Video accounts need more "Daolang"

Video accounts have become popular thanks to celebrity online concerts, attracting more than 53 million viewers and accelerating the layout of e-commerce and local life. As Tencent's "hope of the whole village", Video accounts are accelerating to catch up with Douyin, but the road to commercialization is still full of challenges. In the future, Video accounts may need more "Dao Lang"-style stars to help realize the e-commerce closed loop and commercial realization.

For a celebrity’s online concert, should you choose Tik Tok or Video Account?

Daolang chose the video account.

On the evening of August 30, Daolang’s online concert "Where Mountain Songs Are Played" was held on WeChat Video Account. It was extremely popular and dominated the screen all night.

This concert, which lasted more than three hours, attracted more than 53 million online viewers and received over 600 million likes, breaking the video account live broadcast record previously set by Jay Chou. Related topics also became hot searches on Weibo.

It is quite surprising that Daolang's online concert was not held on Douyin. You know, Daolang became very popular on Douyin last year, and his fans soared to more than 10 million in a short period of time.

This is not the first time that Video Account has tasted the "sweetness" of celebrity online concerts. Previously, Westlife, Cui Jian, Luo Dayou, Jay Chou and others have all had very popular live broadcast content on Video Account.

On the evening of September 2, Li Jian also held his first online concert on WeChat Video Account. The live broadcast attracted over 40 million viewers, making it another benchmark event for vertical screen live concerts on Video Account.

It is with the help of celebrities’ online concerts that Video Account has made great progress in the fields of short videos and live broadcasts.

At the same time, Video Account is also making efforts in e-commerce. On August 25, Video Account Store was officially upgraded to WeChat Store, and the entry threshold and deposit were further lowered.

This is an important strategic layout for the e-commerce of Video Account, and "Video Account e-commerce" has been officially elevated to the position of "WeChat e-commerce".

While expanding its influence through celebrity concerts, it is also increasing its e-commerce layout and trying to enter local life. As Tencent's "hope of the whole village", its video account is undoubtedly accelerating its growth and catching up with Douyin.

However, in the e-commerce market where giants abound and competition is fierce, the road to commercialization of Video Accounts is destined to be difficult. Perhaps, Video Accounts will need more "Daolang" in the future.

1. Out-of-the-box celebrity concerts

In the field of short videos, Tik Tok is currently the absolute “number one”. For celebrities’ online concerts, whether in terms of influence or entertainment, it seems natural to choose Tik Tok.

Many people thought that Daolang would hold an online concert on Douyin, because Daolang became extremely popular on Douyin last year. Not only did he register an account and release works, but his number of fans also reached 18 million in a short period of time. Fans supported this new idol with great enthusiasm.

Many netizens said that if Daolang’s online concert was held on Douyin, it might be more popular and the data might be more amazing.

As a latecomer in the short video field, Video Account is indeed far behind Douyin in terms of comprehensive strength. Its traffic and influence are also not as good as Douyin, and its publicity offensive for such activities is not as good as Douyin.

This time, many fans of Daolang said that they didn’t know that Daolang had an online concert beforehand, nor did they see any promotional advertisements, so they missed the event.

In fact, Video Account has been organizing online concerts of celebrities in recent years.

Since the end of 2021, celebrities have been holding concerts on video accounts one after another, including not only veteran singers such as Westlife, Mayday, Cui Jian, but also powerful singers such as Jay Chou and Li Jian.

After these concerts were broadcast, they all gained popularity of tens of millions. For example, Cui Jian's first online concert attracted more than 45 million users to watch, and the number of likes and interactions exceeded 100 million, breaking the previous record of viewing for live concerts on video accounts.

This time, Daolang's online concert broke the video account live broadcast record previously set by Jay Chou, with more than 53 million people watching online and over 600 million likes.

Unlike offline concerts where tickets are expensive and seats are limited, online concerts allow tens of millions of viewers to listen together. Everyone can interact and leave messages in the comment section, making it easier for the audience to resonate emotionally.

For example, on April 1, 2022, the Leslie Cheung re-screening concert launched by the video account had more than 17 million people online at the same time, and the comment area was constantly flooded with moving messages such as "It's like you came down again to spend this April Fool's Day with us", "Spend it together", "Love you", "Miss you", and "Tears".

Just a few days after Daolang's online concert ended, on the evening of September 2, Li Jian held his first online concert on WeChat Video Account at Anaya Valley Concert Hall. The live broadcast was watched by over 40 million people, becoming another benchmark event for vertical screen live concerts on WeChat Video Account.

As a platform, Video Account has obvious advantages in organizing such online concerts.

On the one hand, Video Account has the support of a huge number of WeChat users and a powerful social communication chain, making it easy to spread among acquaintances.

On the other hand, Video Account is a key support target of Tencent, which can maximize the mobilization of resources under the WeChat ecosystem and use various components such as official accounts, mini-programs, search, Moments, Nearby, etc. to divert traffic to it.

If users want to share concert information on the video account, they can directly forward it to their Moments or communities. Users who see the update can enter the concert in one second without switching apps or clicking to jump.

Even if someone clicks in and is not interested in the concert, they can reply to their friends in seconds. For artists, holding online concerts on video accounts is also a good way to break the circle and attract fans.

2. Accelerate the layout of e-commerce and local life

In the long run, Video Accounts frequently organize celebrity online concerts perhaps to attract traffic for its commercial layout.

Since the beginning of this year, the commercialization of Video Account has accelerated significantly.

On August 14, at the Tencent Q2 2024 financial performance communication meeting, Tencent President Martin Lau emphasized Tencent’s determination to build the WeChat e-commerce ecosystem.

Liu Chih-Ping said, "We have recently repositioned the live e-commerce of Video Accounts to make it more closely connected with the WeChat ecosystem, including official accounts, mini-programs, and WeChat for Business, in order to establish a more systematic WeChat e-commerce ecosystem. Rather than building an e-commerce ecosystem based solely on Video Accounts or live broadcasts."

On August 25, the Video Account Store was officially upgraded to the WeChat Store, expanding its capabilities to include multi-channel sales, mini-program jumps, and search and discovery, while further lowering the entry threshold and deposit.

In other words, new store applications on WeChat Stores no longer require merchants to have a video account. Merchants only need a WeChat account that has been authenticated by real name and relevant business qualifications to open a store.

After opening a store, WeChat store merchants who meet certain conditions do not need to pay a store deposit for the time being and can achieve a trial operation with 0 deposit.

It is obviously more convenient for small and medium-sized businesses that have not yet entered the video account or have low video account operation capabilities, but want to develop e-commerce business on the WeChat platform.

At the same time, the upgraded WeChat Store will connect to more core scenarios in the WeChat ecosystem based on the previous unified export of the Video Store. For example, the merchant's store and product information can be circulated in multiple WeChat scenarios such as official accounts, video accounts, mini programs, and search.

This also means that stores and products are exposed in more public areas on WeChat, and the jump paths among various components within the WeChat ecosystem are shorter, making transactions or fan accumulation more efficient.

In fact, as early as ten years ago in 2014, Tencent launched WeChat Stores, but WeChat Stores, which relied on the WeChat public platform, did not develop smoothly and was officially taken offline in July 2020.

This time, the Video Account Store will be officially upgraded to the WeChat Store, which is not only a further optimization of the Video Account e-commerce, but also a level upgrade, officially elevated to the position of "WeChat e-commerce".

This also means that the logic of the entire WeChat e-commerce has changed, from the previous relatively scattered point-based e-commerce layout to an interconnected ecological system. That is, through the top-level design of WeChat Stores, various e-commerce projects within the WeChat ecosystem are integrated to form a synergy.

In the future, WeChat stores will have access to more resources.

At the same time, Video Account is also trying to get a piece of the pie in local life. On April 23 this year, Video Account officially released "Video Account Store-Opening Guide-Local Life Industry", and Video Account's local life service was fully launched to the public.

As early as March 2023, the relevant person in charge of the Video Account revealed at a closed-door sharing session of the WeChat Open Class that local related functions will be launched in May 2023.

However, local life is a tough nut to crack. Even Douyin, which has competed with Meituan for a while, has narrowed its battle lines this year. It is not easy for Video Account to enter local life.

Currently, the competitors in local life are far more than Meituan and Douyin, there are also JD.com and Alibaba.

In addition, local life is closely linked to offline, which requires a large number of field sales staff and business personnel. Video accounts may currently lack a local life team, and related businesses are still being explored.

But no matter what, Video Account is making efforts in many aspects to continuously improve the e-commerce closed loop, and Tencent is also stepping up the commercialization and monetization process of Video Account.

3. How far is Video Account from Douyin?

Video Account is a business segment that Tencent focuses on supporting, and Tencent has high hopes for it.

At the beginning of 2023, Ma Huateng called the video account "the hope of the entire Tencent."

At the beginning of 2024, he once again affirmed Video Account, saying that after more than a year of development, Video Account has indeed lived up to expectations, "giving us a solid grip again after the failure of short videos in the past."‍

The reason why Tencent attaches so much importance to Video Account is not only because short videos are the last traffic highland of the Internet, but also because e-commerce has always been the "eternal pain" in Tencent's heart. Tencent hopes to realize its long-cherished dream of e-commerce through Video Account.

If the WeChat "Mini Program" released as early as 2017 made Tencent feel the feasibility of e-commerce platformization, then the continuously growing and developing video accounts have made Tencent see all the hope of e-commerce.

Starting from the end of 2023, the WeChat Pay team will be involved in the commercialization process of Video Account, and local life of Video Account will be put on the agenda from that time.

To a certain extent, as long as the video account completes the e-commerce closed loop, Tencent’s e-commerce dream can be realized.

With the support of Tencent's various resources, Video Account has developed rapidly.

At the 2024 WeChat Open Class at the beginning of the year, Tencent disclosed that in 2023, the GMV (gross merchandise volume) of live streaming sales on Video Accounts nearly tripled, the number of orders on Video Accounts surged by more than 244%, and the GPM (average total order amount per thousand viewers) reached more than 900 yuan.

Among them, the GMV of video account brands accounted for 15%, the brand GMV increased by 226%+, and the number of brands increased by 281%+. There are also more than 3,000 service providers' ecological partners, whose GMV increased by more than 4.5 times in one year, contributing more than 35% of the GMV of the market.

According to Tencent's second quarter report, the revenue of its online advertising business in the second quarter of 2024 was 29.871 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19%, mainly driven by the growth in revenue from video accounts and long videos.

In the second quarter of this year, the total user time spent on video accounts increased by more than 20% year-on-year. Video accounts have contributed to Tencent's growth in e-commerce, online advertising, financial technology and enterprise services.

According to a research report by Sealand Securities, in 2023, Video Account MAU (monthly active users) will be 900 million, DAU (daily active users) will be 450 million, and the average daily usage time per person will be 54 minutes. The main competitor Douyin has an MAU of 1.1 billion and a DAU of 760 million. Kuaishou's financial report shows that by the end of 2023, the MAU will be 700 million and the DAU will be 374 million.

This shows that the monthly active users of Video Account are approaching those of Douyin.

However, for the current video accounts, the number of users is not the most important thing. The most important thing is commercialization, which is actually the difficulty of Tencent's commercialization.

Although the video account has developed rapidly in all aspects, if it cannot be monetized well and there is no higher transaction volume, the "hope of the entire Tencent" cannot be realized.

At present, it is not easy for Video Account to form an e-commerce closed loop, and the gap between it and Douyin will be difficult to narrow in the short term.

The core issue of video account e-commerce is positioning. The content of Douyin and Kuaishou tends to be entertaining, which is an important reason why they can attract and retain a large number of users, and is also the basis for commercialization.

However, WeChat is a functional social interaction between acquaintances. After all, it is a social tool, which is naturally lacking in entertainment and fun. It is difficult for users to consume in the context of work or life, but they often consume randomly when they are entertaining or relaxing.

Douyin and Kuaishou are positioned as "interest e-commerce", but WeChat e-commerce is difficult to be classified into a certain category. Although people use WeChat a lot, the e-commerce mentality has not been developed, and the market penetration rate of Video Account is probably not as good as Douyin.

This also means that if Video Account wants to attract more users, keep them staying longer, or even place orders to shop, it needs to differentiate itself, make more users like it, and even "grab" users from Douyin and Kuaishou.

Although immersive short videos and live broadcasts are attractive to businesses’ marketing communications and can bring practical help, the threshold is not low, because models such as short videos and live broadcasts also require businesses to have certain operational capabilities.

Perhaps aware of these problems, Video Account has set its sights on chain restaurants and hotels and travel agencies with high brand power, because these merchants have their own brand appeal, their own traffic, and certain operational capabilities and can bear potential risks.

However, if we only focus on quality merchants and lack small and medium-sized merchants, it will reduce the random consumption generated by users while watching short videos and live broadcasts, and will also make it difficult to expand the business scale of the local life section of the video account.

In addition, Video Account currently lacks top streamers and head anchors in the field of live streaming e-commerce. In comparison, Douyin has big anchors such as Luo Yonghao, Dong Yuhui, and Three Sheep, and Kuaishou has the Simba family, etc.

Video accounts actively organize online concerts of celebrities. In addition to factors such as influence and traffic, it may also be to reserve more celebrities with the potential to become top anchors.

However, the frequency and influence of celebrity concerts organized by Video Accounts are still limited. In order to achieve better commercialization, more "Daolang" may be needed in the future.