Top-tier slices sell tens of millions of units per month. How should we correctly understand the value of “expert distribution”?

New business model: IP live streaming slice authorization is very popular. It has become the "third revenue growth curve" for top anchors and influencers in addition to advertising and selling goods. The author of the following article explains the feasibility of "slice distribution" for us. Let's take a look.

The "crazy" increase in followers of Crazy Brother Yang and his high-profile purchase of a building have not only led to Wang Hai's anti-counterfeiting report, but also a new business model: the IP live streaming slice authorization has become popular in the market. If you search the keyword "live streaming slice" on WeChat Index, you will find that the total search volume has approached 2 million times in the past 90 days.

Although the company where Xiao Yangge works, Three Sheep, announced a few days ago that it would suspend the authorization of slices, and emphasized that charging any fees in the name of authorization is a fraudulent act, this does not seem to affect the pace of other anchors to "follow the trend". In the editor's WeChat Moments, you can often see the slice authorization investment of top IPs, such as: Guangdong Couple, Zhu Xiaohan, Hao Shaowen, Huang Shengyi, etc.

Could it be that IP live streaming slice authorization has become the "third revenue growth curve" found by top anchors and influencers in addition to advertising and selling goods? Why does this seemingly profitable business model have room for continued development? In this article, we try to explain the feasibility of "slice distribution" from the perspective of algorithms.

1. From the perspective of recommendation algorithm: Why is the “slicing” distribution model feasible?

In fact, the first person to start the IP licensing craze on Douyin was not Brother Yang, but Fan Deng.

In 2019, those who frequently browsed Douyin should have seen many accounts related to the "Fan Deng" IP. Some of them were officially certified, some were marked as local agents, and some had nothing, but they all successfully got the traffic of "Fan Deng" and were representatives of IPs that converted traffic into sales in the early days. However, with the release of new regulations by Douyin in May 2020, announcing a focus on combating matrix "excessive marketing" behavior, this kind of chaos of creating accounts in batches, publishing similar or even duplicate content, and taking advantage of Douyin's traffic has been rectified.

By the end of 2021, as Crazy Brother Yang started to introduce products with jokes and frequently "turn over" in the reverse sales mode, his pace of increasing followers also accelerated. According to Kas Data statistics, in the past 10 months, Brother Yang's number of followers has exceeded 34 million. Among them, the live broadcast highlights shared and uploaded by a large number of users spontaneously also helped Brother Yang's increase in followers from the side, and let Brother Yang's company Three Sheep explore a business model of authorizing live broadcast room slices to agents and sharing the long-tail sales revenue outside the live broadcast.

The Times reported that more than 2,000 people have obtained Xiao Yangge’s live streaming slice authorization, and Xiao Yangge’s share of the income from live streaming slices can reach 16 million per month. However, according to Kas, the number of individuals/institutions authorized by Xiao Yangge may be far more than this number, and Xiao Yangge’s income from slice authorization may also exceed this value. In addition, Xiao Yangge’s “clone” videos are not limited to being posted on Douyin. In Kuaishou and video accounts, we can also see a large number of Xiao Yangge’s clones with goods, and the names will try to be close to Xiao Yangge, such as “Crazy Good Things Sharing” and “Crazy Xiao Yangyang”, etc., to blur the boundaries with the parent IP and gain better consumer trust.

According to the official statement of Three Sheep, after obtaining the video authorization, the slicing account and Brother Yang will share the sales performance in a ratio of 3:7, but the ratio can be divided based on the sales performance in a tiered manner, up to a ratio of 5:5. In order to allow consumers to clearly distinguish who is the compliant agent, Brother Yang also stated in the live broadcast room that the brands carried by the authorized slicing account will be the same as those in the live broadcast slicing, and the authorization number will be stated on the account homepage.

Photo/Xiao Yangge's slicing business

Authorized accounts will be marked with authorization codes. To ensure the quality of the slice lineup, before announcing the suspension of authorization, Three Sheep Network had made some adjustments to the authorization threshold. For example, in the case of Douyin, the number of fans of the cooperative account increased from 1,000 to 3,000, and the showcase requirement also changed from opening a showcase to showcase level lv2 or above. If slice authorization is reopened in the future, Kas expects that this threshold will be further raised.

Although Xiao Yangge has announced the suspension of authorization, more and more top Vs have joined the queue for slice authorization. Among them, there are stars, such as Huang Shengyi and Hao Shaowen, as well as top anchors, such as the Guangdong couple and Zhu Xiaohan. In terms of the profit sharing ratio, most of them are 50-50 at this stage.

In Kas's opinion, the reason why IP is willing to be authorized to partners is not only a means for anchors to use their IP attributes to attract traffic and obtain long-tail distribution income, but also to a certain extent, through the secondary operation of high-quality live broadcast content, it can bring about a simultaneous increase in voice and attention .

Take me as an example. The first time I watched Xiao Yangge’s live broadcast, I was attracted to it because I saw the clips of Xiao Yangge’s live broadcast posted by other individuals. I felt relieved and innovative. Since Zhu Xiaohan and the Guangdong couple started live streaming, Kas found that their popularity has also been gradually increasing, and they have successfully avoided the life cycle "curse" that most Internet celebrities cannot escape. Especially today, Kas found that Douyin's recommendation algorithm may also help distribute this kind of traffic from the side.

Photo/Zhu Xiaohan, the big wolf dog couple, Hao Shaowen slice authorization number screenshot

I wonder if you have noticed that a new data segment has appeared in the background of Doudian, Luopan and Baiying, called "planting grass" . I believe that everyone is familiar with the concept of "planting grass". In the past, when we were doing product promotion, we would emphasize the concept of "planting grass" and the importance of planting grass to merchants, but at that time, the value of planting grass might still be relatively vague, more of the value of product promotion, and the assessment was also the number of VVs of the video. But at this stage, there are clear data indicators for planting grass in Douyin.

Picture/Backstage of Doudian

How do you understand the official interpretation of “number of cooperative seeding”?

In layman's terms, when a user watches a host's short video or live broadcast and is attracted to a product but does not immediately make a transaction, he/she will most likely be labeled "attracted by the product (A3)" by the system. If the product appears in other videos or live broadcasts, the system will most likely recommend the product to people who have been labeled "attracted by the product" to facilitate their final conversion.

How does the system judge whether a user is attracted to a product? The backend does not provide clear data, but only mentions that it will be judged based on multiple behaviors such as the user's stay time, number of views, number of product clicks, number of product purchases, number of product orders submitted, number of times the product details page is entered, etc.

In other words: people who were attracted by a certain product in Xiao Yangge’s live broadcast room but did not make any purchases may be recommended to their “clone accounts” by the system because they are labeled as “advancing”, ultimately generating sales conversions.

2. Expert distribution has more value than just “selling goods”

Of course, writing "planting grass" into the data segment is just an algorithm upgrade made by Douyin to maximize the efficiency of traffic conversion, but it helps to convert the content of the slice. Of course, the more important value of the launch of this function is to further enhance the value of "expert distribution".

In the past, when we evaluated the value of influencer distribution, the most important evaluation indicator must be the influencer's ability to bring goods, in short, to look at his historical GMV data and the GMV data of his own goods. For merchants who sell standard products and have low-end and medium-end products, this standard can continue to be used to select and evaluate influencers.

However, for merchants who sell high-order products, whether they are standard products or non-standard products, such evaluation criteria may not be so friendly. After all, the user's persuasion path will be very long. At this time, it is recommended that merchants pay attention to the second level of value of influencers, that is, the value of seeding. Has the influencer distribution expanded your potential user base? Has your A3 user pool increased? Has the distribution of influencers increased the traffic of your store live broadcast room?

Here we share a case study from a merchant from Kas Academy. This merchant makes smart home products, mainly toilets, and the main product has a customer unit price of more than 3,000 yuan.

In July, the GMV of this merchant's self-broadcasting was 6.24 million, but in August, the GMV reached 10.34 million. If we look at the sales composition, we can find that in July, the GMV generated by self-broadcasting was 5.47 million, and the GMV generated by influencer distribution was 760,000. In August, the GMV of self-broadcasting was 8.71 million, and the GMV of influencer cooperation was 1.63 million.

Of the 4.1 million GMV increase, the growth contributed by store live broadcasts was 3.24 million. However, this merchant did not upgrade the three elements of "people-goods-venue" in the store live broadcast room within one month. Where did the sales growth come from? The answer is from the "grass planting" contribution brought by expert distribution.

In July, under the guidance of Mr. Hanekawa from Kas Academy, the brand strengthened its cooperation with influencers in addition to store broadcasts. However, for a product with a high average order value and relatively limited brand power, the actual sales brought by influencer distribution did not increase rapidly, but through the influencer live broadcasts, the number of users who were labeled as "seeding" for the product increased significantly.

According to the "grass planting" principle we mentioned above, once a user is tagged with a grass planting label by a product, he/she will be more easily reached by the system when other accounts promote the product through short videos and live broadcasts. In other words, through the distribution of influencers, more potential users will be tagged with the grass planting label of the product, and then enter the brand's store live broadcast room, resulting in transactions.

Here, Kas Data reminds business friends not to simply understand Douyin as a place for store broadcasts. In Douyin, a large share comes from the contribution of influencers. Moreover, store broadcasts actually test the "people-goods-place" capabilities of merchants, especially in the traffic competition system of racing. Only live broadcast rooms that can truly increase the traffic conversion rate can be more dependent on natural traffic. In addition, store broadcasts have to pay high traffic investment fees. For brand merchants with low customer unit prices and low gross profits, it is recommended to spend more time on cooperation with distribution influencers. First, expand the basic GMV through influencer distribution, and second, further expand the crowd labels of goods through influencer planting, and then introduce more precise crowds for your self-broadcast.

Author: Kas Data

Source: WeChat public account "CaasData (ID: caasdata6)"