Burning money, poaching anchors, and high bandwidth fees, how do live streaming platforms achieve commercial monetization?

Today, let’s talk about how the live streaming industry will achieve commercial monetization in addition to the existing gift monetization.

Before the capital winter of 2015, when you walked into a coffee shop on Zhongguancun Entrepreneurship Street, you could hear entrepreneurs talking to investors about their ideals and the future. At that time, most entrepreneurs were chasing after user volume and financing rounds. As for how the company should achieve commercial monetization, the founder himself does not seem to know. Later, when the money ran out and most startups died before they could get the next round of financing.

The essence of business should be transactions and profits, rather than spending unlimited money to seize the market. Didi and Kuaidi merged and then acquired Ube China, Meituan and Dianping merged, 58.com and Ganji.com merged... The battle to seize the market by burning money cannot last too long, and the invisible hand behind it is the power of capital. Investors focus on business and pursue profits.

Internet celebrities monetize and use fan economy

The live streaming platforms have a large number of popular internet celebrities, and more and more advertisers are inviting celebrities on the live streaming platforms to expose their products. Compared to celebrity advertising or print advertising, which focuses more on achieving brand recognition and awareness, influencers on live streaming platforms use live streaming to more naturally integrate advertisers' products into life, thus bringing related brands closer in the minds of users and establishing a more lasting influence relationship, thereby guiding viewers to convert into paying users.

With the development of live streaming content in various segments, vertical fields such as tourism, games , food, fashion, etc. all have appealing and influential Internet celebrities. When brands want to influence their respective segments, they choose suitable live streaming Internet celebrities based on the target users of the product, and use the fan economy to achieve exposure at a faster speed and gain user recognition.

So how do live streaming platforms use internet celebrities to realize monetization?

Tencent Guangdiantong utilizes idle social traffic, relies on big data's precise crowd analysis capabilities and massive amounts of high-quality advertising materials, and provides them to advertisers to realize traffic monetization. The live streaming platform has idle traffic from internet celebrities and can also serve as the “Tencent Guangdiantong” of the live streaming platform.

By utilizing big data analysis , live streaming platforms can obtain clear user portraits, such as basic information, user behavior, and user status of users watching live streaming, thus achieving precise targeting capabilities. The live broadcast platform matches qualified internet celebrities according to the advertiser's target users. The internet celebrities cooperate with advertisers to do offline customized live broadcasts, live broadcast room advertisements, advertising endorsements, etc., in order to achieve the promotional effect. Live streaming platforms monetize online celebrity traffic by charging corresponding service fees and advertising revenue sharing.

Case Study

1. Brand Story

The M series is the sports model of a certain car brand A. Its unconventional structure and highly dynamic expression extend the charm of racing. As an entry-level sports car, it promotes the youthful texture of "speed and passion" and hopes to bring the ultimate experience to customers.

2. Marketing pain points

Car A is a model with a strong personality, adhering to the essence of BMW brand sports. Advertisers hope to use appropriate promotional methods to allow the audience to truly experience the car and the sports concept of the BMW brand, and to trigger strong social interaction.

3. Marketing plan

The live streaming platform selected 100 internet celebrities based on the advertisers' target groups. Most of the fans of these internet celebrities are men aged 25-60 who have high spending power, pursue high quality of life and have high income. The advertiser invited these 100 internet celebrities to go to major cities for a 24-hour live broadcast to "experience the car" and gave out purchase coupons during the live broadcast. The live broadcast platform used its own traffic to customize personalized live broadcast pages for advertisers, and made the live broadcast rooms of multiple Internet celebrities officially recommended, attracting the attention of countless people.

Members, providing value-added services

On June 14 this year, iQiyi’s official membership exceeded 20 million. By using high-quality content, ordinary users are attracted to become members, and members have the privilege of being the first to watch the entire series. A typical case is "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", which increased the number of paying users by 5 million and ultimately brought 2.7 billion traffic to iQiyi. This viewing mode is called the tomb-raiding mode by iQiyi, and its paid membership business strategy became officially known to the public because of this drama.

The video industry's monetization is mainly through advertising + membership, and the difference between live streaming and video lies in real-time interactivity, which also means that live streaming cannot be used for video advertising in the video industry. If you have to watch the video advertisement before watching the live broadcast, the delay of the live broadcast will greatly affect the user experience. Nowadays, the income of live streaming platforms mainly comes from gifts and rewards from a small number of users. I believe that the membership income of live streaming platforms will be able to attract other non-paying users to try to pay.

Profit demand is the fundamental driving force for enterprises to encourage user payments. High-quality content is the core competitiveness, and a complete content system provides the possibility for developing user payments.

The live streaming platform’s e-sports event copyrights and PGC variety shows are a good way for members to monetize. In the future, these contents will be able to support members' paid subscriptions or viewing, providing members with a rich selection of content and giving users more privileges. For example, members can watch a designated PGC variety show, members can watch live broadcasts with higher clarity and fluency, members can purchase event peripherals at a discount, members can remove advertisements and other services.

Game joint operation & advertising

China's mobile gaming industry is in the transition stage from the initial explosive growth phase to the mature phase, but the market is plagued by the phenomenon of following trends, lacks innovation, and many gaming products are highly homogenized. Suppose a game becomes popular, other game companies will add the gameplay of several popular games, copy the UI of a top-ranked game on the app store, and then copy the social features of a certain game, and it will become a mashup of "innovative game."

As game products become increasingly homogeneous, channels are becoming increasingly important. With good channels, your game may become popular. When a game fails to become popular, it sometimes doesn’t mean that your gameplay is bad or that you lack innovation, but rather that your channels are not good. In a country where plagiarism is rampant, channels are king. The widespread existence of paid ranking manipulation on the Appstore shows the extent to which games currently rely on channels.

The game live streaming platform has attracted a large number of game enthusiasts. In the eyes of game manufacturers, the live streaming platform has become a channel for game promotion , similar to the Android application market and Appstore. Game advertising and mobile game joint operations are the most direct ways to monetize. Through advertising and joint operation of games, they collect huge advertising fees and commissions from recharges of high-volume premium games.

Looking ahead, mobile game live streaming will be an important revenue point for live streaming platforms. With the gradual decline of PC and web games, mobile games are developing rapidly. The characteristics of mobile games are more dependent on game distribution channels. It is easier for live streaming platforms and game manufacturers to achieve a win-win situation through cooperation. In early 2016, Google Games began developing an in-game live streaming feature, which means that players only need to open the game and click the live streaming button inside the game to start and watch the live streaming with one click. In China, the Chushou live broadcast platform is already developing such a one-click viewing function, as long as the game function is connected to the SDK live broadcast technology developed by Chushou.

Douyu 's commercialization is given priority among major live streaming platforms. You can see various game advertisements when you open the homepage or the live streaming room. When it comes to business monetization, it is very important to find the balance between user experience and business.

E-commerce , learn how to sell goods

Weibo has been questioned for its inability to make a profit. In 2012, when Weibo users were active, it lost $100 million; in 2013, it lost $38 million; and in 2014, it lost $63 million. This year, Weibo's pursuit of profitability has become obvious.

At the Weibo V Influence Summit held in Beijing in October 2016, Weibo, whose market value had just surpassed Twitter, released some data. 11.7 billion, the largest source of new media project revenue in 2016 came from e-commerce.

In an era where traffic is king, e-commerce monetization is a very direct method. Live streaming + e-commerce has effectively solved a pain point of e-commerce shopping. That is, live streaming shopping can eliminate users' distrust of product pictures. Live streaming can create a sense of participation and temporariness for users, changing the users' long-standing e-commerce shopping experience. This is also the "live shopping" that is currently valued by e-commerce companies such as Taobao and Jumei.

Luo Zhenyu said that the advertising monetization method is outdated and undesirable, so it is important to learn how to sell goods. But from the perspective of form, this "content + e-commerce" approach is actually a disguised form of soft advertising, so whether users will pay for this model is an important question. As the trend of consumption upgrading becomes more and more obvious, live streaming + e-commerce cannot simply sell "goods", but should showcase a lifestyle.

Conclusion

Zhihu launched Zhihu Live to realize commercial monetization of knowledge sharing. Bilibili has launched premium membership to realize monetization through value-added services, and more commercial monetization of the live broadcast platform will also be launched in the near future. It is also very challenging to make the advertisement "beautiful" without affecting the user experience.

Most companies in the live streaming industry have only been established for a short time. They do not have the energy to do everything in detail and have to go through these tests step by step. The road to commercial monetization is full of challenges. When the dust settles in the live broadcast industry and a huge number of users gather together, the signing fees of anchors will be greatly reduced, and the spring of commercial monetization of the live broadcast industry will truly arrive.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @烤乌鼠 is compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!