8,000-word article reviewing the development of the short video industry

In 2020, short videos will undoubtedly still stand in the spotlight, and the value of short video traffic will be fully released into commercial value. At the beginning of the new year, the editor will take you to review the ups and downs of the development of domestic short videos. This may be the first detailed article in the industry about the development of the short video industry.

I hope you can see that: entering the game early or late does not determine the success or failure of the overall situation. When the time, location and people are right, and with the courage to innovate, a fluttering sparrow can also leap into a phoenix.

Although 2020 had a difficult start, with the rise of short videos and live streaming e-commerce and their gradual transformation into user consumption habits, 2020 will definitely be the best year for new consumer brands to start businesses around new traffic; it is also the best year for brands to focus on short video content marketing. Don't miss this good opportunity.

With the rise of smartphones, Camera360, which was launched in 2010, and Meitu XiuXiu mobile version, which was launched in 2011, became must-have apps for installation. With the improvement of mobile phone hardware performance and the reduction of traffic charges, multi-image apps such as Meitu Gif, Gif Magic, and Gif Microfilm appeared one after another. GIF Kuaishou, the predecessor of today's Kuaishou, was also born in this period. In January 2013, "Xiaoying", which positioned itself as "the Meitu XiuXiu of mobile videos", was launched. With its large amount of editing materials, it quickly became popular and then went overseas in a low-key manner, achieving remarkable results.

However, domestic short video apps at this time are still focused on the tool level.

At the same time, Twitter, which was at its peak on the other side of the ocean, spent $30 million to acquire Vine, which had only three employees and had not yet launched its product, and was founded four months ago. In 2013, Vine, a social short video app, was officially launched, gaining 40 million users on the IOS platform in just three months. Soon after, Instagram launched the 15-second video sharing feature and Snapchat launched the 10-second short video.

As we all know, short videos and social media have a natural fusion property: on the one hand, short videos continuously contribute content to social media; on the other hand, social media allows short videos to spread faster.

Social short videos once became the hottest trend of the year. When this trend came to China, it was coupled with the raging fire of issuing 4G licenses in the country, and it became unstoppable from then on.

2013-2014

(germination stage)

Weibo and Tencent strike hard

On August 20, 2013, Sina Weibo built the Miaopai app into its platform, and four months later, it officially announced that it would focus on developing Miaopai.

Subsequently, on September 28, Tencent officially launched the IOS version of Weishi, and released the Android version one month later.

Weibo hopes to leverage its powerful media attributes to promote Miaopai, and then feed back into Weibo's content ecosystem through short video content; Weishi will give full play to its social genes, relying on the dual traffic entrances of QQ Space and Moments, and strive to build Weishi into the next video version of WeChat.

Long video platforms are also unwilling to be left out. During this period, iQiyi launched "Papaqi", Ku6 launched "Short Ku", LeTV launched "Lepai" and "DaKa". All of these platforms have placed great hopes on short videos. On the one hand, they hope to make up for the user stickiness bottleneck of long video platforms through the high frequency and highly interactive social attributes of short videos; on the other hand, they also hope to enrich the content library with short video content and get rid of the increasingly fierce copyright disputes.

However, at that time, whether it was Weibo and Tencent, which held high the banner of celebrities, or major long video platforms, they all had a hard time.

For Weibo and Weishi, under the influence of deep-rooted media thinking, what is pushed in the spotlight are more content from celebrities and big Vs, and what is valued more is the improvement in communication efficiency brought by the short video format. Although each of them has launched a series of operational methods to educate users, in essence they have not given ordinary users a reason to create short videos.

For long video platforms, the focus on top copyrighted content will inevitably lead to the neglect of long-tail short videos, and even lead to the conclusion that "UGC content = industrial wastewater", believing that this type of content not only consumes huge bandwidth costs, but also lowers the overall content quality of the platform.

It was not until May 2014 that Meitu, a mobile photo editing app, launched an app called Meipai. After its launch, it topped the App Store's free list for 24 consecutive days and became the most downloaded app in the non-game category on the App Store worldwide that month.

In addition to popular functions such as breakpoint resumption, Meipai's biggest killer is "one-click MV", which packages the five major elements of editing, filters, watermarks, music, and high-definition picture quality into MV special effects, and turns all complex post-production work of video processing into a one-click "fool-proof" operation, greatly lowering the usage threshold for ordinary users and solving the problem of content viewing. It allows exquisite "templated" content to emerge in an endless stream, and gives many beauty-loving female users a reason to shoot short videos: they can also shoot blockbusters in ten seconds.

Thanks to Meipai's large amount of high-quality content, Meitu's own huge user base, and its extreme operation of the social platform, the number of users exceeded 100 million in January 2015, just 9 months after the official launch of the APP, making it the winner of the first round of short video wars.

2015-2016

(Outbreak period)

The short video industry chain has taken shape

With the popularization of 4G and smart terminals, and the operators' speed increase and fee reduction, mobile data consumption by mobile users increased rapidly from 2015 to 2016. According to data released by China Mobile, with the total number of users remaining basically the same, the annual growth rate of data traffic has exceeded 100% since 2014, and even exceeded 140% from 2015 to 2016.

Correspondingly, mobile network video has become the biggest beneficiary of the "traffic" dividend, with the user base growing from 310 million in December 2014 to 500 million.

For long videos, there were three important changes between 2015 and 2016:

First, a three-way competition has emerged among iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent Video, backed by BAT;

Second, paid content has become the second largest profit model for video platforms after advertising revenue;

Third, original content is booming. According to CNNIC data, the number of self-produced online dramas registered with the General Administration was 549 in 2015 and 4,430 in 2016, a growth rate of 707%.

For live streaming: From 2015 to 2016, the DAU of mobile video live streaming doubled.

The famous Thousands of Live Broadcast Wars broke out at this time. In January 2015, YY Game Live was renamed Huya; in February, Longzhu Live was launched; in May and June, Yingke and Huajiao were launched; in October, Panda Live was launched. By 2016, a total of 46 live streaming platforms were launched in the first half of the year alone.

With the continuous acceleration of capital, the live broadcast industry has developed at an accelerated pace. Traditional PC-based show live broadcasts and game live broadcasts have gradually transformed into mobile-based entertainment live broadcasts, vertical live broadcasts, and e-commerce live broadcasts. Without commenting on the devastation left by the bursting of the live streaming bubble after the industry scale stabilized, at least we have seen two changes brought about by the [Thousands of Live Streaming Wars]:

First, it successfully popularized the profession of "anchor" and made it seem that becoming an "anchor" is not that difficult for ordinary people;

Second, it has been confirmed that live broadcast rewards (the main monetization model for pan-entertainment and gaming anchors) and live broadcast sales (the monetization model dominated by Tmall and Taobao Live) are very efficient monetization models.

With the rapid development of long videos and live broadcasts, the short video industry has also shown a thriving state. However, unlike the initial establishment of the long video platform structure and the booming live broadcast, short videos mainly revolve around two aspects. One is the exploration of the boundaries of short videos by entrants; the other is the initial formation of the industry's industrial chain.

According to talkingdata, in the first quarter of 2015, the total number of mobile video application users was 879 million, and the number of short video users increased by 401.3% year-on-year. However, Meipai, which ranked first in terms of user scale at the time, had a user coverage rate of 5.08%, while Xiaoying, which ranked second, had a user coverage rate of only 0.68%.

Such an industry structure has brought huge imagination space for short videos. Giants have begun to make their plans, and dozens or hundreds of innovative short video apps have also rushed in with their own understanding of short videos.

This caused the entire short video landscape to begin to split from the original three camps of the PUGC community model represented by Meipai, the elite/PGC model represented by Miaopai, and the tool model represented by Xiaoying, and develop in a more vertical and diversified direction.

First of all, a large number of short video products specializing in vertical fields or innovative content have emerged, such as: Pear Video focusing on information content, VUE focusing on VLOG, Little Red Lips focusing on female consumption, FaceU focusing on young user experience, Xiaokaxiu focusing on funny content, and so on. Most of these emerging short video platforms gained favor from the market and capital when they were first launched, and were extremely popular for a while. However, these apps all have a problem: the growth in user scale is not encouraging, and it is difficult for MAU to exceed 5 million.

In April 2016, Taobao launched Weitao Video, and in August, Taobao Second Floor was launched. At the same time, Taobao Live was launched. Starting from the e-commerce sector, the well-known Wei Ya was one of the first anchors recruited by Taobao Live. In April, Baidu launched Baidu Encyclopedia and Haokan Video, which started from the search side. 360 launched Quick Clip and Quick Video, which started from the tools and information side.

On the other hand, short video platforms that emerged earlier have all focused on live streaming. In January 2016, Meipai officially launched its live streaming function; in April, Kuaishou launched its live streaming function; in May, Weibo teamed up with Yixia Technology, the company that owns Miaopai, to launch an independent live streaming APP "Yizhibo". The launch of live streaming not only makes up for the monetization problem that short videos have been criticized for, but also effectively improves user stickiness and enriches content types.

In addition to the changes mentioned above, another shot in the arm for the wealthy giants is their layout in "people". Weibo & Miaopai announced a subsidy of US$100 million to short video creators. Toutiao launches a 1 billion subsidy plan. Tencent launched the Mangzhong Plan with a subsidy of 1 billion yuan. Alibaba Entertainment's major player "New Tudou" launched Dayu account in a high-profile manner and announced a 2 billion subsidy plan.

The multi-billion dollar cake has driven a gold rush on the content side, with a large number of short video and live streaming celebrities/teams/institutions emerging.

2017

(Optimization period)

Algorithms drive the upgrade of user content consumption experience.

Giants are growing up

When traffic and content are growing explosively, another problem arises: how can massive amounts of fragmented content be efficiently delivered to users?

Two platforms that started with algorithms rose to prominence at this time.

At the end of 2013, Su Hua's team with deep machine learning algorithms and Cheng Yixiao's GIF Kuaishou team officially merged, and Kuaishou officially entered the short video community. With the original intention of "do not disturb", version 4.0 including the recommendation algorithm was launched in early 2014, opening up a path for cultivating short video users "outside the Fifth Ring Road" that was ignored by most Internet companies. In just one year, the DAU exceeded 10 million. In 2015, as the short video industry entered the fast lane of development, Kuaishou announced in June that its user number exceeded 100 million, and in February of the following year, the number of users exceeded 300 million.

In June 2016, an article titled “The Cruel Story of the Lower Class” brought Kuaishou into the public eye, causing an uproar for a while, but Kuaishou was not affected at all and its user base grew steadily. Kuaishou, which did not spend a penny on marketing, had more than 400 million users in December.

In March 2017, Tencent led the D round of investment in Kuaishou with USD 350 million. During the same period, Zeng Guangming of NetEase joined Kuaishou and was responsible for marketing and invested heavily in the market. In June, the number of Kuaishou users exceeded 600 million, and the DAU reached 95 million in December.

What is more worth mentioning is that the grassroots celebrities on Kuaishou have their own system, and have early formed a closed-loop path from attracting fans through short videos to monetizing through live streaming (rewards, represented by MC Tianyou, Paipai Qi, etc.; selling goods, represented by Sanda Ge, Chu Ruixue, etc.), and they live much better than the Internet celebrities active in the first and second tier cities.

Now let’s take a look at Toutiao, which was founded in 2012. Relying on the advantages of its algorithm recommendation and the layout of Toutiao accounts, by the end of 2016, the daily video playback volume had exceeded 1 billion, making it the king of aggregated video distribution. It is precisely this data that gave Toutiao the determination to ALL IN short videos.

In 2016, three short video products based on algorithm distribution were launched in succession:

"Toutiao Video" - an aggregation video APP, later renamed Xigua Video;

“Huoshan Video” – a video product that competes with Kuaishou;

"Tik Tok" - a music short video product.

Since then, Toutiao’s short video matrix has been initially laid out, covering almost all common forms of short videos.

In 2017, three products were launched simultaneously. Xigua Video’s advertisements covered the entire Beijing subway; Volcano Video’s offline promotion entered the rural areas; and Douyin seemed to have become popular among young people overnight, ranking high on the App Store’s overall rankings for several consecutive months and topping the App Store in December. At the same time, Toutiao took over FaceU and Music.ly in a high-profile manner. In addition to becoming defensive targets, FaceU's unique facial recognition technology and Music.ly's music copyright have laid the groundwork for the future explosion of TikTok.

As of December 2017, Kuaishou has firmly held the top spot in the short video market with an absolute advantage. Toutiao's three products, Xigua, Huoshan, and Douyin, ranked 2nd/3rd/4th, with DAU far exceeding that of Meipai, which ranked fifth.

2018-2019

(Fighting period)

Douyin and Kuaishou share the world, fighting bare-chested

The beginning of 2018 was the most "troublesome" year for short video platforms: a policy and regulatory storm swept in.

On March 22, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued an urgent document, imposing strict requirements on the production and dissemination of short videos, including that clips of several programs cannot be cut and spliced ​​into new programs for broadcast, and that such programs that are complained about must be taken offline immediately;

On April 4, the main persons in charge of Kuaishou and Toutiao were summoned for a talk and ordered to make immediate rectifications;

On April 10, the "Neihan Duanzi" under Toutiao was permanently shut down by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television;

On April 11, TikTok suspended live streaming and commenting functions;

On May 8, Baozou Comics was banned on multiple platforms;

On June 1, the Cyberspace Administration of China, together with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the local Cyberspace Administration of China, jointly interviewed the relevant persons in charge of Meipai in accordance with the law and regulations, and Meipai was removed from the shelves for rectification;

On July 1, the Beijing Cyberspace Administration summoned five companies, including TikTok and Sogou, and asked them to start special rectification immediately;

On July 16, the National Copyright Administration, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Public Security launched the "Sword Net 2018" special action, which included a special rectification of short video copyrights. Hot short video apps such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Xigua Video, Huoshan Short Video, Kuai Video, and Bilibili were included in the key supervision, focusing on cracking down on various infringements in the short video field;

On July 26, 19 short video companies were rectified, including Miaopai, Bilibili, 56 Video, etc.

This wave of storms affected almost all short video platforms, with Meipai and Miaopai being the hardest hit, with both being removed from the shelves for 30 days and receiving indefinite rectification penalties, respectively. On the one hand, Toutiao and Kuaishou solved the qualification problem through acquisitions (Toutiao acquired Yangguan Broadband and Kuaishou acquired Station A). On the other hand, with a strong desire to survive, they actively cooperated in rectifying content and strengthening review, thus avoiding the storm and achieving considerable development against the odds, forming a pattern of two giants, Douyin and Kuaishou, coexisting side by side. At the same time, the policy storm further rectified the short video market and significantly raised the entry threshold, which also led to the fact that most of the subsequent entrants had backgrounds of giants.

丨Douyin and Kuaishou share the world: from traffic competition to commercial monetization efficiency competition

Speaking of this period, the most dazzling performance is undoubtedly Douyin.

At the beginning of the 2018 Spring Festival, Douyin launched a series of extremely exciting marketing methods (Dance Machine, Million Heroes, Douyin Red Packets), which brought an increase of nearly 30 million daily active users, surpassing its peers Xigua and Huoshan in one fell swoop and becoming the number one short video player under Toutiao. The regulatory storm in April also allowed Douyin to safely receive a large number of users from Neihan Duanzi. In June, Douyin announced that its DAU had reached 150 million, just one and a half years after the product was launched.

When the outside world was still questioning the commercial monetization of short videos, Douyin started a textbook-like operation in commercialization, with its clear goals and high efficiency that were astonishing.

Among them, the most effective is the establishment of a marketing system.

In March 2018, it connected with Toutiao's "Luban" system and launched information flow advertising;

In June, the DOU+ function (similar to Kuaishou fan headlines) and the Blue V enterprise account function were launched;

In July, the Star Chart platform was launched to standardize KOL marketing;

Since then, Douyin has completed a marketing closed loop integrating information flow, KOL, and Blue V corporate accounts.

In January 2019, ByteDance launched its marketing service brand, Massive Engine, which integrated the marketing services of multiple ByteDance products including Douyin; in July, Star Map was upgraded to support the entry of Watermelon and Volcano KOLs. According to Kas Data statistics, the number of active creators on Douyin with more than 100,000 fans has exceeded 75,000. In addition to the Blue V, which has been synchronized with Toutiao and Huoshan since its launch, ByteDance has simultaneously extended Douyin's successful marketing system to other Toutiao products.

The mini program platform launched by Douyin in October 2018 also began to show its power in the second half of 2019. Taking the Dingxiang doctor account as an example, the mini program link seamlessly transplanted online Q&A, appointments, user account system and other functions into the Blue V account and even every video content. The one-stop transformation from watching videos to consulting and booking has attracted a large number of advertisers to actively build websites, and achieved deep links with advertisers at the product level.

In the field of e-commerce:

As early as March 2018, Douyin began its e-commerce experiment by adding a shopping cart function, opening a Taobao entrance, and strengthening e-commerce conversion after short videos were promoted. Then, the shopping cart threshold was gradually lowered until the shopping cart was fully opened in December 2018, and then it was immediately connected to Toutiao’s own e-commerce platform - Fangxingou Mall.

In February, Xiaomi Youpin took advantage of a super challenge competition and teamed up with Douyin to launch a mini-program e-commerce platform; in June, Douyin signed a framework agreement with Taobao that was rumored to be worth 7 billion yuan, and successively opened mini-program e-commerce platforms for JD.com, NetEase Kaola, Vipshop, etc., forming a good product alliance with its own e-commerce platform. The good product alliance has a more convenient consumption process and also supports fission, which shows Douyin's determination to build its own e-commerce ecosystem.

Finally, let’s take a look at the gaming and live streaming sectors:

For Tik Tok or Toutiao, the gaming industry, which emphasizes results, has always been the most important advertiser. On Douyin, you can find Blue V accounts for almost any popular game. When game advertising volume is at its peak, it can even account for half of its information flow. Familiarity with the gaming industry and powerful traffic resources have prompted Tik Tok to embark on the path of game distribution.

In January 2019, Douyin launched a mini-program game - Yinyueqiuqiu. In April, it was independently listed on the App store and achieved remarkable results. During the same period, it acquired and invested in several game companies. In June, it announced that it would develop its own heavy game, which gave people endless imagination.

In the field of game live streaming, affected by the war between Toutiao and Tencent, Tencent's popular live games such as Honor of Kings and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds are banned from being played on Toutiao products. As a result, Douyin cut off the route of game live streaming and opened its arms to trade unions, vigorously developing pan-entertainment live streaming.

Perhaps, Douyin's own centralized operation strategy is not conducive to the development of big anchors, but don't forget Volcano, an APP that is extremely similar to Kuaishou and has always been overshadowed by Douyin. In July 2019, the Star Map platform opened up to Volcano KOLs. In November 2019, Douyin held an offline conference for unions and anchors, and issued a policy of daily settlement for live broadcasts. In January 2020, Volcano was officially renamed Douyin Volcano, announcing the full integration of the two platforms. The live broadcast module on Volcano was further highlighted, and the anchors can receive traffic support from Douyin, and Douyin will inevitably strengthen the display of live broadcast content.

Under the strong attack of Douyin, Kuaishou, which has always been pushed by users, is no longer "Buddhist" and has taken the initiative to let go.

On the marketing side, Kuaishou is following closely in the footsteps of Douyin and released the Kuaishou Marketing Platform at the FE+ Conference in October, which also integrates information flow, KOL, and merchant account businesses. On the surface, the marketing product layouts of the two companies are already very similar.

However, there is a certain gap between the effect and scale of Douyin. On the one hand, Kuaishou will not change its core operating idea of ​​"universal benefit". Although it is trying hard to introduce MCN and KOL, it cannot change the content performance in a short time; on the other hand, Kuaishou's genes are content + social. Compared with ByteDance, the speed of commercialization process is also more inclined to monetize in deep mining of private domains.

In the field of live streaming, Kuaishou has taken the lead and established an absolute leading position. In the past, simple show live broadcasts were difficult to sustain, and pure e-commerce live broadcasts lacked fresh sources of traffic. Therefore, when short videos gradually occupied the Internet entertainment time, Kuaishou's advantages became increasingly prominent.

Since the Thousands of Live Broadcast Wars in 2016, Kuaishou has added a live broadcast function to its products. At that time, live broadcasts were mainly based on entertainment. The anchors obtained public domain traffic by posting short videos, and then strengthened user stickiness through live broadcasts, accumulated private domain traffic, and interacted deeply with fans to receive rewards. In the early days, Sanda Ge accumulated tens of millions of fans by posting positive energy videos.

As the number of Kuaishou users gradually increases, users have various needs, among which shopping needs have been released through live broadcasts. Fans’ long-term following of the anchor has created a strong sense of trust in them, and they can even support the products recommended by the anchor without any reason. This is actually not difficult to understand. Kuaishou’s strong social attributes have created an “acquaintance” effect similar to the offline one. When it comes to consumption, low-end users are more willing to find “acquaintances”.

In April 2018, Kuaishou officially launched Kuaishou Store, connecting the e-commerce portals of Taobao, Moxiu and Youzan. Later, it released the Liaoyuan Plan. A series of actions completely ignited the fire of e-commerce and attracted a large number of e-commerce anchors to join, thus forming the two major anchor camps of Kuaishou e-commerce:

The first type is transformed from traditional entertainment anchors, who still attract fans through short videos and live broadcasts. The core channel for monetization is to rely on e-commerce-based rankings and second rankings (such as Xiao Yiyi). Some entertainment anchors also participate in bringing goods and obtain corresponding commission income (such as the 5 million yuan of Zhuazhi Happy);

The other type is e-commerce anchors. Most of these anchors have their own supply chain and sufficient supply of goods, such as Simba and Zhou Zhouzhenkeai. There are also some big anchors who mainly sell goods and have excellent product selection and sales capabilities (such as Beiyuange and Players Are Fun). They have also accumulated a large number of fans through character building (including professional character, successful character, bestie character, etc.), and won the trust and following of fans.

However, the e-commerce sales ability of Kuaishou anchors has been widely noticed by the outside world because of the fact that at the Kuaishou Sales Festival in 2018, Sanda Ge sold 160 million yuan in one day. Since then, Kuaishou has established its position as the "third pole" in the e-commerce field.

In 2019, Kuaishou further connected with Pinduoduo and JD.com, and continued to customize e-commerce rules, standardize live streaming e-commerce, and adjusted the commission system many times to compete with e-commerce platforms such as Taobao. As of December 2019, Kuaishou data showed that the number of e-commerce creators on Kuaishou has exceeded 1 million.

In addition to e-commerce live streaming, Kuaishou's game live streaming also performed outstandingly. In March 2019, after multiple lawsuits, Toutiao products were banned from playing videos and live broadcasts of several major national games under Tencent (Honor of Kings, Game for Peace, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, League of Legends, and Cross Fire); while Kuaishou achieved crazy growth through its in-depth cooperation with Tencent. In July 2019, Kuaishou announced that its game live streaming data reached 35 million, surpassing Douyu and Huya to become the number one; by December, the game DAU had grown to 51 million.

Nowadays, Kuaishou is no longer just a short video platform in the strict sense, but also the largest live broadcast platform in China, with live broadcast DAU exceeding 100 million. Whether for entertainment, social, gaming or shopping purposes, users are deeply connected with this platform every day.

丨More and more "similar": the shirtless battle between Douyin and Kuaishou has started

Before the first half of 2018, the public's perception of Kuaishou and Douyin was very different. Douyin focused on trends, while Kuaishou dominated old iron and earthy videos. The former's barrier was the number of MCN agencies settled in, while the latter's barrier was the fan economy under the old iron culture.

But nowadays, it is very difficult to find such a clear boundary. Data shows that in February 2018, the proportion of overlapping users between Douyin and Kuaishou was 14.6%; by May 2019, the proportion of overlapping users between Douyin and Kuaishou had reached 45%.

In June 2019, Su Hua released an internal open letter on Kuaishou, setting an annual target of 300 million DAU and calling on all employees to enter a combat state. This is no exception for Douyin. Whether it is the creator support plan or the new business, it is almost in line with the former. In August, in order to attract new users, Kuaishou launched the "Kuaishou Express Edition". While adopting the red envelope strategy and removing the e-commerce entrance, it even gave up the double-column waterfall flow display that it had always adhered to and switched to Douyin's single-column display. The content pool will be manually "purified" by a professional content team and then recommended and distributed by the system.

At the end of August, Douyin launched "Douyin Speed ​​Version" and "Jianying" to defend against "Kuaishou Speed ​​Version" and "Kuaishou Video" respectively. In January 2020, Douyin merged with Huoshan, exported Douyin content to Huoshan, and provided Douyin with traffic support; in terms of product form, Huoshan used Kuaishou's double-column waterfall flow display.

In addition to the product level, Kuaishou launched the car channel "Kuai Shuo Che" in November. On the one hand, it hopes to impress more car brand advertisers, and on the other hand, it is also an attack on Toutiao's Dongchedi; at the same time, at the GES Future Education Conference in November, Kuaishou Senior Vice President Ma Hongbin announced that it would allocate 6.66 billion traffic before the Spring Festival to help educational accounts cold start on the Kuaishou platform, once again demonstrating Kuaishou's determination to enter the education ecosystem.

At the e-commerce level, Douyin and Kuaishou are entangled in ambiguous relationships with Taobao and JD.com while actively building their own e-commerce ecosystems. Kuaishou has chosen to embrace WeChat and Pinduoduo, while Douyin has embraced Kaola and Vipshop, and they seem to have formed their own camps. The competition between Douyin and Kuaishou has blossomed in all battlefields.

But no matter how fierce the competition between platforms is, it is extremely beneficial for creators, users, and brand owners.

For creators, having more diverse content distribution channels will help them expand their influence while gaining more abundant monetization channels. In order to further optimize the content ecosystem and revitalize DAU, the platform will also provide more support to high-quality creators/institutions from the perspectives of policies, traffic, etc.;

At the user level: The optimization of platform creators and algorithm recommendation logic will bring a better content consumption experience. KOL recommendations based on trust can also help users shorten the time.

At the brand level: Content marketing is undoubtedly the mainstream of brand marketing in 2020. With Douyin strengthening its cultivation of private domain/social traffic and Kuaishou increasing its support for high-quality content/influencers produced by MCN organizations, brand owners' marketing implementation has richer carriers and display space.

Author: Mars Marketing Research Institute

Source: Mars Marketing Research Institute