The tortuous road of Moji Weather's monetization has taught a lesson to traffic-oriented products

For tool -type applications, commercialization seems to always be a problem. The "use it and leave it" attribute of the tools means that even if they have millions of users, they can only watch the traffic and worry about monetization.

Meitu, which just went public a month ago, was troubled by this problem. This time, the star company "Moji Weather" is also in trouble and in the public opinion.

At the end of December last year, Moji Weather submitted a prospectus to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and is expected to be listed on the Growth Enterprise Market with a maximum fundraising of 338 million yuan. What has attracted attention is the company's revenue source. According to the prospectus, as of the first half of 2016, advertising revenue accounted for 98.7% of Moji Weather's revenue, and smart hardware accounted for 1.13%, of which the top five customers contributed as much as 79.5% of the advertising revenue.

A single revenue model, sole reliance on advertising, and lackluster hardware performance are all potential risks for this company. Looking back at the product changes of Moji Weather over the past six years, the company has indeed racked its brains on commercialization, trying hardware, community, and service +, but ultimately it still increased the proportion of advertising revenue.

Jin Li, the founder of Moji Weather, said that as of now, Moji Weather has 500 million users, accounting for more than 55% of the market share, which is 3.9 times that of the second place, but they are still trying to explore commercialization.

Want to break the boundaries of "tools"

The main business model of tool-type applications is often advertising, and the biggest problem is "use it and leave". However, the short retention time of users also means that the value of advertising cannot be fully utilized. Therefore, keeping users in the APP longer is the first thing to consider in the commercialization of tool-type products. The same is true for Moji Weather.

But for Moji, one of the pressures it faces comes from the fact that most users' needs for weather conditions are simple and direct, and today's smartphones have relatively accurate weather applications built in.

This means that Moji must provide users with more valuable information. Jin Li told Titanium Media that in the past year, Moji has made great progress in its investment in weather data, from previous cooperation with the National Meteorological Administration to the establishment of its own "Meteorological Research Institute". In addition to supporting more than 70 countries around the world, it can also provide "weather forecasts" accurate to the minute and kilometer levels.

Weather service page screenshot

In addition, Moji has also added sections such as an anthropomorphic dressing assistant and a weather picture community. In Shijing Weather, users can spontaneously upload real-life pictures to determine the outdoor weather conditions at a precise location in real time. Jin Li said that the user feedback after the launch of Shijing Pictures was quite good, and he might consider adding short videos , live broadcasts and other forms that can better convey real-time information.

These are all "weather" services based on the tool attributes, but in April this year, Moji also extended the "weather + service" business based on weather. Opening the "My" column in the APP, it is not difficult to see that Moji has now been involved in taxi-hailing, food delivery, car washing and other businesses.

Jin Qu, senior marketing director of Moji Weather, told the author that the basic logic of "Weather+" lies in the different needs that users may have in various weather scenarios. For example, Moji reminds you that it may rain in an hour, then the user may need to take a taxi home, or it may be more convenient to order takeout to be delivered to the door.

The author has previously expressed the view that the most suitable paths for the transformation of tool-type products are community-based, service-based, and content-based. In order to remove the "tool" label and increase user stickiness, MoJi has tried almost all paths. On the Moji APP, you can see a picture community, peripheral services like WeChat "Wallet", and even weather and health news and information as well as an e-commerce mall.

According to Moji Weather's prospectus, the company's current user retention time is 2 minutes and 17 seconds.

But how should the user experience and commercialization of a product be balanced?

Of course, all efforts are made to provide services to users and to expand the commercialization channels of products.

After launching a series of experimental services and the smart hardware "Air Fruit", advertising is still the main source of revenue for Moji Weather. Cheng Qian, senior vice president of Moji Weather, told Titanium Media that Moji's main way of monetizing its products is currently brand + traffic value, and it will later explore data + traffic value, as well as data + traffic + brand value, but in general, these are all advertising-level revenues.

According to the prospectus, Moji Weather mainly provides brand advertising and performance advertising for brands. The former includes various banner ads, splash screen ads, feed ads, and dressing assistant implants on the APP. Performance advertising, on the other hand, has joined advertising alliances such as Guangdiantong to sell advertising space, and has directed traffic to clients such as Taobao, JD.com, and 58.com in the "Service" section.

Screenshots of ads and service pages

Cheng Qian said that based on the accumulation of user data, Moji will combine traffic and user data, and strive to help performance advertising improve its conversion rate . In addition, based on user data, we recommend content and advertisements related to users' needs. However, Cheng Qian revealed to the author that MoJi currently mainly uses third-party data and has not yet connected to its own DMP (data management platform).

"We only started commercialization in the second half of 2015, and we still have a long way to go," Cheng Qian told the author. As for the commercialization of advertising, Jin Li said that Moji's future goal is to commercialize products. For example, when users are watching the weather forecast, relevant services can be pushed to them to achieve closed-loop sales and improve monetization efficiency.

But if you have taken a look at the Moji Weather app, you may feel that after a series of initiatives to break boundaries and refine advertising monetization, the product page has become too complicated, and you may not even be able to use some of its features.

"We are now working on version 7.0, which is trying to make the business logic in the product stronger and the user's usage path clearer." Jin Qu explained, "The reason why the content is becoming more and more complicated is that we have caught some new needs of users, and there will be a trial process. Now the trial may be a bit rough. In the future, we will try our best not to disturb users unless necessary."

"We have been working hard for this, and there is indeed some commercial pressure now," Cheng Qian said silently.

Hardware will continue to be produced, but TO B is becoming a new profit direction

Hardware is another achievement of Moji Weather besides product commercialization. The second generation of Air Fruit, whose main function is air quality detection, is currently on sale. The price remains 999 yuan, but it has added monitoring functions such as formaldehyde. In addition, the cheaper Air Fruit Sport (299 yuan) has become more popular since its launch.

Jin Li and his team said that Moji will continue to stick to making hardware and does not rule out the possibility of launching air purifiers in the future. However, another person familiar with the matter revealed to Titanium Media that compared with companies such as Xiaomi that have more advantages in the supply chain, Moji may face higher costs in making hardware, which is why the prices of the first two generations of Air Fruit remain high.

According to the prospectus, in the first half of 2016, Moji's hardware sales were only 1.2102 million yuan. When converted, the sales volume is not very objective. Despite this, the role of air fruit may not be entirely on C-end sales.

According to Bao Yueqian, vice president of technology at Moji Weather, the Air Fruit is equipped with high-tech industrial-grade sensors. In addition to monitoring the air, these sensors can also transmit the collected data to the cloud. Moji then uses big data technology and artificial intelligence technology to conduct real-time analysis of the scene, and based on this, it corrects the weather forecast pushed by the APP to users.

In the past, the value of these data may only be reflected in the APP for C-end users, but Jin Li revealed to reporters that Moji Weather is now preparing to develop TO B business, deepen meteorological monitoring, and commercialize the value of its data.

"The source of our 2B service is the cooperation between Moji and some enterprises. Through weather forecasts, we analyze the factors and results that have an adverse impact on their business, feed back to customers, and then the enterprises make adjustments accordingly." Bao Yueqian told the author that Moji's meteorological data can provide more accurate forecasts for B-side enterprise users and help them make business decisions.

Such a statement reminds people of "prepare for a rainy day". Bao Yueqian said that currently Moji Weather's B-side business is cooperating with Coca-Cola, using Moji's data to predict the weather, so that Coca-Cola can adjust their production and logistics.

There are many such examples abroad. Statistics show that the value of industries affected each year in the UK and the US reaches US$160 billion, in Europe US$260 billion, and in Japan US$10 billion. IBM also acquired Weather Channel, a weather forecasting company, for $2 billion.

It seems that this matter seems to be more valuable than simply selling advertisements. It places extremely high demands on the meteorological data forecasting and analysis capabilities of private enterprises. However, once it reaches a certain level, both 2C, 2B business and To Government will become possible.

Regarding the decision on this matter, Jin Li once referred to the data of similar foreign platforms. He told reporters, "In mature foreign meteorological companies, the ratio of B-end and C-end business is 1:1."

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The author of this article @韩佩 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!