With the traffic dividend disappearing and user loss intensifying, who can survive in the second half of live streaming?
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In 2016, China's Internet and venture capital industries encountered the so-called capital winter. A large number of startups faced bankruptcy and investors became cautious. Mobile live streaming was one of the few hot areas that was still sought after. To some extent, the live streaming industry has almost replicated the popularity of group buying and O2O in the past. Hundreds of startups have flooded into the market in a short period of time, and major companies such as BAT, Xiaomi, 360, and LeTV have also followed suit. After a year of madness, as the user growth dividend has been exhausted, the more difficult second half of the battle has just begun. Especially for startups, they are far from establishing their own ecology and competitive barriers. They are facing multiple risks such as encirclement by giants, cost and operation pressure, user loss, and pornography. According to Tencent Technology, in the second half of the year, many domestic live broadcast platforms have encountered survival crises. Which live streaming platforms will survive in 2017? How to survive? At a critical juncture in the industry's transformation, Tencent Technology launched a series of reports on mobile live streaming, deeply restoring the rise, structural changes, bubbles, transformation and solutions of the live streaming industry in the past year, providing valuable analysis and thinking for relevant practitioners. The mobile live streaming war is entering the second half. China's live streaming industry experienced a leap in development from the end of 2015 to the middle of 2016. But in the second half of this year, the market trend took a sharp turn for the worse. According to data provided by QuestMobile, the number of new reading applications in the live broadcast industry has maintained a continuous upward trend since October last year, reaching a peak of 81.66 million in August this year; starting from September, the indicator plummeted back to 71.21 million. This is a clear sign of a market correction. At the same time, a wave of bankruptcies has quietly arrived. According to rough statistics from Tencent Technology, dozens of platforms including Youqu Live, Weibo, Wangju Live, Maoer Live, and Curry Live have been taken offline or stopped services. Panda TV Vice President Zhuang Minghao described this stage as the FT (Final Table) of a Texas Hold'em game, "At this point, every player at the table must have at least $100 million in cash chips. Players with less than $100 million in cash reserves cannot even participate in the competition." But on the other hand, relying on the newly developed live broadcast business, the mobile social platform Momo produced a brilliant financial report in its third quarter financial report this year. Of its US$157 million in revenue, live broadcast revenue accounted for as much as 69%, playing a major role in the performance growth. Where will live streaming go in 2017? In this situation of ice and fire, a new turning point is coming. At this critical moment of life and death, there may not be much time left for practitioners. The dividends have disappeared, and live streaming has become a money-burning game Among live shows, game live broadcasts and mobile live broadcasts, the market structure and industry scale of live shows and game live broadcasts based on PC are relatively stable. Existing problems such as content competition and profit pressure will further put pressure on them next year. Mobile live streaming, which is currently the hottest, is undoubtedly the biggest variable. According to Analysys data from July this year, in the field of mobile live streaming, Yingke and YY Live have reached tens of millions of monthly active users, ranking in the first echelon. Huajiao, Yizhibo, Laifeng and other platforms have between 2 million and 10 million monthly active users, ranking in the second echelon. Except for platforms with 1-2 million monthly active users such as Xiaomi Live and Crystal Live, a large number of small and medium-sized mobile live streaming platforms have monthly active users below one million. For the leading platforms, the intervention of early capital helped them gain the first-mover advantage; thereafter, with the support of new capital, the platforms further increased their content and marketing investments, thus forming a certain scale barrier. This also determines that if latecomers want to catch up, they should first obtain stronger capital and resource support. Fu Zhengjun, CEO of 9158's parent company Tiange Interactive, told Tencent Technology that live streaming now has a very high entry threshold. "Without hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, it is impossible to get ranked. Even if you spend hundreds of millions of dollars, you can only barely make it into the top ten at best." With the same investment a year ago, perhaps we could have taken the top three. Fu Zhengjun, CEO of Tiange Interactive This also explains why it has become increasingly difficult to raise funds for mobile live streaming startups since the middle of this year - for entrepreneurs and general investment institutions, the time to make a small investment for a big return is over. On the other hand, platforms like Yingke, which are currently ranked high, are not safe either. The gradually disappearing traffic dividend, the high user loss, and the threat from giants with superior resources and financial strength have made the leading platforms increasingly anxious. The traffic dividend was once an important reason for the rapid growth of mobile live streaming in the early stages. A senior executive of mobile live streaming told Tencent Technology that, excluding some relatively vague user and traffic figures, its user growth had already shown signs of decline around June this year. "We were very surprised internally at the time. Although we knew that this day would come sooner or later, we didn't expect that this round of dividends would end earlier than we thought." Ultimately, the disappearance of the traffic dividend had swept the entire industry around August. This trend is particularly evident for some platforms that lack traffic transfusions from giants. At this time, many practitioners began to pay attention to another important data indicator - user churn rate. "According to general industry standards, a 40% attrition rate is normal," the person told Tencent Technology. But in the early days of the industry, this high figure was masked by the rapid growth in the number of new users. Now, the tide is gradually receding, and the industry's competition indicators are shifting to user retention rates . How to survive? In 2017 when the traffic dividend is no longer there, if a platform wants to survive, it must have two characteristics: first, a strong ability to import funds and resources; second, strong user stickiness. Regarding the first point, businesses that burn money and traffic are not the strong points of entrepreneurs. On the contrary, this is precisely the specialty of the giants. Zhang Hongtao, president of Alibaba's Laifeng Live, told Tencent Technology that Alibaba will invest 2 billion yuan in Laifeng Live for content in the next three years, "If Laifeng was not in Youku and Alibaba Entertainment, it might have died." In addition to funds, the import of traffic is also crucial, especially in the context of increasing traffic acquisition costs. Zhang Hongtao believes that live streaming is a product that consumes traffic, rather than a product that creates traffic. This determines that platforms backed by traffic giants will have greater advantages in the future. For example, Tencent's mobile e-sports platform Penguin E-Sports Live launched this year has achieved 6 million daily active users within half a year of its launch through the diversion of traffic from the mobile QQ Game Center. A figure for reference is that Yingke’s daily active users are currently about 15 million, and Huajiao Live’s daily active users are about 8 million. Penguin Esports Live User stickiness is also a long-standing problem in mobile live streaming. Tencent Technology found that practitioners generally hope to increase user stickiness by enhancing social attributes and enhancing content. In terms of social attributes, since mobile live streaming focuses on interactive attributes, it is very necessary to build a stable and long-term social network. Han Kun told Tencent Technology that the biggest variable in mobile live streaming in the next 3-5 years will be the social relationships themselves. "In the age of information explosion, there is an overabundance of information, and we need to use social methods to tell people what they can see." "Only platforms that can combine social networking and live streaming can win in this round of mobile live streaming competition." Han Kun believes that simply producing content is not true mobile live streaming. After adding social networking, another feature of mobile Internet - sharing - can be truly highlighted. Especially when users become "acquaintances" and sharing becomes a habit, the churn rate will naturally decrease. However, establishing a relationship chain is itself an extremely large project, and it is not easy to start from scratch. In fact, looking at the social application market in recent years, there are only a handful of platforms that have survived. This also determines that cooperating with platforms with strong social relationships may be a good shortcut. Han Kun even said frankly that if we want to make live streaming available to the entire population, the only two companies in China that can meet this requirement are Weibo and Tencent. This is also an important reason why Yizhibo has been closely connected with Weibo from the very beginning. On the other hand, enhancing content capabilities is the strategy of almost all mainstream platforms in China. With the continuous development of live streaming platforms, the content advantages established by platforms such as Yingke in the early stages have continued to shrink. Especially when more and more users find that the content and experience on various platforms are similar, how can user stickiness be established? New content situation: “Live broadcast +” or “+ live broadcast”? Practitioners all understand that homogeneous content will cause the platform to fall into disorderly competition. This has already happened on pan-entertainment live streaming platforms such as Douyu and Huya. Huang Xunxun, marketing director of Huya Live, said that between 2014 and 2015, the value of domestic anchors increased at least 10 times. However, this capital confrontation did not lead the market to healthy development. The content of each platform is similar, and the users who follow the anchors have not formed real stickiness. Mobile live streaming does not want to repeat the same mistakes. In the second half of this year, various mainstream platforms have successively called for the verticalization of content, preparing to increase live streaming content in segmented fields next year. "The current live broadcast is all about watching beautiful women, but after a long time, it's like eating braised pork all the time, you may not be able to eat it anymore," Han Kun believes that verticalization is very urgent for user growth. According to the plan, in addition to the e-commerce live broadcast launched this year, Yizhibo will launch financial, fashion life, food live broadcast, etc. next year. The benefits of growth verticalization will also be diverse. If the content provided by the anchor is sufficiently vertical and professional, its users will also have the same attributes, thus forming a small circle; small circle culture is most likely to form a social chain, and user stickiness will also be consolidated. In addition, the accuracy of marketing promotions , mini-games, e-commerce, etc. will also be of great benefit to the platform's profitability. Some platforms have already tasted the sweetness by deploying in niche areas. For example, during this year's Double Eleven , a new platform called Dream Live emerged through a self-made column for young users. It was said to have achieved the record of "raising tens of millions of yuan in 9 minutes, and the number of gifts on that day was worth more than 50 million yuan." Large platforms have not been left behind. For example, Yingke has previously been planning to expand into sub-sectors such as sports, entertainment, and charity, and has been seeking to recruit professionals in these fields. Inke Live However, it is not easy to attract experts and a sufficient audience in a niche field. Tencent Technology has learned that in the vertical strategies of various live broadcast companies, spending a lot of money to win over the top users in each field remains the top priority. This is very similar to using Weibo, and the logic of "big leading small, small leading many" will not change: by first influencing experts in vertical fields, and then leading some people in the same industry who don't know how to play, each of them will develop fans, and finally establish a stable user base. Of course, this model is not unfamiliar to platforms such as Yingke, Huajiao, and Yizhibo, which relied on top resources to emerge in the early stages. However, in addition to the above-mentioned "live broadcast +" logic, the concept of "+ live broadcast" is also becoming increasingly popular driven by platforms such as Momo. Industry insiders said that in vertical fields, whether or not a platform can influence vertical groups of people depends on whether it has deep roots in the field. Compared with the live streaming platforms that entered later, the existing players in the vertical field may have more say. These platforms have users, brands, and healthy cash flow. Even if they did not have live streaming business before, as long as the platform has high-quality users, their content can be digested after the live streaming goes online. In this scenario, live streaming can be used as a tool to serve the platform's original business, such as Taobao Live and Tmall Live previously launched by Alibaba, which provide a better way to present products and increase sales. On the other hand, it can be used as a way to monetize, rediscovering the value of the user community relationships gathered on the platform through business models such as rewards. For example, the highly vertical gay community Blued achieved a turnover of tens of millions at the beginning of the year as soon as it went online, generating positive cash flow. But the flaws of this type of live broadcast are equally obvious. Due to the lack of independence, the scale of its main business is its ceiling. Once it deviates from the main business, live streaming will have no competitiveness. But the good thing is that as long as the main business develops healthily, this type of live broadcast will be much better than many independent live broadcast platforms in terms of money burning and profitability. The simultaneous addition of these two types of logic will undoubtedly make the live broadcast market more lively and more unpredictable next year. It can be foreseen that with the support of strong traffic and strong social relationships, the live streaming platforms will engage in head-on confrontation with new players in various segments. New imagination: diversified profits and overseas layout In the second half of the live broadcast war, improving retention may not be enough. The wild development period has passed, and some new imagination space needs to be explored urgently, especially the single profit model relying on page advertisements and anchor rewards. With the rapid development of the industry in recent years, it has long been inconsistent with the scale of the industry. First of all, in terms of advertising models, various live streaming platforms are constantly exploring. For example, Yingke launched an advertising package for brand advertisers in October, which is divided into three tiers of 6 million, 10 million, and 20 million. During the Double Eleven period, it has collected tens of millions of advertising fees from Tmall. However, this exploration of model may not be entirely good for live streaming platforms. In fact, since mobile live streaming is operated on the small screen of mobile phones, traditional forms of advertising such as patch ads and banner ads can easily arouse user disgust given the strong interactivity and immediacy of live streaming, thereby causing a reverse impact on the brand. This feature has spawned a series of new forms of advertising. For example, Yizhibo designs products as virtual gifts, which increases the categories of advertisements and has little impact on user experience. Proper design will enhance the brand image. Huajiao Live has launched regular advertising resources including splash screens and banners, as well as embedded exposure such as customized gifts and live broadcast room floating windows. In addition, commercial customized filters have been widely used in short videos and photo beautification tools, and can naturally be extended to the field of live video . However, in the short term, live streaming platforms still have a long way to go in polishing their own advertising products and reaching a complete consensus with advertisers. Overseasization is another expansion path that is becoming increasingly clear. Although mobile live streaming products represented by Meerkat first appeared in overseas markets, in terms of product form, overseas live streaming mainly uses the "take you to watch" model, and most of them are live concerts, sports games, or certain projects or activities. In China, the main focus is "for you to see". The anchors broadcast content that matches their own interests, attracting a group of users with similar interests. The live broadcast content is more extensive, the participation threshold is lower, and it is easier to gather users. Meerkat and Periscope In addition, Meerkat, the originator of mobile live streaming, quickly died after losing the support of Twitter and Facebook. On the other hand, domestic live streaming products include both mobile live streaming products such as Yizhibo that rely on other social platforms, as well as self-owned platform products such as YY and 9158. At the product level and model level, domestic products have considerable advantages. This has also encouraged more and more platforms to choose to go global. Fu Zhengjun told Tencent Technology that overseas, especially in Southeast Asia, there is still a strong traffic dividend. "Southeast Asia is somewhat similar to China's third- and fourth-tier cities, and the population in third- and fourth-tier cities has always been the strong point of platforms such as 9158. If we directly copy the model, we may gain a considerable number of users." Currently, Miaobo, a subsidiary of Tiange Interactive, has been deployed in India, Thailand, Malaysia and other countries. According to Fu Zhengjun's expectation, the user scale in Southeast Asia will eventually account for 40% of Miaobo. Huajiao Live is also expanding overseas. The difference is that since Huajiao mainly affects people in first- and second-tier cities in China, it also tends to prefer developed countries with similar user characteristics overseas. Guo He, vice president of Huajiao Live, told Tencent Technology that Huajiao has now entered 102 countries including Iceland and Madagascar, with the United States having the most anchors, accounting for 15.99% of all foreign anchors, while France has 13.67%, followed by South Korea, Japan and Thailand. However, the overseas layout of domestic platforms is still in its early stages, and the extent to which they can ultimately support domestic live streaming platforms remains a variable. Lei Tao, head of Yizhibo, admitted that it is difficult to say whether China's live broadcast products' innovations in product functions such as rewards can fully meet the needs of overseas users. On the other hand, as social chains are increasingly emphasized, live streaming platforms that lack allies overseas may face some bottlenecks in the future. Domestic social products such as Weibo, WeChat , and QQ do not have a mature social layout overseas. At the same time, Twitter and Facebook have already built their own live streaming products, so it is unlikely that they will provide convenience for domestic live streaming products. Undoubtedly, whether it is more diversified profit models or overseas layout, the commercial exploration of live streaming has just begun. Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising The author of this article @李儒超 compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion), please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! |
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