coverage of live broadcasting and carry out guarantee coverage of all categories of anchors. This trick of "burning money" can indeed attract new anchors to join, but the long-term operation support and "cash concession" model will further compress the profit space of YY live broadcasting.

On the one hand, if you want to upgrade your IP with "gorgeous transformation", on the other hand, you want to upgrade the "fast food dividend" of the Internet, YY Live is now in a dilemma. In addition, the content homogenization between YY live broadcasts is serious, and the layout of the track is too broad, and in the long run, it is difficult for YY live broadcasts to form a platform synergy.

More importantly, YY Live currently has no complete e-commerce ecology, followed by whether the pan-entertainment anchors based on shows and games can match the relevant business requirements in multiple links such as product selection, sales, logistics, and after-sales.

epilogue

There are many entrants in the live broadcasting industry, such as a big wave of sand, under the rapid development of the live broadcast economy, the regulatory authorities continue to strengthen the supervision of the industry, and have put forward more stringent requirements and norms for anchors.

Now backed by Baidu's YY live broadcast, it may be necessary to plan your own strategic layout well, just put on a layer of "culture" and "e-commerce" cloak, the probability is useless.

On the one hand, if you want to deeply cultivate your own entertainment IP to earn tips, on the other hand, you want to quickly complete the transformation of all categories of e-commerce. The world knows that a bite is difficult to eat into a big fat man, standing in front of the YY live broadcast in front of many levels, it is time to make a reasonable choice.