Is there a new solution to the commercialization problem of pet bloggers?

With the rise of cute pet culture on social media, pet bloggers have won the attention and love of many netizens by sharing the cute daily lives of their pets. However, how to convert this attention into commercial value has always been a difficult problem faced by pet bloggers.

Pet content has always attracted a lot of attention and love from young people on major platforms, and many representative "pet experts" and phenomenal content have emerged. However, the commercialization difficulties and content homogeneity of pet experts have always been two major challenges facing them.

As users' content demands change, pet content has begun to radiate into the fields of health, fashion, and comedy, and has successfully explored multiple commercialization paths such as content marketing, live streaming e-commerce, pet IP, and brand building. The commercialization difficulties of pet experts have improved, and pet content has become a popular way for brands in multiple fields to penetrate the circle of young people, promoting the rapid development of cute pet content.

01 Innovative content creates the “ceiling” of pet live streaming

When a cat and its owner "compete in acting", the evil expression and contrast make many users stop in the live broadcast room. Recently, a silver tabby cat named "Fen Tou'er" became popular on Douyin and became the "top streamer" among pet live broadcasters.

The live broadcast room of "Fen Tou'er" is screened by the owner and the cat at the same time. During the live broadcast, this silver tabby cat had a cold face and did not cooperate with the live broadcast. He showed a fierce look and even stared at the owner's fingers when he was not given snacks. But as soon as he got the snacks, his expression changed instantly, showing his gentle side, and often showing a mysterious smile like a human.

Image source: TikTok

This feeling is very similar to that of a young worker who hates his job but has to do it. Some netizens even said in the comment period that "as long as the salary and bonus are increased, I will change my face in a second and work hard, just like Fener". Because the owner looks very similar to Qin Hailu, netizens jokingly call Fener's live broadcast "Qin Hailu vs. Evil Silver Gradient". The related playback volume of the topic with the same name has exceeded 17 million, and many users have imitated and shot the same video.

With the explosion of live streaming, both the number of fans and sales of products brought by live streaming of "Fenertou" have seen an overall increase, becoming a phenomenal topic in the field of pet live streaming.

The first Douyin live broadcast of "Fen'er's head is a cat, not a pig" began on January 5, 2024, lasting 3.5 hours, with 237,000 viewers and live sales of between 100,000 and 250,000 yuan. The live broadcast products are mostly pet staple food, freeze-dried food, cat litter boxes, etc. In the past 30 days, the "Fen'er's head is a cat, not a pig" account has gained 1.54 million followers, and the estimated cumulative live broadcast sales are between 5 million and 7.5 million yuan. The cargo tray has also increased daily food and daily necessities such as rice and coffee. Among them, the live broadcast on September 6 alone had 3.92 million viewers and live sales of between 750,000 and 1 million yuan.

Image source: TikTok

Live streaming e-commerce has become an important breakthrough for pet experts to monetize.

According to the data from the "2024 Big Pet Industry Trend Quick Report", the scale of my country's pet e-commerce market (shelf e-commerce and content e-commerce) reached 52 billion yuan in the past year, an increase of more than 8% over the previous year. It is expected that by 2025, the overall scale of the pet economy industry will reach 811.4 billion yuan.

Taobao also said that the number of pet owners on the Taobao platform has exceeded 100 million, a double-digit year-on-year increase; the number of families with multiple pets has increased to 39%, the amount of consumption per pet has increased by 18%, and the frequency of consumption has increased by 6%. The market size of pet-related products is continuing to expand.

The same growth trend also appeared in Douyin e-commerce. According to official data, in August this year alone, Douyin's pet e-commerce sales reached 772 million yuan, an increase of 26.56% from 610 million yuan in the same period last year. The average customer price increased significantly from 24.44 yuan to 41.48 yuan, an increase of 69.72%. In the first half of 2024, the search volume for the keyword "pet" on Douyin increased by 65.96% year-on-year and 28.68% month-on-month.

In addition to pet-related products, many products used by people have also begun to be seen by more people through pet bloggers. For example, the blogger "I am Labrador" has a dog named "Maomao" whose owner is an orange grower. "Maomao" helps to take care of the orchard and pick oranges on a daily basis. Many netizens expressed their desire to eat the oranges picked by "Maomao", which eventually boosted the sales of the product, with sales exceeding five million in just half a year.

Nowadays, keeping pets has become a part of young people's lifestyle. Pets are deeply integrated into daily life. The warm companionship of pets also allows the owners' lives and life-related products to be seen by more people.

02 Changes in emotional needs lead to a transformation in pet content

Through observation of pet content, Claure discovered that the pets that are popular nowadays are more likely to have human behaviors and characteristics. When human characteristics, specialties, and even personality appear on pets, it will bring a certain sense of contrast to users, thus feeling a sense of novelty and happiness.

For example, @嘻哈不拆 is a Douyin creator who records the daily life of cute pets. Three dogs of different breeds and personalities have their own characteristics, attracting the attention of nearly 2.7 million fans. In particular, a husky named "不拆" almost only sticks to its "father" in the video, and ignores the care of its "mother", so it is nicknamed "daddy dog" by fans.

From the user's perspective, the popularity of this type of video is inseparable from the change in the content needs of the "pet-keeping army". In the past, users liked more high-looking pets or novel content presentation forms such as pet gesture dance. But now, users prefer daily and personalized content, and pay more attention to the authenticity and contrast of the content.

For creators, they themselves are also members of the army of pet owners. Sharing their daily interaction videos with their pets on social platforms has lower costs for shooting and recording. Many bloggers even share content from daily pet monitoring. This way of content creation is more efficient and easier to intersect with the owner's life.

Image source: TikTok

In addition to being part of daily life, the knowledge explanations and popular science provided by some pet experts, doctors, and pet raising experts have also become an important direction of current pet content, and pet content is beginning to tend towards professionalization.

Most of the short science evaluation videos are accompanied by clear data charts, practical case illustrations and vivid and interesting explanation methods. The information density of the videos is often very high.

Nowadays, users have an increasingly strong demand for pet health and pet life. Through the vivid and interesting explanations of these pet bloggers, the abstract and highly professional knowledge of pet diseases is no longer obscure, so that every ordinary pet owner can easily and accurately grasp this knowledge.

Image source: TikTok

At present, young people's demand for pets is constantly upgrading. Healthy breeding, hands-free, efficient cleaning, intelligent monitoring, and remote companionship drive the development of pet products in the direction of intelligence. In the process of updating and iterating concepts, new equipment and new knowledge need to be understood and learned, which provides space for the monetization of pet science content.

03 Commercialization difficulties have been alleviated, but the ceiling is still low

For current pet bloggers, the main way to monetize is still through advertising placement. For example, @嘻哈不拆 mentioned in the previous article, the categories of content placement advertising that can be received are still relatively narrow, focusing on the promotion of pet supplies, household products or games and platforms. The ads received by the creators include some pet supplies, such as pet deworming medicine Puant Dipai, Lan's dog food, etc. In addition to pet supplies, there are also ads for Zhuanzhuan recycling platform, Choubao snail noodles, Liby laundry detergent, etc.

Today, @嘻哈不拆 has opened a live broadcast room for selling products and created its own brand, mainly pet snacks and pet health food. Although it has successfully transformed its personal IP into a product, it still has great limitations and targets a relatively concentrated user group. At the same time, the repurchase cycle of pet products is relatively long, and there is still a low ceiling for the fans and business growth of pet bloggers.

Author: Dake This article is written by the operator author [Klout], WeChat public account: [TopKlout], original/authorized to be published in the operator, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.