Bilibili returns to the battlefield of medium and long videos, replacing playback volume with playback time

When it comes to self-media and the two-dimensional world, we will definitely think of the Bilibili platform. Now, Bilibili has returned to the battlefield of medium and long videos, replacing the number of views with the length of playback. This article describes the relevant content. Let us learn about it together.

At 9 pm on June 27, 24 hours had passed since Bilibili’s 14th anniversary celebration, but more than 4,000 people were still watching the anniversary celebration video.

Three years after being delayed by the epidemic, Chen Rui, affectionately called "Xiao Chen" by B station users, appeared at the anniversary celebration and met with users and fans face to face. Compared with facing investors, Chen Rui seemed much more relaxed.

At the 14th anniversary celebration of Bilibili, Chen Rui emphasized the persistence of "good content", "dedicated UP hosts" and "like-minded communities". Correspondingly, the number of clicks is replaced by the length of playback, and in addition to live broadcast rewards, incentive plans and fireworks platforms, a monthly charging plan is added to create more content monetization channels.

In short, after a brief attempt, Bilibili returned to the battlefield of medium and long videos, trying to use medium and long videos to find a new path to commercialization.

1. Decision on the anniversary celebration

At the 14th anniversary celebration of Bilibili, Chen Rui announced that Bilibili will usher in a major change - replacing clicks with playback minutes. In Chen Rui's explanation, playback minutes can better reflect the quality of the video.

It is not uncommon for long video platforms to use other indexes to replace simple clicks. Starting in 2018, iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent Video successively replaced "views" with the more complex "hotness". But for Bilibili, this change means a shift.

In recent years, under the impact of short videos, the living space of long videos has been squeezed. Both iQiyi, Youku, and Bilibili are facing huge pressure in terms of revenue. Previously, Bilibili chose to embrace short videos, tried to introduce vertical screen mode on the platform, and gradually tilted its resources towards short videos. However, this approach was questioned by many old users and UP hosts of Bilibili. In their opinion, Bilibili has "changed its taste".

Obviously, this adjustment is a response of Bilibili to its previous practices. This change is bound to have an impact on Bilibili’s video ecology.

"Changing the number of views to the number of minutes played is more friendly to medium and long videos." UP host Technology House Xiaoming did some calculations for the reporter: a short video with a length of 60 seconds and 100,000 views, assuming its completion rate is 80%, its completion minutes are 80,000 minutes. If it is a 10-minute medium-long video, with 50,000 views and a completion rate of 20%, its completion minutes are 100,000 minutes. When the number of clicks and completion rate are lower than those of short videos, the data of medium and long videos is still better than that of short videos.

In fact, videos with an average play time of more than 1 minute may benefit from this change.

After the revision, one foreseeable change is that the values ​​displayed on some videos will increase exponentially. For a video with 100,000 views, if the average playback time is 5 minutes, the displayed number will expand 5 times, from 100,000 to 500,000. The difference in playback time will further widen the numerical difference between videos. For the same 100,000 views, the displayed data for a video with an average playback time of 1 minute and 2 minutes will differ by 1 time.

Regarding this change of Bilibili, many industry insiders said that most brands are still in a wait-and-see state.

“It makes sense to a certain extent that longer viewing time means higher content quality, but whether it means higher value for brands requires further measurement and judgment,” explained Cui Yan, general manager of Publicis Influence, a new influencer marketing brand under Publicis Groupe.

Despite this, Cui Yan is still optimistic about this transformation of Bilibili, because Bilibili has sent a clear signal to the outside world: Bilibili will take a medium- and long-form video path that is different from Douyin and Xiaohongshu. "At least it has found a differentiated development direction," Cui Yan said.

2. Finding a balance between quality content and commercialization

In order to once again place high-quality content at the center of its commercialization, Bilibili must face a question: how to get UP hosts to produce higher-quality content?

In the past two years, achieving a break-even has become the top priority for Bilibili. Driven by the goal of increasing revenue and reducing losses, Bilibili has repeatedly reduced platform incentives for UP hosts. At the 14th anniversary celebration, Chen Rui directly compared Bilibili's incentive plan to a "scholarship", frankly admitting that the "scholarship" cannot afford the cost of survival for UP hosts in society, and made it clear that the incentive plan only applies to novice UP hosts.

For those UP hosts who have already stepped out of the "Newbie Village", since last year, Bilibili has launched the UP host business cooperation and service platform "Hua Huo". Through the "Hua Huo" platform, brands can directly contact UP hosts and complete business orders. However, the platform cannot solve the contradiction between business orders and the community atmosphere of Bilibili. UP hosts need to find a balance between business orders and content.

"Just like when we watch TV series, if there are a lot of interludes, even if the plot is very exciting, the audience will feel uncomfortable." Xiao Ming expressed his understanding of the fans' entanglement. He said: "The key is to improve the watchability of the business order."

Making the business order content more interesting and better looking is also the solution proposed by Chen Rui at the 14th anniversary celebration. But in fact, for UP hosts, this still requires trade-offs.

Every year, 618 and Double 11 are the peak seasons for UP hosts on Bilibili to receive business orders. Brands will select vertical UP hosts one or two months in advance to customize business orders. This is also the busiest time of the year for UP host Xiaoming, a tech geek. During this year's 618, he rejected nearly 70% of the business orders.

"It's mainly due to energy and adaptation considerations." Xiao Ming explained that for a mid-level UP host like him, the production cycle of each video is about 10 days to 1 month, and the update frequency is two to four times a month. In order not to affect the viewing experience of fans, he generally controls the number of business orders.

In order to ensure the quality of the video content and reduce fans' negative emotions about the business orders, he will also conduct research on the product reputation in advance and spend a week or two trying out the products. "In the video, I will also try to be objective and not only talk about the good aspects of the product." He will not accept business orders that do not suit his style.

"Fans are quite understanding," he said. "As long as the quality is guaranteed, they generally don't have any objections." As one of the sections of Bilibili that is most likely to receive business orders, Xiao Ming, a UP host in the technology section, does not have much pressure to survive for the time being.

But for Bilibili, finding the balance between content and commercialization and extending business orders to as many UP hosts as possible is a top priority.

This is not difficult to understand. Just three days after Bilibili’s 14th anniversary, on June 29, Bilibili issued an internal email stating that it would integrate multiple teams to form a new first-level department, the “Transaction Ecosystem Center”, which will be headed by COO Li Ni. The purpose is to strengthen the company’s infrastructure in commercial transactions. At the same time, the original “E-commerce Business Department” was renamed the “Member Purchase Business Department” and will continue to focus on the ACG population’s demand for two-dimensional derivatives.

3. Let users generate electricity

On the road to commercialization of Bilibili, Bilibili users often become the target of public criticism. But this does not mean that Bilibili users have no spending power.

During the 618 shopping festival this year, Bilibili once again tried live e-commerce business. Official data from Bilibili showed that the joint live streaming of top UP hosts "Bao Jian Sao" and "Yu Ge Chuan Pao Pao" by Bilibili on the evening of June 10th achieved a GMV of 28 million, showing the consumption potential of Bilibili users.

However, Zhang Yi, founder and CEO of iMedia Research, believes that most of Bilibili’s users are young people of Generation Z who have just graduated and are not price-sensitive, so the live streaming e-commerce path may not be the most suitable. Zhang Yi said: “If Bilibili wants to find its own commercialization path, it has to think of ways to take advantage of the characteristics of its users.”

Different from other platforms, Bilibili's unique community atmosphere attracts a large number of high-quality users. Although they are more demanding about content, these users tend to show stronger professionalism and higher stickiness. "Some unpopular content may be difficult to attract audiences on other platforms, but it can be done on Bilibili," said Zhang Yi.

When Xiao Ming started making videos two years ago, he never thought he would become a full-time UP host. Although many people around him think that his video content is too professional and the audience is small, thanks to the hardcore atmosphere of Bilibili, Xiao Ming has now accumulated more than 300,000 fans.

B station users are not unwilling to pay to support good content and good UP hosts. Xiao Ming told reporters that fans would actively ask for payment when they privately messaged him to ask questions, "but I usually refuse. If you want to support me, just click three times."

Bilibili is obviously aware of this. In order to encourage UP hosts to create high-quality original content, Bilibili launched the "Charge" function as early as 2016, which is a network value-added service. Users can choose to charge their favorite UP hosts to express their support and love. Bilibili will calculate the charging income according to the number of charges given by users to specific UP hosts, and distribute it to the UP hosts in the form of shells.

Recently, Bilibili has started testing a new "charging plan" for some UP hosts, adding monthly charging on the basis of the original custom rewards, which is divided into two forms: monthly or annual. Monthly charging is further divided into ordinary monthly charging and high-end charging. In addition to being able to watch paid exclusive videos, users who activate monthly charging can also obtain fan medals, additional lucky draws, video supply boxes and other benefits.

If the number of minutes played is more related to the quality of the video, then the monthly subscription fee is more related to user stickiness. Although it remains to be seen how attractive customized emojis and exclusive videos are to users, one thing is clear: under the pressure of breaking even, Bilibili has found that users may be the most important piece of the puzzle for Bilibili to achieve a commercial closed loop. Involving users in the commercialization process and increasing the user's consumption conversion rate will help Bilibili complete the commercial closed loop between "UP host-high-quality content-Bilibili users".

Author: Fan Xinru; Editor: Qian Lifu, Sun Yan

Source: IT Times (ID: vittimes)