618 of “new players”: Jia Nailiang, the “new No. 1” of Douyin, takes over, and will Xiaohongshu and Bilibili join the battle?

Why has 618 changed so much this year? This article will show you the reasons. At the same time, this article is also recommended for anchors or companies who want to engage in live streaming and selling goods on new media platforms.

No one cares about this 618.

Most consumers have become "indifferent", and the excitement basically only exists in platform battle reports and evening parties. On the evening of June 17, the "JD 618 Happy Night" jointly organized by Hunan Satellite TV, Mango TV and JD.com was held. JD.com's 618 "Last 28 Hours" live broadcast also officially started at 8 pm on June 17.

"Big Anchor Storm" has been updated to a new episode: Yu Minhong's words "Dongfang Zhenxuan is a mess" and Dong Yuhui's words "I am very resistant to selling things" caused the stock price to plummet. On June 13, New Oriental founder Yu Minhong appeared in the "Walking with Hui" live broadcast room, and together with Dong Yuhui, he conducted a live broadcast of Shanxi cultural tourism to "put out the fire". Shortly after the broadcast started, the number of people in the "Walking with Hui" live broadcast room exceeded 100,000, and it also ranked third on the Douyin sales list. Dongfang Zhenxuan's stock price stopped falling, rising nearly 6% in a single day.

Xiao Yangge changed his career path, Dong Yuhui lay flat, and Douyin helped to raise the new No. 1 Jia Nailiang. In the Douyin sales list in May, Jia Nailiang topped the list with sales of 707 million yuan. In the first broadcast on May 21, Jia Nailiang made 380 million yuan in sales in nearly 12 hours, which is the largest single Douyin beauty sales so far this year. Douyin used the power of the platform to provide him with 500 million subsidies, large red envelope subsidies, Apple mobile phone benefits and 1 cent welfare products.

The pre-sale mechanism that has lasted for more than ten years has been cancelled. Major platforms are competing for low prices. Major anchors have retired one after another. Simplifying the mechanism and extending the battle line will become the norm for e-commerce promotions. Old players in the first echelon have fallen into fierce competition in the red ocean. However, new players in the second echelon, such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, still have many stories to tell.

1. Xiaohongshu’s sales increased fivefold as a “contrarian” in the tide of low prices

Platforms that have been swept up by Pinduoduo have gradually begun to learn from it. Information from all aspects shows that consumer concepts are changing dramatically, and "cost-effectiveness" has become the first consideration. Brands that do not have cost-effectiveness are facing a decline in sales. Under fierce competition, low price has become a keyword repeatedly emphasized in the 618 promotion.

Previously, Douyin announced that it would test the price-changing system for e-commerce merchants in a small-scale test. If merchants choose high prices or completely give up opening this service, the Douyin platform will reduce their exposure accordingly. At the end of May, Pinduoduo took the lead in launching a new tool for automatic price tracking for merchants. 1688, which focuses on direct sales of source factory goods, also launched a new price comparison system. JD.com and Taobao also tilted traffic towards low-priced goods.

Although this kind of gameplay meets user needs and protects consumer rights to a certain extent, it also brings about the problem of forcing merchants to blindly pursue low prices without paying attention to quality.

In the tide of low prices, Xiaohongshu, which mainly focuses on "buyer live broadcasts" and "store broadcasts", is one of the few counter-trend players with high average order values.

The commercialization of the platform has accelerated in the past two years. In May this year, it was reported that the e-commerce buyer operation business of Xiaohongshu, which was separately scattered in two departments, has been merged with the merchant operation business to form the e-commerce operation department, which is a secondary e-commerce department. The platform provides merchants with traffic support during the 618 period by setting up broadcast incentives, GMV transaction incentives, and delivery incentives. "As far as this year's 618 is concerned, the proportion of notes (transactions) will decrease, but the proportion of K broadcasts (buyer live broadcasts) and store broadcasts still accounts for about 70% of the total revenue."

Recently, at the 618 media exchange meeting held by Xiaohongshu, the platform announced that the order volume of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce live broadcast room during 618 was 5.4 times that of the same period last year, and the store broadcast GMV was 5 times that of the same period last year. At the same time, Gintoki, the head of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce operations, said: "Live broadcast is the most important carrier of Xiaohongshu's e-commerce, and live broadcast is an important direction for Xiaohongshu's e-commerce." The number of buyers who exceeded one million in a single game on Xiaohongshu is three times that of the same period last year, and the number of buyers whose GMV increased by more than 100% reached 2.8 times.

If the first-tier e-commerce platforms have a large number of well-known brands and white-label products, and the live streaming style is increasingly tending towards the homogeneity of "three, two, one and link", Xiaohongshu, which grew up from a grass-planting community, has shown the characteristics of a large number of emerging designer brands after accelerating commercialization. It mainly cultivates vertical segmented tracks, and the user decision cycle is obviously longer. It is mainly composed of young groups with aesthetic taste in first-tier cities, and the live streaming style is mainly slow live streaming, with strong emotional stickiness.

Such characteristics may be more suitable for releasing the long-tail effect and telling brand stories. Some accounts with low thresholds and not many fans can also become "buyers with goods", but the sales volume is not very high. At the same time, on-demand and buyer live broadcasts can also promote each other to a certain extent.

For example, Zhiwu Home Furnishing, which has 25,000 fans, has established a solid foundation on Xiaohongshu by attracting new customers through notes, strengthening conversion through store broadcasts, and converting private traffic through social media . In the first broadcast on May 22, Zhiwu Home Furnishing's Xiaohongshu store broadcast sales exceeded 1.3 million, a nearly 9-fold increase compared to the highest sales of 150,000 in a single live broadcast on Double 11 last year.

Gigi Leung switched to Taobao Live, and the viewership of her first live show just exceeded 10 million. Gigi Leung herself gained 195,000 followers, and the highest single product sales were over 3,000. She did not achieve remarkable results. Several live broadcasts that were not well adapted to the local environment indirectly confirmed that the "Little Red Book buyer anchor" has its own suitable soil and specific ecology.

The above relatively niche approach proves that Xiaohongshu is gradually exploring the "most suitable commercialization path" after years of exploration and detours. However, compared with Douyin, Kuaishou, Pintao, its user scale is relatively small, and it faces the paradox of the mutual exclusion of content community atmosphere experience and commercialization speed . If it wants to build its own moat of live broadcast differentiation and build a strong "buyer e-commerce" mentality, it still needs long-term accumulation, "quantitative change leads to qualitative change."

2. Bilibili adheres to the principle of "large open-loop e-commerce"

Profits from e-commerce are not necessarily achieved only through transaction services, but can also be achieved through e-commerce advertising.

As a content platform, compared with Xiaohongshu, Bilibili has disadvantages in building a closed-loop e-commerce in terms of user positioning and business model. The former has higher grass-growing ability and consumption capacity, and closed e-commerce has higher requirements for operations, supply chain, after-sales and other links. Taking various risks into consideration, Bilibili has chosen a more conservative "traffic diversion and profit" approach that is suitable for its own ecology. The large number of young college students among its audience is exactly the potential market that major e-commerce platforms are eager for.

On May 23, Bilibili's Q1 financial report showed that its revenue in the reporting period was 5.665 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12%; its net loss was 765 million yuan, a 21.4% increase from the loss of 630 million yuan in the same period last year; its adjusted net loss was 456 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 56%. Among them, the advertising business in the first quarter increased by 31% year-on-year to 1.67 billion yuan, a record high in the past three quarters.

Data shows that in 2023, the GMV of B's ​​open-loop e-commerce increased by 260% year-on-year. With a total loss of 24 billion yuan and the pressure of "making a profit in the third quarter of this year", 618 is obviously the highlight of B's ​​advertising revenue increase this year.

In response to this, Bilibili’s answer is to upgrade and further deepen its “big open loop” strategy. Different from other platforms’ logic of creating a “closed loop within the site”, Bilibili has been committed to directing traffic to other e-commerce platforms through content seeding.

In addition to strengthening cooperation with existing partners Alibaba and JD.com this year, we are also actively expanding new partners and incorporating platforms such as Pinduoduo and Vipshop into the cooperation map, aiming to build a more open and diverse "big open loop" e-commerce ecosystem.

At the same time, Bilibili will carry out a comprehensive upgrade in three key dimensions: product tools, traffic support, and new customer incentives , and provide a comprehensive "618 Preparation Guide" covering marketing strategies, data analysis, user behavior insights and other aspects to help partners develop effective promotion plans.

The "UP host monetization issue" has attracted outside attention time and time again, and major e-commerce platforms are the most important financial sponsors of UP hosts in many fields such as knowledge, evaluation, and film and television. This is especially true during promotional periods, including video jumps, customized advertising, pop-ups, and blue links.

In addition, the mature data analysis and positioning capabilities of each platform are conducive to improving the accuracy and efficiency of platform advertising distribution, and establishing a community consumption atmosphere and cultivating user consumption mentality. For example, the "Jinghuo Plan" jointly launched by JD.com and Bilibili was launched in October last year, which strengthened Bilibili's grass-seeding system and helped brands analyze marketing links and measure grass-seeding value more accurately.

At the same time, Bilibili is also doing live streaming sales, but most of the traffic is limited to the site and has not been able to break through the circle. Bilibili has launched a sales incentive plan for anchors during the 618 promotion. During the event from May 20th to June 20th, UP hosts who participate in video sales or first broadcast sales will have the opportunity to receive traffic rewards.

The annual GMV of the home UP host "MR迷登" exceeds 3 billion, and he alone accounts for nearly one-third of the annual GMV of Station B. Since the beginning of this year, the top UP host of clothing "Parrot Pear" has completed 6 live broadcasts with goods, and ranked first on Station B's "Life Hot List" on June 15. According to data from Station B, 34,000 people made reservations before the start of this live broadcast. By the end of the live broadcast, the total number of people who watched the live broadcast reached 207,000, and 6,600 dresses with a post-coupon price of 264 yuan were sold. "Coco" and "Wubai" have each completed 4 live broadcasts this year. Previously, "Parrot Pear" had achieved a GMV of over 100 million yuan in three live broadcasts.

The live broadcast frequency of the above-mentioned top UP hosts is much lower than that of other platforms, which means that the commercial monetization efficiency of the platforms in terms of live broadcast sales is insufficient. Another problem is that the mid-level UP hosts do not have such sales and monetization capabilities.

In addition, Bilibili also needs to face the problem of balancing user experience. Bilibili COO Li Ni said that Bilibili has achieved an increase in advertising inventory and expanded advertising scenarios such as dynamic search on the basis of ensuring user experience and community atmosphere. "Based on the current basis, compared with other platforms, Bilibili's adload (ad loading rate) still has a lot of room for improvement in the future."

In the field of e-commerce, both Bilibili and Xiaohongshu still have a long way to go from truly coming on the market to posing a threat.

Author: Mia; Editor: Akagi Pingzi

Source: WeChat public account "Entertainment Unicorn (ID: yuledujiaoshou)"