Why are all the ads I see on TikTok games?

"Catch any divine pet you want, and get a set of levelless divine equipment every three days!"

If you are a heavy user of TikTok , you will definitely keep seeing game videos, and you will see them "passively" because the word "advertisement" is often written in front of these videos.

According to the " TikTok Advertising Analysis Report" released by the data statistics platform AppGrowing on May 20, the gaming industry has the highest proportion of advertising, accounting for 34.48%. TikTok is undoubtedly one of the most favored advertising channels for game manufacturers recently.

This may also allow Douyin itself to see the space for gaming content and no longer be satisfied with just providing channels for game manufacturers. Recently, many media reported that Douyin has begun recruiting game MCN agencies and released a picture of "Douyin game category MCN agency cooperation officially launched".

In addition, Douyin has also opened a "Douyin Game" account, in which you can jump to a web page where you can read game-related content and download games - but not Tencent games. Right at the top of the page, there is also an H5 event page called “Call for Pioneer Players,” which calls on “ gamers who love mobile games, are willing to put forward personal opinions for game platforms, and have a sense of ownership.”

Initial speculation is that Tik Tok wants to form an advisory group exclusively for gaming video content.

The entire "Tik Tok Game" page is exactly the same as the "Today's Game" section of Toutiao , with the same four columns: new games, popular games, benefits, and categories, and both have extremely deep entrances. If you want to jump to this interface in Douyin, you need to first enter the "Douyin Game" account interface, and then click to view details before jumping. Today's game is hidden in the "My Wallet" entrance of the personal account interface.

Today's game interface on Toutiao

Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe) believes that the model for Douyin to focus on games should be to sign a gaming MCN, produce and publish more gaming short video content, and then use Douyin’s own powerful content “sales ability” to attract users to jump to the download page to download.

The "Tik Tok Game" account may have the same functions as the "Tik Tok Assistant" in the future, responsible for recommending and managing high-quality game short video content and launching some challenge activities.

In fact, before this, many official game accounts had already settled in Douyin and achieved good data. For example, the official account of Honor of Kings has released 106 works on Douyin, and has 1.5 million followers and 2.76 million likes. The official account of Onmyoji also has 620,000 followers and 6.73 million likes.

But this is far from enough for Douyin. The dominant power of these official game accounts is not in its own hands. Douyin, which has always liked to recruit top content producers, must have its own game content experts.

After achieving 500 million monthly active users worldwide, how to provide more high-quality content and maintain lasting appeal to users has become a new problem that must be faced. After all, in the field of short videos, Douyin has more and more imitators , and it definitely does not want to see any platform suddenly overtake it like it did during the Spring Festival in 2018.

Therefore, games have become a sector that Douyin has to pay attention to. Before this, Douyin did not invest too much energy in the operation of game content, but mostly focused on life and entertainment content, and game content mostly appeared in the form of advertisements. However, according to the "2017 Toutiao Game Industry Data" released by Toutiao Index , the total reading volume of Toutiao game articles in 2017 was 22.6 billion, 3.7 times that of 2016, which shows that there is great potential for game content.

According to the "China Game Industry Report from January to June 2018" released by Gamma Data. From January to June 2018, the number of game users in China reached 530 million, a year-on-year increase of 4.0%.

Among them, the consumption scale of female game users continues to increase. The report shows that from January to June 2018, the scale of consumption by female users in the Chinese game market was 24.15 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%.

According to Aurora Big Data statistics, female users account for 66.4% of Douyin users. Therefore, if we can rely on game content to attract more male users on the one hand and enhance the stickiness of female game users on Douyin on the other hand, it will be a win-win situation.

In addition, it is worth noting how Douyin will cooperate with gaming MCNs. Two weeks ago, Douyin launched the "Star Map" platform to provide docking services for Douyin influencers and brands . However, shortly after its launch, 36Kr published an article saying that most people refused to join because they could not reach a consensus with Douyin on the "sharing ratio" and "advertising price increase."

Hedgehog Commune once interviewed a blogger @手游君 from the game MCN Fengqun Game. He believed that the policy of a platform is like the planning in the game to a game MCN. From the perspective of game developers, they definitely want the game to be more fun and have more people play it, so they formulate policies; conversely, from the perspective of players, in order to reach a higher player level, they should also follow the rules of the game, buy equipment, and practice skills, so that both parties can maximize their value.

To put it bluntly, platform policies mean the rules of the game. Only by accepting these rules can both parties team up and play the game. The same is true for business.

Just a few days ago, Kuaishou launched the MCN cooperation plan, offering attractive conditions such as "exclusive operational support", "priority experience of product functions", and "commercial monetization support". Douyin's special support for MCN organizations is reflected in the form of guaranteed traffic , resource exposure, and priority opening of e-commerce . For MCNs that cooperate with Douyin, Douyin will provide resource recommendations after their celebrity accounts publish content. It is curious whether this cooperation with gaming MCNs will introduce new support mechanisms.

Judging from ByteDance's overall strategic layout, this is not the first time that ByteDance has entered the gaming field. In addition to the Today's Game mentioned at the beginning, media reported in July that ByteDance's other short video application, Xigua Video, will enter the game live broadcast field . The person in charge of ByteDance said that Xigua Video started the layout of the game live broadcast function as early as January this year, and began recruiting mobile game and terminal game anchors in June.

In the current version of Xigua Video, live streaming has become an independent first-level entrance, and has four sections: recommendations, games, music, and countryside. However, judging from the current data, its popularity is not high. It can be said that for ByteDance, the gaming field is still in its initial exploratory stage.

Judging from the external environment, games are indeed a position that ByteDance must seize. In the gaming field, it goes without saying that Tencent, which has always been at odds with ByteDance, has long been the "number one player" in the gaming field and will inevitably be unable to catch up in the short term. Kuaishou, a competitor in the short video field, has begun to turn its attention to the gaming field at the beginning of this year. It first launched an independent app for Kuaishou mini-games , and then quietly launched the Kuaishou live broadcast platform , focusing on gaming content.

Kuaishou Games - later renamed "Kuaishou Dianwan" - has been online for more than half a year. Since its update, only two channels, battle and chat, have been retained. Most of the online games are classic mobile games such as Connect the Dots, Jump Jump, Gobang, 2046, and Minesweeper. The operation is simple and easy to understand, which may be to adapt to the usage habits of Kuaishou's short video user groups.

In addition, like Kuaishou short videos, Kuaishou mini games also focus on social attributes. Each game has users randomly matched by the system to play against each other. After the game, both parties can jump to the chat interface and add each other as friends.

Kuaishou Mini Games gained rapid momentum when they were first launched. According to statistics from Analysys Qianfan, among the top 20 mobile apps with the highest monthly active user growth in February 2018, Kuaishou Mini Games ranked first in the gaming category, with monthly active users reaching 4.74 million in February.

However, according to data from App Annie , from April to August this year, the number of downloads of Kuaishou's mini-games fluctuated significantly, and showed an overall downward trend. Kuaishou itself did not do much promotion for this app. It is not known what the current position of this product is in Kuaishou's overall layout, but it is undeniable that Kuaishou has never given up its exploration of the game field.

Last week, Hedgehog Community reported on the launch of a web-based live streaming platform by Kuaishou. Kuaishou officials remained mysterious about this, only saying that the business is in the exploratory stage and there is not much information to disclose. Hedgehog Commune analysis believes that Kuaishou’s full acquisition of Station A in June this year may also be due to its consideration of developing game live streaming.

The self-media "Short Video Studio" wrote an analysis article and believed that compared with the live broadcast platform, the newly entered short video platform has an advantage in retained capital. At the same time, compared with live streaming platforms whose profit models rely too much on rewards, short video platforms have multiple monetization channels such as channel sharing, advertising cooperation, and e-commerce. The model is more flexible and less likely to fall into financial difficulties. Moreover, compared with the immediacy of live streaming, short videos can better precipitate content, columnize and refine game content, and achieve more extensive promotion and marketing.

However, judging from the current situation, both Kuaishou and Douyin are still newcomers in the gaming field. This field is equally cruel, and not every company is involved in the gaming field. Last year, Baidu sold its mobile gaming business for RMB 1.2 billion and withdrew from the gaming industry. Alibaba , which once said it would rather starve to death than make games, has only implanted the " Travel Frog " in Taobao .

Therefore, it remains to be seen how short video platforms can get a share of the pie among large companies like Tencent and NetEase, as well as the increasingly mature live streaming platforms.