On April 14, Douyin's e-commerce assistant issued a notice to limit the flow of six types of content: in order to maintain the healthy development of the account, it will no longer recommend "picture carousels, inspirational videos, unboxing videos without voiceover, street interviews/selling unrelated products, solicitation-style recommendations for good things that mention prices, and vulgar or awkward skits."

As for the reasons, Douyin said that these types of content have problems such as low video production costs, abnormal orientation, serious homogeneity, lack of nutrition and positive content, and simply inducing consumption.

▲ Screenshot of announcement

At the same time, the e-commerce assistant also released a "Content Optimization and Upgrade Guide" with a total of 5 lectures, providing upgrade guidance for women's/men's clothing, good product recommendations, and beauty content.

So why did Tik Tok specifically mention these types of content? Which aspects should the relevant accounts be improved? How to interpret these upgrade measures and correctly understand the trend signals behind them? The author will sort them out for you one by one in this article.

1. Low-cost Douyin account self-help

Going back to Douyin’s “Not Recommended Content List”, we found that it mainly targets Douyin accounts with poor quality and obvious monetization purposes.

Picture carousels are often seen in knowledge and popular science content, while chicken soup storytelling is the topic of some emotional content. The quality of both and vulgar/awkward performances in the entire platform ecosystem is low. The problem exposed by the unboxing without voiceover, street interviews to sell unrelated products, and solicitation-style skits with price mentions is that the purpose of monetization is too obvious. It is not surprising that Douyin, as a content platform, curbs excessive commercialization that damages the content ecology.

Douyin's move is mainly aimed at maintaining the healthy and sustainable development of the content ecosystem. According to the "Content Optimization and Upgrade Guide" released by the assistant, clothing content can focus on "street shooting, technical dressing, showing faces, and natural and unstressed advertising", while product recommendations and beauty content require "professional fields, popular science knowledge, rational analysis, objective comments", as well as "useful content in real scenarios."

The former means investing more in creativity and celebrities, while the latter sets requirements on professional thresholds, meets practicality, and needs to truly provide reference value to users, which corresponds to more manpower and financial costs. Low-cost videos do not mean low-quality videos, but high-quality content must be the result of multiple costs.

▲ Taobao store "Jin Daban" Douyin account

This initiative has also become a screening mechanism for identifying professional content creators, and this mechanism may continue to be improved in the future. Since micro-businesses entered Douyin in a high-profile manner in October 2018, some micro-business users who only want to use Douyin as an incremental channel, rely on tricks to quickly monetize, and even guide users to WeChat to complete transactions are consuming Douyin's operation and maintenance costs. Ensuring that users are not disturbed is also one of the reasons why Douyin took this measure. According to Kas Data, if Douyin determines that you are a micro-business, you are likely to be restricted and demoted.

In addition, there is an interesting phenomenon worth noting. Tik Tok's content distribution is based on algorithms and is an active choice made by users based on their preferences. Users believe that low-quality videos are actually not within their field of vision. Then we can make a guess that Douyin, which has 250 million daily active users, may be interested in improving and elevating the content level of the platform on the basis of maintaining its content platform attributes, and further educating the aesthetic taste of platform users after completing the national harvest.

Now let’s look at the question “How can a low-cost Douyin account save itself?” The answer is obvious: upgrade the content, establish the core value of high-quality content, and polish its form of expression, that is, the quality of the video. In the future, only content that meets higher aesthetic standards will be recommended, and even receive support in other areas beyond traffic.

2. Behind the flow restriction: raising the level of content; curbing the proliferation of “Douyin merchants”

In October 2018, along with the overall lowering of the application threshold for Douyin's shopping cart function, a wave of new "Douyin business" organizations emerged. Some media called it "a game in which old leeks harvest new leeks after 30 million micro-businesses flock to Douyin."

What is Douyin Business? Wechat merchants, Taobao and Weidian shop owners who have entered Douyin, and even users who have no advantages or experience in content industry but want to make money by relying on platform dividends can be called Douyin merchants.

In the current context, Douyin merchants more often refer to amateur creators who have strong profit-making purposes, do not specialize in content, and mainly focus on skills. In layman's terms, they are the wool party.

Behind DouShang is the rapidly growing DouShang organization. The "2019 First Douyin Business Festival and Global Douyin Business Alliance Establishment Conference" in January 2019 and the "World Douyin Business Conference" on March 23, etc., have eased the anxiety of Douyin merchants about creating Douyin accounts, but did not seem to really solve them.

According to the Beijing News, "Reporters' investigation found that many of the training methods of Douban business are still teaching you to 'plagiarize' videos, recruiting people to join groups in a WeChat business-like manner, and developing 'downline' in a pyramid-like manner. The so-called gold medal lecturers are also largely packaged."

▲The WeChat Moments promotional image of a Doushang training institution Source: Beijing News WeChat Official Account

Douyin has lowered the threshold for shopping carts and e-commerce monetization, which was an important measure to promote structured monetization of platform creators and form a more mature short video industry, but the wool party has also found opportunities in it. An overly utilitarian content environment will definitely disrupt the user experience, and the emergence of "harvesting" Douyin businesses is also discouraging the enthusiasm of new creators and even creators below the mid-level.

Douyin has also taken precautions against this phenomenon. On March 23, the day when the "World Douyin Business Conference" was held, ByteDance PR and "Toutiao Zhejiang" both issued notices in a timely manner, stating that the official had never authorized it. To this day, if you search for "Dou Shang" on Toutiao, related statements will still appear.

However, Douyin has not given up on these new entrants who caught the last train of traffic dividend. The launch of the “Content Optimization and Upgrade Guide” is a good example. Douyin said that they only need to make rectifications based on the named content before the end of May. As long as creators can start from the content and find their own advantages under the guidance of the platform, they will eventually be able to make profits based on the value of the content.

3. How do Tik Tok celebrities realize their online business revenue correctly?

Kas Data believes that based on the purpose of limiting the flow of low-quality content with obvious monetization purposes, these six types of content are not the end. In the future, more content presentation forms that need to be limited may be added, and there will also be a more advanced "Content Optimization and Upgrade Guide".

In the future, for creators who want to rely on e-commerce as their main profit model, their e-commerce conversion logic will develop into: creators solidify the core value of the content → fans convert by following the celebrities and identifying with the brand IP.

Under the long-term influence of this move, the Douyin content ecosystem may show the following trends:

1. Creators’ monetization cycle is getting longer

The key point of this monetization logic lies in the first step. As long as the first step is straightened out, scale monetization can be completed more easily afterwards.

This requires that the content IP has a high degree of completion, which means that the monetization cycle of the Douyin account becomes longer and more IP construction is needed in the early stages. In the battle for existing assets where new dividends are stagnating, the first step may be a tough battle.

▲According to the "Douyin Shopping Cart Double 12 "Shopping" Report (2018)", the e-commerce celebrity Xue Li sold 10,000 down jackets in 20 minutes, with a turnover of 23 million

1. Big players return to the racetrack

Similarly, in addition to the strong initiative of celebrities, the early stage of IP construction also involves multiple challenges such as funding, resources, and team costs. Those who can undertake this operation cycle may be the transformation of traditional media and various powerful big players.

1. PGC may return to the battlefield

Which one costs more: creating a new IP for short video e-commerce VS learning e-commerce from an IP that has already succeeded in the PGC battlefield? The answer may be the latter.

PGC players, especially vertical players, have control over content and the influence accumulated by IP can be used again on short video platforms. In 2019, it is time to test the traffic payment rate and verify the user value, and PGC vertical players may be able to shine on the battlefield again.

E-commerce monetization relies on the appeal of celebrities and IPs to every fan, which is reflected in the accumulated conversion of each order. In fact, from this perspective, if the content IP can run through e-commerce, there will be absolutely no problem in monetizing it through advertising. In 2019, mastering e-commerce is the most important achievement.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)