A guide to avoiding pitfalls and making money when promoting live streaming products overseas!

1. India

1.1 Development and Current Status of Live Broadcasting in India

The first companies to introduce live streaming to India were veterans in the live streaming industry - Bigo and Liveme. In particular, Bigo's promotion in India in 2017 popularized live streaming education for the Indian people. Following closely, MeMe, Uplive, and Mico went overseas in the first half of 2018, and NoNo, Yome, and Streamkar went overseas in the second half.

If one-on-one video chat is also considered a type of live broadcast, the largest type of video chat in India now is one-on-one video chat.

1.2 Characteristics and Pattern of Live Broadcasting in India

The Indian live streaming market is still in its early stages, with low user awareness and user arrpu values, but now its forms are gradually becoming more diverse, leading to intensified oligopoly competition.

Live show - mainly chatting, singing and dancing

Game live streaming is not mature and the situation is very immature in the local area.

1.3 Indian live streaming content and anchor structure

Single content

The mainstream content of India's live streaming platforms is currently relatively simple. Before 2019, the platforms were basically all singing, dancing, and rap. Unlike short video platforms that have MCNs providing more professional content, there is a lack of innovation in live streaming.

Since 2019, NoNo has joined in to adjust its direction and vigorously promote game live streaming, with a richer variety of game types. Hago is mainly casual games, but it also has a voice live broadcast module. Various platforms are also strongly encouraging anchors to conduct various forms of live broadcasts.

The driving force behind all new content does not come from user creativity, but from the auxiliary tools and strong incentives provided by the platform. In this regard, Indian users' understanding and thinking of live streaming are still at a relatively early stage, and this situation is difficult to change in a short period of time.

The anchor structure is strange

The anchor crowd is quite mixed and the crowd structure is rather strange. The proportion of male anchors is very high. If it is not controlled, you may even find that there are more male anchors than female ones (Mico). The main reason for this is that men are the user group of live broadcasts. There are no professional characteristics for male and female anchors in India. Those who have jobs basically do not do live broadcasts. The anchor group is mainly housewives, students, and freelancers. They have a unified name: anchor.

In view of the fact that there is a relatively large proportion of male anchors in India, the platform needs to adjust the display ratio through operations. The revenue of male anchors is not better than that of female anchors, and the quality of most of their content is worse, not as good as that of female anchors who are both beautiful and talented. The operation is still mainly based on female anchors, and it would be nice to add some male anchors as appropriate.

The quality of unions varies

The main group on the union side is still the early users of the live broadcast platform. They have already established some knowledge of live broadcasting and have a certain degree of popularity on the platform. Then they started to recruit people to form a union. The problem is that the quality varies greatly, and most guilds are just trying to recruit people and make money between platforms. Because the policies of each platform are generally better during the cold start period, these unions will move between the various platforms. These unions do not manage the anchors very well, and some of them even take the money and run away. There are a small number of trade unions that are slightly better, but they are still far behind those in China.

1.4 Opportunities and risks of live streaming in India

1) Opportunities

Live broadcast type: Game live broadcast

The more promising opportunity right now is game live streaming. As we all know, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds became very popular in India last year, and some other heavy games are ranked relatively high on India's revenue list. The live broadcast module embedded in Hago's casual social game builds strong connections and even small communities by playing games together. At present, Hago's revenue in India is also relatively good. NoNo's transformation into game live streaming also attracted a large number of fans.

Live broadcast format: 1v1 video chat

The second is some innovations in live streaming formats, such as 1-on-1 video chat. There are more than a dozen video chat software in the top 100 Indian revenue list, and new players are constantly entering the market.

2) Risks

Regulation from the government

At present, the supervision of live streaming overseas is not as strict as in China, but the voices calling for banning live streaming platforms have always existed. Especially after what happened with TikTok, we have more reason to believe that policy uncertainty is the biggest risk for the platform.

Expectation management and decision making in the Indian market

This risk may only exist in India. A more vivid example is that a certain live streaming platform established an office in India in the second half of last year and started recruiting a lot of people. It was quite radical in its investment and anchor policies, with big moves, but it suddenly disappeared from the market after the New Year.

2. Southeast Asia

2.1 Current Status of Live Streaming in Southeast Asia

In Southeast Asia, I think three markets have great potential:

In general, the gap between the rich and the poor in Southeast Asian countries is even greater. Either the average cost of a restaurant is 5 yuan, or the average cost of a restaurant is 80 yuan. There is no middle class, and people are more vain than in China.

Therefore, BD cooperation and related online and offline activities on the brand side are still relatively valuable and necessary, making the anchors and users feel that the platform is not low, has room for growth, and has face.

2.2 Southeast Asia Live Broadcasting Infrastructure

Payment channel fee

The commission rate is high, 30% for iOS and Android, and the average is around 20% .

Tax GR

You can ask local Chinese people to solve the problem or companies with deep backgrounds such as ZTE and Huawei, which all have relevant experience.

2.3 Selection of Southeast Asian live broadcast team members

Country Manager

Chinese are preferred as the risk factor for locals is too high.

Marketing/User Activity Operation/Anchor Operation

You can consider the locals, but I don’t recommend Muslims in general. In comparison, the Chinese are better and have a strong desire to make progress.

1+3 configuration for early operation

1 country manager, 1 person each for marketing/user activity operation/anchor operation

2.4 Southeast Asian live broadcast operations and data reference

Streamer recruitment and profit sharing

Before, I used Instagram to find potential anchors, and then sent private messages to invite them. You can also cooperate with some local MCNs and let them transform small artists into anchors.

It was still very immature in 2014 and 2015, but now there are already some guild organizations specializing in live streaming. In terms of profit sharing, giving 40% to the anchor is already the top level.

Cold start cost

Broadcaster: Amateur broadcaster in Jakarta, Indonesia earns RMB 1,000 per month (40 hours of broadcasting per month, 2 hours per day)

In the initial trial period of one month, 50 such anchors are needed, which means 50,000 RMB. They will be paid a basic salary and also receive commissions to ensure good broadcasting results.

3. Tips for Overseas Experience

3.1 Pain Points and Solutions of Overseas Live Broadcasting

Competition in emerging markets is fierce and payment is low

Competition in the emerging overseas live streaming market is fierce and the ability to pay is relatively low. It is recommended to test the waters in the North American market, which has strong payment capabilities and has tried game-related live broadcasts before, with good performance. The competitive environment is relatively good and there is less malicious competition.

Low activity frequency and retention

The retention and active frequency of live streaming products are lower than those of social products, so retaining users is a difficult problem. In the early development stage of live streaming, content recommendations were mainly based on a set of rules and parameters to screen anchors with high revenue and popularity. It was not until the past two years that personalized content recommendations based on user browsing preferences and follow-up relationship chains were introduced. However, personalized recommendations based on "people" are much more complicated than personalized recommendations based on "items" and "text content", and it is difficult to truly make personalized recommendations into the hearts of users. Often, the "people" guessed by "guessing what you like" are not the same as the people the user really likes.

Payment channels have high commissions

Analysis of payment channels in the Philippines

Compared with domestic live streaming platforms, overseas live streaming platforms have to take another commission from payment channels. Especially in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, the commission rates of local payment channels are very high. Taking the Philippines as an example, for channels with a higher market coverage, the share of a single recharge is even higher than that of App Store/Google Play. Generally speaking, the rates of telecom operator channels are very high. E-wallets are better. ATM and 711, which are online and offline channels (channels that are more troublesome for users to pay), are the cheapest.

Setting thresholds at the national level

Countries such as Indonesia and India may set some conditions at the national level after the product penetration rate is high, and may even directly ban the product first. At first we guessed that the target group was more sensitive. But after talking with the Indonesian government and an agency that specializes in dealing with such issues in 2018, I feel that their core goal is still to get money.

3.2 Profits and input-output considerations of overseas live streaming

In horizontal comparison, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam are almost in the same tier, while India's payment rate and ARPU value are relatively poor. Overall, iOS users are much better than Android users, but the proportion of iOS users in India is too low. Therefore, each platform needs to weigh this balance point on its own.

Distinguishing between diminishing marginal costs

The marginal decreasing cost of live streaming is:

1. Company human resource costs;

2. Third-party face recognition (filters, beauty, stickers, AR gifts, etc.);

Costs that cannot be reduced at the margin:

1. Video storage and pornographic identification (machine identification/manual identification);

2. Bandwidth cost for viewing;

Three ways to increase gross profit margin:

1. Improve labor efficiency and reduce labor costs

If you can automate the product, use less heavy operations strategies to complete it;

2. Increase the payment rate and focus on high-quality markets

If it is not a strategic loss, try to spend less money in the market with extremely low payment and per capita GDP;

3. Improve the yield rate of the broadcast

The rate of return refers to the proportion of anchors who meet the profit standards among the total number of anchors. The higher the number of anchors, the better. When ensuring "the number of anchors who can achieve positive profits" and "new anchors have a smooth upward channel", the broadcast rate can be appropriately lowered.

3.3 Experience in building overseas live broadcast teams and mid-stage

Big middle office, small front office

If it is an internal cooperation model of "big middle platform, small front desk", in fact, a team of 5-7 people is enough for each market, including 1 country manager, 2 anchors & union management, 1-2 marketing colleagues responsible for new additions, and 1-2 full-time customer service staff.

Middle platform

This part is mainly responsible for products, data, strategies, etc., which are not highly dependent on local languages ​​and can be quickly reused and promoted globally, ensuring that functions and strategies can be widely reused. Adjust the parameters of a set of strategies based on localized data, rather than repeating the same thing several times for localization.

The focus of anchor management is transferred to the union

In markets such as Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, and Taiwan, mobile live streaming has been gradually introduced since 2016. Local unions and agents have developed relatively maturely. In these markets, the focus of anchor management can be transferred to the unions to liberate the productivity of local teams.

Immature unions need to increase human resources costs to manage anchors

The local unions in India and the Gulf Muslim countries are not particularly mature yet, and the unions will take advantage of each platform, which requires the platforms to spend more manpower costs on anchor management.

3.4Solution to security issues and establishment of monitoring team

Regarding safety, let's first look at an example. When LiveMe entered the US market, the live streaming industry in the US was relatively blank. American children particularly like this new thing, and they have a strong desire to perform. This is also due to the differences in domestic culture. However, there are no young users on the platform now, and the platform has done a comprehensive cleanup. Why? It is mainly due to safety considerations, because the United States attaches great importance to the protection of minors, which is very different from China!

How to deal with security issues is mainly explained from two aspects: internal and external:

Internal security audit mechanism

(1) A 24/7 content review team with more than 100 people reviewing content online every day. Only reviewed content will have traffic. Of course, the content of some contracted anchors is guaranteed and will be broadcast first and then checked after being included in the whitelist.

(2) We have also introduced AI technology to conduct machine review in the review process, which will improve the review efficiency. The content identified by AI will be manually confirmed before being put on or taken off the shelves.

External security audit mechanism

(1) It comes from the mall. The mall will remove the siege content. This is the lifeblood of developers, so ensuring content security is also our sincerity to the mall.

(2) Due to differences in religion and culture, the censorship systems in different regions are also different. For example, the United States pays more attention to child protection, which is also our priority in the United States. If we find that children are broadcasting, no matter what the content is, the minors will be banned. In some countries with more conservative religions or cultures, we will be more strict in content review

It is not recommended to set up a dedicated content review team for each market

The first reason is that it is difficult to manage because the emperor is far away. The second reason is that if we want to achieve 7*24 hours supervision coverage in different regions, at least 3-6 shifts are needed. Even if there are only a few people in each shift, it is a heavy labor cost burden.

It is recommended to bring the audit team together

Whether it is setting up an audit team in second- and third-tier cities in China or in India and the Philippines, several audit levels are divided according to the general national conditions. When the review is conducted, the backend will directly gather the live broadcast rooms in countries of different levels into different audit halls. This can firstly ensure that the audit standards are in line with local conditions, and secondly, it can maximize the concentration of resources to improve labor efficiency.

Author: Overseas Operations

Source: Overseas Operations