The online live broadcasting industry, represented by e-commerce live broadcasting, will once again stand on the cusp in 2020. Live e-commerce GMV also ushered in a triple-digit growth rate again in 2020, entering a real trillion era. At the same time, various bubbles and problems have emerged in the live broadcasting industry. What kind of anchor can continue to bring increments? How can the platform get more value? How can practitioners get transparent and fair development opportunities?
On February 3, at the 2021 think tank release week of China Southern Finance and Economics All Media Group, the "2020 Live Streaming Trend Report - Top 100 Anchor Influence Ranking" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") was officially released. The report, together with Xiaohulu Big Data, conducts a multi-dimensional analysis of live broadcast data on the three major platforms of Taobao, Kuaishou and Douyin from June to December 2020, and sorts out the trends and difficulties of the live broadcasting industry with in-depth case analysis.
On the whole, live e-commerce will also usher in multiple growth in 2021, the advantages of head anchors will be further highlighted, and industry competition will be more rational.
<h4>First, the sales of Top10 anchors accounted for more than 50%.</h4>
The report shows that from June to December 2020, among the top ten anchors in terms of total sales amount, 45 Taobao anchors ranked on the list, 41 on the Kuaishou platform, and only 14 in the third place on Douyin. In the list of the top 10 sales, there are 5 from the Taobao platform, 4 from the Kuaishou platform, and only Luo Yonghao is among the top ten in Douyin. This distribution is also basically consistent with the current market share performance of live streaming platforms with goods: Taobao and Kuaishou are two major platforms that compete with each other, and Douyin is slightly inferior.
In terms of sales, the total sales of the top 100 anchors in the second half of last year was close to 113 billion yuan, and the total sales volume reached 936 million. Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and Simba topped the top three in terms of sales amount, reaching 22.539 billion yuan, 13.931 billion yuan and 7.613 billion yuan respectively.
It can also be clearly seen from the distribution of sales results that the head concentration effect is very obvious. The total sales amount of the top 10 anchors was 63 billion yuan, accounting for 55.75% of the total number of top 100 anchors.
<h4>Second, low-priced goods are more popular</h4>
Statistics show that the hot sales in the head net red live broadcast room are still low customer unit price (less than 300 yuan) products. The average unit price of live broadcast sales of the top 100 anchors between June and December 2020 was 233 yuan, with the highest anchor reaching 2447 yuan and the lowest 26.5 yuan.
There is also a significant difference in the average unit price of the head anchors of the three major platforms, the average unit price of the 14 anchors who entered the top 100 of Douyin is about 385 yuan, the average unit price of the anchors who are shortlisted for Taobao is 249 yuan, and the average unit price of Kuaishou is 162 yuan.
The anchor with the highest unit price is Liu Xuanhao from Douyin, whose unit price in the live broadcast room has reached a considerable 2447 yuan, and the most sold category is wine. Kuaishou anchor donkey family class small fat, the best selling commodity category is men's clothing, its customer unit price is also as high as 1728 yuan.
Overall, low-cost products such as beauty, skin care, daily life, clothing, shoes, and snacks are more likely to create high performance in live streaming. Previously, China Merchants Securities' live report showed that of the total turnover of 40-50 billion yuan of Kuaishou's goods in the whole year, food accounted for more than 40%, daily necessities accounted for about 30%, and cosmetics accounted for about 30%.
<h4>Third, the number of fans is not proportional to sales</h4>
Internet celebrities engaged in live streaming with goods often have fan economic attributes and can stimulate users to make unplanned purchases. Therefore, private domain traffic and fan monetization ability are also a major indicator of the competitiveness of Internet celebrity anchors. From the perspective of the number of fans, among the top stream anchors, Kuaishou's ability to absorb fans is stronger, and among the top 5 anchors in the number of fans, Kuaishou occupies three seats, and Douyin and Taobao have one seat each. Among them, Simba's fan base is the largest, exceeding 70.87 million, and he is a veritable fast hand with a brother.
However, from the perspective of fan increment, Taobao has obvious strength, in the second half of last year, the top 10 anchors with the fastest fan growth have 9 from the Taobao platform, of which Li Jiaqi has the most fans, and 37.57 million new fans have been added to the whole network in 6 months, an increase of nearly 78 times.
However, the ratio of the number of fans to the ability to carry goods is not directly positively correlated, and it can be seen that among the top 10 anchors in the number of fans, only the three giants of Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and Simba are in the top 10 of the sales amount.
<h4>Fourth, women's money is best earned</h4>
From the perspective of categories, the current hot categories of live streaming are concentrated in beauty, clothing, food and so on. The top five categories of sales amount are beauty skin care/body beauty/essential oils, women's clothing/women's boutiques, makeup/perfumes/beauty tools, snacks/nuts/specialties, and toiletries/sanitary napkins/paper/aromatherapy.
It is not difficult to find that the first three categories, whether it is beauty skin care, women's clothing, or makeup are based on female customers as the main consumer group, and considering female consumers, they often have to assume the role of family consumption decision-makers, so snack specialties, toiletries and daily necessities into the popular category, but also inseparable from the promotion of female consumers.
From the perspective of average selling price, in the top 10 categories, except for the average unit price of the mobile phone category, which reached 1378 yuan, the other nine categories were less than 200 yuan, and the average median unit price was 79 yuan. This shows that live streaming with goods is more of a low customer unit price with the way of volume.
The reason why beauty and clothing are popular is because there is a high gross profit space, which is more likely to be favored in the selection process of live streamers. Food, daily necessities, etc. belong to the standard products, the unit price is low, the repurchase rate is high, and it is more suitable for the randomness and impulsive consumption of live streaming.
<h4>Fifth, live streaming brings opportunities to new brands</h4>
In terms of sales, new domestic products have risen. The top three brands in terms of total sales volume are all domestic brands that have gained momentum in the past two years. Makeup brand Huaxizi's sales volume in the live broadcast room of the top 100 anchors exceeded 10 million, ranking first. The makeup brand Perfect Diary, which has a similar marketing path, also reached 9.835 million orders. Snack nut brand sales ranked third, and cutting-edge brand Li Ziqi ranked fifth.
It can be seen that live streaming brings opportunities for cutting-edge brands to overtake in curves. The marketing model of live streaming with goods, which is based on finding people from goods and focusing on experience and sharing, helps cutting-edge brands to quickly increase their awareness and create blockbusters.
<h4>Sixth, live e-commerce platform analysis</h4>
From the perspective of development time, the time for major platforms to enter the field of live e-commerce is similar. However, the three major platforms of Taobao, Kuaishou and Douyin have different operational logic, which also means that they face different problems in the process of developing live streaming with goods.
<h4>Taobao: The first-mover advantage is obvious, and the fun is insufficient</h4>
Taobao is one of the earliest platforms to combine live broadcasting and e-commerce forms, and it has a perfect supply chain system, payment system, after-sales service system and logistics system, and the conversion rate is relatively high.
90% of the live broadcast content on Taobao comes from the self-broadcast of merchants, and the live broadcast of Internet celebrities and celebrities accounts for a relatively small proportion. Therefore, the self-broadcast of merchants is not interesting enough to attract the attention of consumers. For Taobao, increasing the proportion of Internet celebrities and celebrity anchors, users are more likely to generate emotions of trust and like, and shopping decisions are also more likely to be generated. At the same time, the lack of off-site traffic with its own fans also limits the ability of Taobao live broadcasting to commercialization and guiding transactions to a certain extent.
In addition, it can also be seen that Taobao's anchor traffic aggregation effect is prominent. Especially during the double 11 and other big promotion activities, only the head anchor has traffic, and the traffic of small and medium-sized anchors is almost cut.
<h4>TikTok: Take the content as the gripper</h4>
The social attributes of Douyin Entertainment are obvious, and live broadcasting belongs to long video content, which is a normal extension of the short video business form.
Douyin is oriented to "high-quality content", which enables commercial live broadcasting to take into account the number of viewers, viewing time and high stickiness. The target users are mainly young people in first- and second-tier cities, who have strong spending power and like to watch videos for entertainment.
At the same time, there are enough high-quality content creators on the Douyin platform, most of them have the possibility of becoming anchors, and these creators themselves have a certain amount of fans, and the income brought by e-commerce with goods can feed back to the anchors and bring better live broadcast content to the audience.
However, the distribution mechanism of Douyin has led to a high degree of centralization, with 3% of videos accounting for 80% of user playback. Although only 14 anchors on the Douyin platform entered the top 100 in terms of sales amount, the average number of viewers of the anchors shortlisted on Douyin was the highest among the three major platforms. It can be judged that the conversion rate of e-commerce live broadcasting on Douyin is low.
<h4>Kuaishou: The sinking market is highly viscous</h4>
The degree of centering of Kuaishou is relatively low, and the head content is limited to about 30%. In addition, Kuaishou's user stickiness in the sinking market is extremely high, and the conversion rate is relatively stable. The data shows that the GMV promoted by the Kuaishou platform increased from 96.6 million yuan in 2018 to 59.6 billion yuan in 2019, and from 3.4 billion yuan in the first half of 2019 to 109.6 billion yuan in the first half of 2020.
Of course, the problem of Kuaishou is also very prominent. Last year, when the major anchors based on "Kuaishou Brother" Simba were live streaming with goods, problems such as product quality, data fraud, and high return rates were successively detonated, exposing the serious bubble and fraud in the live streaming industry, the lack of platform supervision, and the lack of responsibilities.
At the same time, on the Kuaishou platform, the characteristics of the anchor family operation are very obvious, some fans of tens of millions of anchors through the relationship between master and apprentice, husband and wife to form a family or team, the interests of the head anchor bundled, in fact, to the platform to bring greater difficulty to governance.
<h4>Seventh, industry problems emerge in an endless stream</h4>
Statistics released by the official website of the State Administration for Market Regulation on the first three quarters of 2020 show that a total of 21,900 complaints and reports related to live broadcasting were received in the first three quarters, an increase of 479.60% year-on-year, and nearly 60% of the demands for "live streaming with goods" were received. During the "618" promotional campaign alone, consumer rights protection was collected during the monitoring period 112384 negative information about "live streaming with goods".
At the same time, the "Online Survey Report on Consumer Satisfaction of Live E-commerce Shopping" released by the China Consumer Association in March 2020 shows that the lowest level of consumer satisfaction is the publicity link, with a score of 64.7. Overall, consumer satisfaction with all aspects of live shopping has not reached 80 points.
Comprehensively combing the data of various platforms, the 21st Century Business Herald summarized the main types of infringement on consumer rights and interests in online live broadcast sales, such as false publicity, difficulty in selling and exchanging goods, the use of "special auction links" to mislead consumers, abuse of limit words, and illegal live broadcast content.
<h4>Expert opinion</h4>
<h4>Xinchuan, head of Taobao Live MCN Agency: Live broadcasting will maintain a triple-digit growth rate</h4>
The live broadcasting industry has begun to take shape, but compared with the overall e-commerce market size, it is still a small share, which also means that in the consumer field of e-commerce, there is still a huge space for consumers to buy and convert.
On the one hand, the efficient form of content interaction such as live broadcasting will allow more stores to reach consumers at zero distance through live broadcasting; on the other hand, short videos have become a very important way for consumers to consume, and can be guided into the increment of e-commerce live broadcasting through the way of content. The future growth of the live broadcasting industry is huge, and it is expected to maintain a triple-digit growth rate this year.
In 2020, the live broadcast of star types, the live broadcast of new and exotic goods, and the live broadcast of partial cultural types have sprung up on various platforms, broadening the boundaries of live broadcasting, not only with goods, more content has begun to integrate into live broadcasting, and more content platforms have begun to try to live stream with goods.
It is a fan economy, and the current consumption power does not represent all. The Taobao live broadcast user structure is similar to dumbbells, two large, small in the middle, that is, the proportion of first- and second-line users is relatively high, the proportion of fourth- and fifth-line users and first- and second-line users is basically flat, and the third- and fourth-line users will be relatively less.
The sinking users of Taobao Live have always been an important customer service object of Taobao Live. The disposable free time of the sinking users of the fourth and fifth lines will be more flexible and more free, with more disposable time costs, and there will be greater purchase and conversion possibilities.
<h4>Wu Shichun, founding partner of Meihua Venture Capital: The short video platform is more friendly to ordinary people</h4>
Now is the best time for the rise of new domestic brands. The epidemic has changed people's consumption habits and psychology from offline to online, and the consumer group of China's younger generation has become the mainstream. This group is based on national self-confidence, the recognition of domestic brands is higher, coupled with the improvement of a new generation of supply chain capabilities and aesthetic capabilities and overall technology, more and more high-quality domestic brands are developing rapidly, and the valuation level is constantly improving.
Of course, the consumption drive of live e-commerce for new domestic brands is very obvious. At present, live streaming is divided into three levels, the first level is the goods represented by Ali JD.com, the second level is the popularity represented by Douyin Kuaishou, and the third level is the career relationship represented by Tencent (iteration of the relationship chain).
It is expected that live e-commerce will continue to maintain a rapid growth, with an estimated 250 million to 300 million user growth in 2021. Many emerging brands will get a better pull, and the publicity effect driven by the head anchor and the big V can be comparable to the advertising effect of traditional TV and variety shows. This is a win-win effect for merchants, platforms and anchors.
At present, the short video platform based on Douyin and Kuaishou is more friendly to the vegetarians and grassroots, and the big data drainage method of the platform will bring them playback traffic. And the star big V itself comes with its own traffic, so the live broadcast method of platforms like Taobao is more beneficial to them. For people who have no traffic at all, there may be more opportunities to choose a new platform similar to WeChat video number.
<h4>Liu Zhiwu, founder and CEO of Brilliant Starlight: A large number of MCN institutions are leaving</h4>
E-commerce live broadcasting has reached an inflection point. In the second half of 2020, the industry has entered a period of decline, a large number of MCN institutions have left, the overall is not healthy, and the traffic of the platform is controlled by the anchor of the head, resulting in the possibility of small anchors having a breakthrough.
A large number of anchors in the middle waist do not have the right to choose goods. Like Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi,000, the requirements for goods can be the lowest price for 90 days, or even the lowest price for the whole year, but the small and medium-sized anchors do not have the bargaining power, which leads to them lagging behind the big anchors in the selection of products.
On the other hand, on the traffic side, it cannot be said that it is not friendly to small anchors or newcomers, but it is only that the traffic is actually tilted, and for the operation of traffic, small institutions and anchors or brand parties do not yet have core organizational capabilities.
At the same time, the trend of online red e-commerce live broadcasting represented by red anchors needs to be better optimized on the entire product side, and there must be more strategies in traffic precipitation. Brands choose to cooperate with big anchors, and they can't just blindly reduce prices, which will lead to the brand having no money to earn.
In addition, the matching of live goods and the platform is also very important, if you sell goods live on Kuaishou and Douyin, you may only be able to sell relatively low-end goods, because the user's consumption habits are still stuck in buying major appliances to go to Jingdong and Tmall platforms.
In addition, there is also an opportunity point in the private domain of social content e-commerce. It will be a very good opportunity to open up and do live broadcasting in the WeChat ecosystem.
<h4>Xue Jun, professor and vice dean of Peking University Law School and director of the E-commerce Law Research Center of Peking University: Anchors selling fakes is an intangible reputational loss</h4>
At present, in the relevant provisions issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation, a realistic analysis method is adopted, that is to say, live broadcasting is not defined as advertising behavior, nor is the anchor all characterized as advertising spokespersons, but it is judged according to the actual situation.
Legislative and regulatory activities on live streaming and the development of national standards have been ongoing. Not only the relevant normative documents issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation, but also the Cyberspace Administration of China is taking the lead in drafting some corresponding normative documents. At the same time, live broadcasting belongs to the e-commerce industry in a broad sense, as early as 2019, China has issued an e-commerce law, and some of the corresponding legal requirements are relatively clear.
The controversy over the extent of the penalty in the Simba Fake Bird's Nest case was not only a matter of the amount of the fine, but also of serious reputational implications. If the image and commercial evaluation of an anchor in the minds of consumers are reduced, it is an intangible loss. Only a good reputation can gain the trust of fans, so that they have the right to negotiate, choose, discount, etc. in the face of merchants. This is also a socialized constraint mechanism.
At the same time, it is also necessary to implement the responsibility of the platform, do a good job of the background real-name system for anchors, and manage the special list of illegal anchors. In the future, some credit punishment systems can be established, and anchors with illegal and false propaganda and other behaviors enter the blacklist and may be banned by the platform.
In addition, acts such as counterfeiting are acts of unfair competition, which will actually disrupt the entire market order.
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