"Buddhist" video account, lie down on 618

Amid the 618 shopping spree, only the video account remained quiet. Was it a case of lying down or passively forgotten? This article deeply analyzes the performance of the video account during the 618 e-commerce promotion and explores the reasons behind it and the challenges it faces.

On the night of June 18, e-commerce platforms entered the climax of the final battle.

When Jia Nailiang surpassed Xiao Yangge and Dong Yuhui to become the new number one on Douyin with 707 million, when Li Jiaqi announced the launch of his own brand and Mei One Youxuan entered the field of self-operated brands, starting a new brand model, the most important event of 618, Christy Chung's first live broadcast with goods, also started on time on Video Account.

On the official marketing page of Tencent Video, Christy Chung is the only major event mentioned during the 618 period. To some extent, Christy Chung may be the biggest celebrity on the video account during the 618 period.

For e-commerce platforms, top anchors are more like a facade. Even in the "most popular 618 in history", the top anchors of major e-commerce platforms are still very popular. On the first day of 618, the GMV of the beauty category in Li Jia's live broadcast room exceeded 2.675 billion yuan. From this perspective, Christy Chung seems to be quite interesting for video accounts.

Christy Chung has 8.684 million followers on Douyin. Although she is a top-tier celebrity, she still has a significant gap in followers compared to Xiao Yangge, Dong Yuhui, etc. In addition, Christy Chung's sales have not been smooth sailing in terms of word-of-mouth. According to public data, in 2023, some media reported that Christy Chung received a slot fee of 50,000 yuan, but the sales effect was not good and only 7 orders were sold. Whether in terms of word-of-mouth or sales ability, Christy Chung has strong limitations.

But in this context, Video Account chose Zhong Liti at the key node of 618. To some extent, it also means that compared with other e-commerce platforms that are making multi-dimensional and full-coverage efforts, Video Account is somewhat "at its wit's end".

Since the beginning of this year, Video Account has started to make full efforts in the commercialization of e-commerce and local life, and has introduced a number of rules such as cracking down on AI anchors and restricting the release of vulgar content, which makes the outside world believe that this year will be a year of rapid development of Video Account e-commerce. However, judging from the performance of 618, Video Account, which has been quiet, seems to have a lot of lessons to learn. Whether it is e-commerce infrastructure, the new positioning of middle-aged and elderly users, or the transformation from content to e-commerce, from the current point of view, Video Account is far away from the top e-commerce companies.

After experiencing rapid growth, "Hope of the Whole Village" has completed all the simple tasks. The next more difficult part, how the video account should break through, does not seem to have a clear prospect.

01 "The most exciting 618", the video account chooses "Buddhism"

"This year's 6.18 is really the worst 6.18 I have ever seen. I even doubt whether there will be a 6.18 next year." In the report, an e-commerce person who has been in the industry for 15 years sighed sincerely.

From the content point of view, Tmall and JD.com have cancelled the pre-sale system, and consumers can buy spot goods directly. Tmall and Taobao's coupons are also connected for the first time, and consumers no longer have to endure the pain of ordering together. On the other hand, affected by the rise of Pinduoduo, the low prices between platforms are also deepening. The launch of the price comparison system makes it seem that the top anchors are not the first choice. At the same time, the popularization of policies such as refund only and free shipping for returns has also begun to level the differences between platforms.

Among the top e-commerce platforms, Video Account seems to be an alternative. According to a report by Guohai Securities, Video Account will have 900 million monthly active users and 450 million daily active users in 2023, with an average daily usage time of 54 minutes per person, which is lower than Douyin's 1.1 billion (monthly active users) and 760 million (daily active users), but higher than Kuaishou's 670 million (monthly active users) and 380 million (daily active users). Video Account, backed by WeChat, has become the second largest short video platform after Douyin. Ma Huateng also bluntly said that he regarded Video Account as "the hope of the village", but with such a high number of users and daily active users, Video Account seems quite Buddhist for the mid-year promotion 618.

Compared with other platforms that have been deployed early and have clear strategies, the incentive policy of Video Account came later. Near the end of May, Video Account officially released an aggressive plan. At the same time, compared with the high investment and huge subsidies of other platforms, Video Account can be said to have "limited bleeding". From the specific policy point of view, in terms of traffic incentives, only the amount of e-commerce growth cards and traffic coupons has been increased (these two tools can be used for exposure and drainage). In terms of GMV incentives, only the requirements for order settlement have been relaxed. However, in terms of content, the 618 incentive plan canceled the traffic incentive policy for the previous video account content to publish 618-related topics, and this event does not include catering and hotel travel. Registration requires that the merchant store and the expert's rating are both greater than or equal to 4.2, and the freight insurance activation and signing are completed. The requirements are actually stricter than last year.

Regular incentives, coupled with stricter item-by-item policies, have greatly reduced the popularity of Video Account 618 before it even started.

On the other hand, Video Account does not seem to have made much progress in terms of volume. Judging from the top anchors that other platforms value, Dong Yuhui and Xiao Yangge are both frequent visitors to Weibo hot searches, but Guo Yiyi, the current top anchor of Video Account, is a little-known presence. In her profile, there is such an introduction: "At the age of 23, she was studying for a master's degree in mathematics while giving birth to a child. After graduation, she has been a housewife. She experienced postpartum depression and finally did my first job (live streaming)." Guo Yiyi became really famous, more based on her sales performance. Data shows that Guo Yiyi's single-game GMV once reached 50 million, and she was hailed as the top anchor of Video Account by the media.

As the "No. 1 video anchor", Guo Yiyi was also quite restrained about 618. There was only one official preview video, and the number of live broadcasts was not increased. In the introduction, she only wrote "live broadcast every Saturday at 7 pm."

The Buddhist attitude of the platform and the top anchors, and the live broadcast of Christy Chung, the biggest event of the video account, have become one of the few publicity points. But even so, judging from the subsequent feedback, Christy Chung’s live broadcast on the night of June 18 also had constant problems.

On June 19, some media and merchants broke the news that the premiere of movie star Christy Chung on Video Account on June 18 almost "collapsed across the board": at 10:40 am on June 18, the live broadcast room had nearly 10 million viewers, and the sales data was about 5,000 orders. But it is said that the merchant paid a pit fee of 30,000 yuan, and an average of 20,000 people bought one order, with a conversion rate of only 0.5%. The whistleblower said that Christy Chung's failure to bring goods this time was related to her wrong product selection. The users of Video Account tend to be middle-aged and elderly people, who are more rational, while the users of Douyin and Kuaishou tend to be young and middle-aged. Products are selected according to the preferences of young and middle-aged people, so they naturally do not sell well on Video Account.

The collective Buddhist attitude of "giving hope to the whole village" seems to be obviously different. What exactly is holding back the progress of the video account?

02 How many lessons do I need to make up for the video account?

In fact, judging from Tencent's actions, Video Account has entered the track of accelerating commercialization, especially e-commerce. At the beginning of 2024, Tencent Advertising released a guide for bringing goods to Video Account, which was regarded by the industry as a sign that Video Account is fully accelerating live streaming to bring goods. Some industry insiders even interpreted it as that Video Account will boost the e-commerce ecosystem around the Spring Festival.

At the same time, according to insiders close to Tencent, the internal horse racing mechanism was still adopted by Tencent for the commercialization of Video Account, with the WeChat payment team and the developer platform team competing internally. In March, this round of horse racing ended, and the teams in Guangzhou and Shenzhen were integrated, led by Zhang Xiaolong himself. Faced with such a strong inclination of resources, the explosion of Video Account was already inevitable in the eyes of the outside world.

But several months have passed, and during the "paper-submission moment" of 618, the video account has performed mediocrely. The main reason behind this seems to be that Tencent underestimated the difficulty of building an e-commerce ecosystem.

From the perspective of actions, the video account has been iterating in Tencent's classic small steps and fast running. Since last year, the video account freight insurance service has been launched, followed by the launch of two new functions: "Invitation to Bring Goods" and "Expert Square". In December, the expert selection center of the video account opened two new columns: "Preferred Goods" and "Newcomer Order". In May this year, the video account launched the virtual account function to protect the privacy of buyers. On May 28, WeChat issued an internal announcement stating that the video account live e-commerce team will be incorporated into the WeChat open platform, and further integrated with transaction-related teams such as mini programs. Starting from May 29, WeChat Video Account will officially launch the "Window Expert Growth Level System".

The continuous iteration of content and functions makes the video account look more and more rich. At the same time, the strong product path is obvious, but e-commerce is mainly based on selling goods after all, and the strong operational attributes are very obvious. Whether it is Pinduoduo’s low-price gameplay or JD’s logistics and distribution, to a certain extent, what they are competing for is the understanding of operations.

A senior industry insider pointed out that the video account has to overcome three major challenges in order to develop e-commerce. The pressure on after-sales service will be huge, as well as the pressure on the supply chain and other fulfillment capabilities, and the ability to operate activities. Behind these strong operations, long-term and heavy investments and a team with strong combat capabilities are needed. This seems to be a difficult problem for Tencent, which is good at products and mainly operates light-operation categories such as games.

According to Yibang Power, the WeChat founding team previously proposed that the video account cannot copy Douyin, and it cannot skip its growth process and directly imitate a very stable and successful product form. Within Tencent, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong recently reiterated the positioning of the video account, saying that the original intention of the video account was to create a platform where everyone can speak out, rather than a short video distribution platform: "He (Zhang Xiaolong) recently mentioned that the product is the content, and he hopes that WeChat can allow the product to circulate in a new way.

Although the goal vision is grand and profound, the realization seems to be very different. In other words, from the current perspective, Video Account still seems to want to use the idea of ​​product iteration, skip strong operations, and evolve into an e-commerce platform in a roundabout way. This path seems very difficult.

Take the most important event of 618, Christy Chung's live streaming, for example. If it is true as the whistleblower said, the influencer did not even have a clear user portrait for live streaming and still used the original idea for live streaming, then the product iterations in the past six months seem to be getting further and further away from the actual user needs. And only in a small scale, product problems are still very dense. If the video account starts a large-scale e-commerce attempt, the consequences may be disastrous.

The lack of top influencers, weak infrastructure, and imperfect strong operation system have hindered the pace of video accounts from the current perspective. However, if Tencent wants to correct this, it needs to make up its mind on the direction.

03 The future of content e-commerce may have only one path

In Tencent's first quarter financial report for 2024, the data of Video Account still performed well, with the total user usage time of Video Account increasing by more than 80% year-on-year. In the e-commerce business, the GMV of Video Account increased nearly 3 times in 2023, the number of orders increased by more than 244%, and the number of goods supplied increased by about 300%. However, in terms of overall revenue, advertising is still the main source of revenue and profit for Video Account.

With the support of huge traffic, Video Account is still running on the fast lane. As industry insiders estimate, Video Account may soon reach 2 trillion GMV, but higher-level growth requires Tencent to invest on a larger scale.

Judging from the current e-commerce landscape, even the fastest-growing Douyin e-commerce has begun to slow down, and the stock game has become more obvious. This also means that competition in the e-commerce market has entered a new stage. It is no longer simply relying on the growth in the number of users to drive business development, but requires more refined operations and differentiated strategies to attract and retain users. In this case, Video Account faces huge challenges. How to compete for more market share in the stock market? Faced with the pressure from competitors, how to get rid of the shackles of social platforms and occupy the minds of e-commerce? These questions seem to need Video Account to answer them again.

Douyin's path has set an example for content e-commerce in terms of both scale and efficiency. In the context of the current platform involution, Douyin's path may become the best path for content e-commerce for a long time. Even in the industry's view, Douyin's e-commerce path is the only path for content e-commerce. From another perspective, whether from traffic to operations, from algorithms to the entire domain, Douyin and WeChat, two national-level apps, have parts that can be learned from each other.

As for the video accounts that are trying to break through TikTok, it seems unclear how to find a new path. On the other hand, for the Tencent system, the time left for the video accounts seems to be running out. How long can the video accounts wait before they can come up with a big move? Perhaps, like Tencent Games, they have to speed up under pressure.