Produced by Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group
Author|Huang Qingchun
Visual China
When Douyin and Xiaohongshu gradually became the darlings of the times, the platform with 1 billion users began to be commercialized.
You must be counting with your fingers, and you can't figure out who else is so calm - because on the surface, the Internet industry is in the blue ocean, and once you enter the deep waters, you will understand that it has long been a red ocean; besides, in this era of god-making and disenchantment at the same time, Internet companies have been living on ice floes, and too many smash hit apps have been squeezed out of the public eye.
But it is so capricious, even if the vertical population precipitated by the service scenario is in units of 100 million (500 million traveling people, 600 million healthy people, and 700 million financial management people), but its commercialization is indeed belated, and it will only take more than half a year to complete it.
On April 11, Alipay released its first "Business Vitality Report": in the past six months, the active advertisers and active agents on the platform have achieved a 4-fold and 9-fold increase respectively, and in the past year, Alipay's traffic has increased by 100%, and the GMV of customer mini programs has increased by 200% year-on-year, including well-known brands such as Mercedes-Benz Smart and Coca-Cola.
In addition, the person in charge of the Beijing market of a fast-moving consumer goods brand told Tiger Sniff: "When the traffic price of each platform rises, where is the cheap traffic, business will naturally migrate to it, and Alipay is the new traffic pool." ”
On the whole, Alipay's commercialization is still in the stage of co-creating new marketing scenarios with the first batch of advertisers, but Zhu Xing (nickname Tao Zhai), general manager of Alipay's advertising division, believes that "Alipay's open commercialization is not based on advertising revenue in the short term, and the core is to improve the platform marketing system." Because a large number of services on the platform require rigor and seriousness, secondly, Alipay links more than 80 million merchants and more than 4 million small program merchants through payment, and the Alipay ecology is not characterized by e-commerce, but the Alipay industry is very wide and has many characteristic industries, and these merchants need to operate on Alipay. Since so many business partners are operating on it, there is definitely a need for commercial infrastructure, and starting commercialization in this context is to solve the core demands of merchants. ”
In view of this, Alipay is running in small steps to build the "infrastructure project" of advertising - "Lights" (the platform's own advertising system) at the beginning of the launch of the "global intelligent investment", "search treasure", "brand treasure" three public domain promotion products, advertisers and advertising agencies can be launched through these three basic products in search, traffic, payment pages, waist seals and other traffic positions.
Zhu Xing also revealed that in 2024, Alipay will continue to expand commercial traffic opening and scene coverage, and the traffic scale will increase by 150% year-on-year in 2023, and open up the ability of merchant mini programs and life account video streaming, and consolidate the platform infrastructure with "content + service".
From the perspective of the traffic business itself, Alipay is also undergoing some changes, from pure payment traffic to service-oriented traffic in the past. "Service is traffic, scene is growth", this is a new story for Alipay to break through the limitation of App time. In the advertising market, which pays more and more attention to refined delivery and effect, "high-quality service duration and conversion" is also attractive.
In fact, from upgrading the life account in 2022, launching the life channel, and adding a live broadcast entrance to the "10 billion subsidy" for merchants in 2023, and the launch of "take a look" (click to jump to short videos, live broadcasts) - Alipay's attempt to fight "pipeline" through content components is not only an extension of business boundaries, but also a reshaping of jumping out of its own limitations.
The deeper reason is also that the first half of the Internet, which is characterized by traffic dividends, is nearing the end, and the competition for users' attention in the second half has entered a white-hot - when the growth curve of Douyin and WeChat is getting steeper and steeper, the trend of all in one is becoming more and more obvious (Super App model).
As the "super platform" theory summarized by Xu Xin, the "queen of venture capital": "In the era of mobile Internet, there is no regional boss, all competition is a national battle, and all business is concentrated on the app.
In this regard, Chen Xianda (nickname Sun Wu), general manager of Alipay's digital product division, pointed out that the interactive form of the consumer track is undergoing drastic iteration, and the platform has reached a crossroads that must be digitally explored. "The first step is atomic reconstruction, that is, the formation of a business platform based on the payment scenario to polish the B2C atomization capabilities, the second step is that the platform is fully open, and merchants can acquire customers/promote activity based on the public domain of the platform more cheaply, and the third step is to accelerate the connection between the public and private domains, and integrate the scenario-based traffic of payment success pages, messages, coupons, and membership channels into an integrated tool. ”
Tiger Sniff understands that Alipay's partners with strong LBS attributes such as takeaway and group buying will promote the operation methodology, completely empower the tools and algorithms to each region, and precipitate the operation cases into a case library. Taking the service provider operation methodology as an example, it is mainly divided into three steps:
- Give service providers the ability to differentiate and reconstruct the industry concept;
- Enhance the monetization ability of service providers and increase profitability through industrial collaboration;
- Once the category "model" is run, it can be replicated and verified quickly.
If you only look at the technical capabilities and user base, Alipay has the confidence to drive the penetration of online to offline consumption scenarios with traffic, and finally sink to the community, merchants and users. According to a report released by Aladdin, a third-party data agency, in July 2023, nearly 9 percent of merchants in 12 major industries, including Ctrip, JD Daojia, and Didi, have settled in Alipay Mini Programs.
"Alipay is currently in the iterative process of 'combining decentralization and centralization', during which the platform will make a system centered on the merchant applet, even if the experience and effect are a little worse now, the platform is willing to pay for it, that is, to pave this road out - the platform should be a tool to empower merchants to operate, not a cost. Following Chen Xianda's logic, the Internet open platform is mainly composed of merchants, service providers, platforms, and users to form a closed loop, and presents a multi-directional cross-flow relationship, and each role repositions itself, which is a new ecology of win-win for all parties.
The following is a transcript of the communication between Tiger Sniff and Zhu Xing (nicknamed Tao Zhai), general manager of Alipay's advertising division, and Liu Zheng (nicknamed this mountain), marketing director of Alipay's advertising division (some expressions have been deleted due to reading needs):
Q: Why is Alipay now determined to commercialize?
Zhu Xing: I can do it before, but I always feel that the time is not so ripe, and commercialization depends on a premise, the base of the two ends of BC must be large enough, and after the volume of the B-end is large, he must have this demand. As other platforms gain momentum, see more opportunities and possibilities.
Of course, Alipay's open commercialization is not oriented to advertising revenue in the short term, and the core is to improve the platform marketing system. Because a large number of services on the platform require rigor and seriousness, secondly, Alipay links more than 80 million merchants and more than 4 million small program merchants through payment, and the Alipay ecology is not characterized by e-commerce, but the Alipay industry is very wide and has many characteristic industries, and these merchants need to operate on Alipay. Since so many business partners are operating on it, commercial infrastructure is definitely needed, and the first thing to solve is what other companies can keep the business, the infrastructure must be complete enough, and the link must be complete enough.
Q: What is the difference between the content ecology of the current shop and the products of Douyin and Xiaohongshu?
Zhu Xing: There are many similarities in the product forms of live broadcast and short video, and there will definitely be some pan-content in it, because the content has a basic richness, but making content suitable for Alipay users and platform features is the biggest choice consideration - because the App attributes are different, the demands and scenes of users entering Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat are completely different from the intentions of entering Alipay today.
First of all, not all platforms are time-only, our platform has room for growth, but making content is not just to lengthen the time, which is an underlying basic capability that Internet companies must have. In addition, it is necessary to find a reason why users are willing to come here, that is, something different from other platforms, other platforms are entertainment, social networking, and e-commerce, but Alipay's content is biased towards service and knowledge types, which is in line with the earliest scene of the product.
Secondly, it is necessary to understand the traffic characteristics of Alipay. Alipay's user disk did not grow overnight, but in the past ten years, it has been precipitated through business (payment and financial management, medical registration, travel booking, etc.), and Alipay's traffic attributes are richer from different incisions - the volume of China's medical insurance code is almost 1 billion, and the number of Alipay medical insurance code users is 500 million, and if it includes the use of health services (medical and health consultation, consultation, etc.), the number of users can reach 600 million, the total number of travel people is almost 500 million, and the number of financial management (including Yue Bao) is almost 700 million.
Tiger sniff note: QuestMobile data shows that during the Spring Festival in 2023, Alipay's average daily usage time is 7.8 minutes, less than 1/10 of Douyin's Express Edition, ranking last among apps with more than 50 million daily active users, while Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Toutiao, and Douyin have 48.8 minutes, 69.2 minutes, 77 minutes, and 102.7 minutes, respectively.
Liu Zheng: The platform is accelerating the construction of infrastructure, and live broadcasts and short videos are not yet fully open to advertisers.
For example, during the Spring Festival in 2024, I made a show for Xu Zhiyuan, and invited celebrities such as Yang Tianzhen to talk about the methodology of making money. Now advertisers will also emphasize better, faster, and more definite growth, and we see that the opportunity is to favor a light service approach, how to combine brand advertising with Alipay scenarios to quickly convert, and then provide more components, of course, the marketing level will also be faster this year.
Tiger Sniff Note: In April 2023, the person in charge of Alipay once told Tiger Sniff, "Many people are talking about who to target, Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat are all strong competitors, but last year I completely reversed the team's thinking - what matters is why Alipay should 'hit' content, not who Alipay should target with content." Alipay naturally has ToB genes, and the core of public-private domain linkage is service and improving operational efficiency. ”
Q: What are the characteristics of platform traffic? How to ensure that the advertising business rolls up if users do not have the habit of brushing?
Zhu Xing: Alipay is not a content-led long-term traffic, but a scenario-rich service-oriented traffic (500 million travelers, 600 million medical people, and 700 million financial management people). The Internet often says that service is traffic, and scenario-based traffic represents the user's mind and convertible traffic, because there are various scenarios behind the payment, which can know under what scenario the user completes the transaction and what traffic is suitable for commercial development;
Secondly, Alipay will not be an athlete, what the platform needs to do is to achieve demand matching more smoothly without disturbing users, and it is a commercialization system with openness as the biggest principle;
Liu Zheng: Now we see that Alipay advertising space is very small, only indented into an area and clicked according to demand, and the advertising display and interaction methods are not displayed on the full screen like other platforms, but combined with the characteristics of Alipay, and co-built with brand advertisers without harming the user experience;
Q: What are the main indicators to look for in the commercialization of service-oriented traffic, and how to build this traffic ecology?
Zhu Xing: Alipay's traffic heterogeneity is relatively high. For example, in the user's medical and health scenario, the user mainly enjoys the full-cycle medical and health services such as registration and consultation provided by Alipay, and the platform recommends the adapted products in a more primitive way to meet the needs of the user.
Q: As a technology background, how do you think AI will impact marketing?
Zhu Xing: AI technology will definitely be deeply applied and change many scenarios, especially in terms of improving business efficiency - advertising commercialization itself is the closest to money and is the most sensitive to efficiency, and AI must occur in advertising in many large manufacturers; secondly, according to my current judgment of AI, AI will change the form and efficiency of advertising in the next few years, and the interaction between users and advertising itself may change in the next 3-5 years.
Q: After so many years of Internet development, which fields and categories have not met the needs of the categories?
Zhu Xing: The marketing demands of some characteristic industries, especially service-oriented industries, have not been met in large quantities. The overall price of Internet marketing is getting more and more expensive, and the profit level and gross profit level of each industry are different, how can they all be satisfied? Many industries can be commercialized in combination with Alipay's characteristics, but the most important thing now is to improve the platform marketing capabilities, so that partners can do in-depth operations with more certainty.
Liu Zheng: The top 5 customers in the food and beverage, daily cosmetics and 3C consumer electronics industries have been looking for new traffic and new people, and Alipay has new traffic and high-net-worth people, which will naturally become a new position.
Q: Content products are naturally faster than tool products, how can the commercialization of Alipay ensure the healthy development of the content ecology?
Zhu Xing: From the perspective of business realization, the tool type is weaker than the content type, and the best model is the content type + transaction type. Users are using services in many scenarios when they enter Alipay, and the service itself is traffic, which is accurate and has a gold content far exceeding that of short videos, as long as business innovation is done well, the conversion efficiency will be very high.
Alipay is also doing content capabilities, but the proportion of advertising revenue of the entire content (including live broadcasts and short videos) is very low, because the content must be natively commercialized on the basis of better meeting the needs of users.
Q: Do you also have a bidding model when you are doing the bottom business, and do you pay more attention to the ROI efficiency or user experience of the merchant?
Of course, the mainstream business model of the Internet platform includes advertising, commissions, service fees, SaaS revenue, etc., Alipay is still in the early stage, and will explore a healthier, more sustainable and more efficient business monetization model, in this process, the user experience is the red line, and it must be adjusted if it crosses this value.
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