Video Account: An optional or mandatory option for creators?

The development of Tencent's video account has a profound impact on the choices of short video creators. In this chapter, the author analyzes the development trend of the video account, the new progress in the monetization of the video account, and what the video account means to the creators. Let's take a look.

Video accounts have been around for more than 3 years.

As Tencent’s “hope of the whole village”, the development of Video Account not only directly affects the market structure of the short video track, but also profoundly affects the choices of short video creators.

How to understand the development trend of video accounts, what new progress has been made in the monetization of video accounts, and what exactly does video accounts mean to creators...

Today, Wei Xi will talk to you about these issues——

1. Has the product pace of Video Account slowed down?

Indeed, compared with the dazzling product iteration rhythm at the beginning of the release of Video Account, the update speed of Video Account at the functional level is objectively decreasing.

The rapid iteration rhythm of video accounts in 2020

So how should we understand this reduction?

In my opinion, the slowdown in the iteration pace at the core functional level is precisely the process of the video account gradually maturing as a latecomer product.

In fact, in the early stages of a product, the definition of the product at the framework level is extremely critical. Therefore, rapid iteration of early functions is a process of infrastructure construction. Only when the foundation is solid can the high-rise building be stable.

With the clear definition of core functions and main functions, subsequent large-scale iterations at the perceptible level will naturally slow down, and more will be focused on continuously polishing and improving the construction of the ecosystem around core functions.

This is not the rhythm of a video account product.

In fact, the successful products we have seen basically have the same iteration rhythm - "fast in the early stage, stable in the later stage".

Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter abroad, or WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, and Pinduoduo in China, their core product definitions were actually determined in the early stages, while in the later stages they adjusted or strengthened certain product orientations on a small scale and to a small extent.

We have seen that products whose core product definitions are constantly changing have left many lessons for the industry:

Douban’s mobile app has been modified again and again but it didn’t work, Alipay’s forced addition of social functions was stopped by public opinion, Meitu Xiuxiu’s transformation from a tool to a social app was not successful, and Zhihu’s strong push for videoization failed…

If the core product definition is constantly modified, it proves that the product lacks deep thinking on its core mechanism.

Therefore, in this sense, the slowdown in the iteration pace of core product functions of Video Account is a normal routine operation in the field of Internet products.

A more accurate statement is that the iteration pace of core functions that users can see is slowing down, but the Video Account product team is carefully polishing the areas that users are not so aware of.

In fact, data proves that the architecture setting of the video account's "atomic content components" is very successful.

Let’s take a look at the data of the video account in WeChat Open Course PRO 2023:

• The activity of authors increased by 2 times year-on-year, consumption time increased by 3 times, the number of authors with 10,000 fans increased by 4 times, the Spring Festival Gala live broadcast was watched by 190 million people, the sales of live streaming products increased by 800%, and the total income of anchors increased by 447%.
• The usage time of Video Account is three times that of the same period last year, exceeding the usage time of WeChat Moments.
• The number of daily active creators and the average daily video upload volume of video accounts increased by more than 100% year-on-year; the number of videos with more than 100,000 likes was twice that of the same period last year.

Obviously, these significant growth data show that Video Account has formed an accelerating flywheel at the core product definition level, and content production and content consumption have achieved a sustainable cycle.

Video accounts have entered the stage of "competing for internal strength" from "building infrastructure".

The "internal strength" stage emphasizes a deep understanding of the business, subtle refinement of the experience, and a determination to invest in ecosystem construction.

2. Relying on products to drive business: Video accounts continue the WeChat team’s work style

After explaining why the video account has slowed down its product pace, let’s reverse a prejudice——

Many people say that Video Accounts have now shifted from pursuing growth to pursuing commercialization.

The implication is that Video Account is now only focused on making money.

This understanding is of course inaccurate. In fact, growth and commercialization have never been an either-or relationship, but rather two nested gears in a flywheel system.

Whether for platforms, creators or users, commercialization is, in a sense, the lifeblood of long-term sustainable growth. Only by having one's own hematopoietic ability can a self-circulating healthy ecosystem be built.

The fact that Bilibili’s “stop updating trend” has become a hot topic to a large extent reflects the importance of commercialization to the continued creation of creators.

Video accounts deeply understand the significance of creators in building a long-term content ecosystem.

Therefore, although the speed of product iteration has slowed down overall at the functional level, Video Account still focuses on promoting the creator incentive system as one of the product focuses.

The "Creation Profit Plan" launched this time is a very important example -

On April 6, Video Account announced that the "Creation Profit Plan" was officially launched. High-quality original creators of Video Account who meet certain conditions can obtain advertising revenue by displaying advertising content in the comment area of ​​the original video.

It is worth noting that the participation threshold of this "Creation Profit Plan" is designed to be very friendly. Original video bloggers with 100 or more fans can participate in the plan.

Don’t underestimate this setting. The low threshold of 100 fans allows this “Creation Profit Plan” to cover small and medium-sized creators to the greatest extent, allowing more creators in the starting stages to participate in monetization through simple operations.

At this point, Video Account has become more complete in the construction of creator incentive systems at different stages.

In addition to basic monetization components such as product showcases, live broadcast rewards, and live broadcast sales, for top creators, video accounts have a "mutual selection platform" that can effectively connect with brand advertisers;

For mid-level creators, the video account has "small tasks" that can realize quick monetization;

For longer-tail creators in the starting stages, they can directly obtain advertising revenue sharing through the "Creation Sharing Plan".

Indeed, for many video account creators in the initial stage, their business capabilities are objectively weak, and it is difficult for them to negotiate business independently and complete the communication and delivery processes.

Obviously, the "creation profit-sharing plan" of the video account has insight into the pain points of small and medium-sized creators.

You only need to choose to join the plan. You don’t have to worry about the matching and delivery of advertisements, or the statistics and calculation of revenue. All of them will be automatically completed by the Video Account and Tencent Advertising systems.

In addition, the "creation profit-sharing plan" of Video Account is not the traffic subsidy of many platforms. This means that Video Account does not adopt the "subsidy transfusion" model which is ultimately unsustainable, but is committed to a sustainable "self-generating" model.

In fact, this is also in line with the WeChat team's consistent style of doing things - relying on products to drive business.

" We hope to allow original creators to earn income here quickly and easily. We use productization to standardize heavy operations and use product capabilities to help more authors earn income."

This is how Zhang Xiaochao, vice president of Tencent and head of the video account, explained the original intention of the "Creation Profit Plan" at the WeChat Open Class. It is a very typical WeChat style of driving business through products.

One of the key points in driving business through products is to make the products detailed.

Taking Tencent’s advertising mutual selection platform as an example, the overall logic of the mutual selection business is not very complicated. The core is to match advertisers and creators to complete business orders.

But in fact, in order to make the experience of a matchmaking platform truly easy to use, there are actually many details that are easy to overlook in terms of functionality and experience.

The following are some important nodes of the product iteration of the mutual selection platform:

It can be seen that in 2022 alone, there were as many as 10 important iterations of the mutual selection platform. It can be seen that Tencent Advertising has indeed devoted a lot of resources to how to make official accounts and video accounts monetize more efficiently.

From "mutual selection platform" to "video number small tasks", it reflects the official thinking on the differences in monetization among creators of different types and stages.

Compared with the complete two-way process of "mutual selection platform", the "Video Account Small Task" focuses on easy operation, directly presenting the tasks, and completely putting the initiative in the hands of the creators.

You only need to select the tasks you are interested in and participate as required to obtain income based on the results. The participation threshold is lower and the process is shorter, which is more suitable for mid-level video account creators.

We can see that from the "mutual selection platform" to the "video account small tasks" to the "creation profit-sharing plan", the video account has systematic thinking about the incentives for creators.

The core logic behind this is to allow creators at different stages to enjoy the platform's empowerment in terms of monetization, and truly transform content value into commercial value.

3. Optional or mandatory option - Video account "dare to be the last in the world"

Content production and content consumption has always been a "chicken or egg" problem.

One of the strategies of the Video Account team is to leverage content consumption through content production.

In order to ensure the healthy operation of content production, creators are the core of the core.

Video accounts have a very profound understanding of creators. From my observation, I can summarize it into two points:

First, let the high-quality content flow. Second, let the monetization flywheel turn.

Let’s talk about the first point first – getting high-quality content flowing.

The Video Account team is very clear about its own advantages. Social networking is the armor of WeChat and also the armor of the Video Account. People are still the core of the Video Account product.

"Human beings are the sum of all social relations." Indeed, in order to allow high-quality content to flow fully in a social system, the most basic thing is to connect social scenarios and functions.

So we have seen dazzling updates in the infrastructure phase of Video Account, from chat interface to Moments, from WeChat groups to official accounts, from search to watch, from mini programs to enterprise WeChat. "Video Account is an atomic component within the WeChat system" is not just a slogan.

The video account is like a needle, connecting the different modules of WeChat products through flowing content.

In terms of distribution strategy, in addition to algorithmic distribution, the unique social distribution makes video not only a content field, but also a dissemination field.

The spread of content no longer follows the "funnel model", but has become a continuously spreading "ripple model".

Let’s look at the second point – getting the monetization flywheel turning.

"Generating electricity with love" is unsustainable. Some of the former top 100 UP hosts at Bilibili have stopped updating. There is no sustainable commercial monetization, and the content supply will eventually run out.

Therefore, the monetization flywheel must be turned, and this requires a productized system to enable creators at different stages to fully realize the commercial value of their content.

So we saw product showcases, live streaming sales, and live streaming rewards, and we saw mutual selection platforms, small tasks, and creative profit-sharing plans.

The efficient operation of these products actually relies on the solid support system behind the video account.

For example, mutual platform selection, small tasks, and creative profit-sharing plans are actually available on many platforms, but the efficiency of different platforms is actually different. Video accounts are backed by Tencent Advertising's massive advertising resources, and in a sense can fully match suitable advertisements for every talented creator.

What's the meaning?

The prerequisite for mutual selection advertising to operate efficiently is that there are advertisers with a large enough number and a sufficiently diverse structure placing orders. Otherwise, some bloggers will inevitably not get orders, and the same applies to small tasks.

The premise for the creator sharing plan to be effective is that the eCPM of the advertisement is high enough. Otherwise, even if there is a share, the unit price of the traffic received by the blogger will be very low, and this requires the advertising system to have a long enough bidding queue.

That’s right, some seemingly simple product logic actually requires very complex capabilities to support it, otherwise the product is just a shell and cannot operate at all, let alone form a flywheel effect.

The great thing about the video account is that——

As a latecomer, it has a deep understanding of the pain points of creators and has truly accomplished two things: "making high-quality content flow and making the monetization flywheel turn," thereby leveraging the growth of user and content consumption.

Frankly speaking, when Video Account was first launched three years ago, even with the support of WeChat, a national application, not many people in the industry were really optimistic about the development of Video Account.

At that time, the general attitude of mainstream creators was to wait and see, and not many were willing to invest resources.

But WeChat has always been good at fighting protracted wars and striking back. It defined the core logic of the product in a short period of time and made full use of its advantages to make this logic truly work in WeChat.

In this sense, Video Account is "the last in the world".

Let’s look at a set of data. According to data from the third-party agency "Xinshi", among the TOP50 video accounts in July last year, 14 accounts were newly created within half a year.

This largely reflects that Video Account is still an extremely friendly platform for novices.

It means that as long as the quality of the video content is high enough and attractive enough, even if you are a novice with a new account, you still have a great chance of standing out on the video account platform.

The hierarchy of video accounts has not been solidified.

I have met at least three short video startup teams, and their attitudes towards video accounts are surprisingly consistent:

I started by watching from the sidelines, then made routine updates without any expectations, then gradually received positive and negative feedback from data and commercialization, and finally the team concentrated its efforts on the investment.

That’s right, for today’s creators, there is basically no question of optional and required options for video accounts, but rather a choice of the extent to which they should focus on the required options for video accounts.

“At first, I updated all platforms with the mentality of ‘every little bit counts’, but I soon discovered that the content data on different platforms are different, and the monetization paths are also different. The video account exploded after I updated it for more than 20 days. I guess that the system labeled us more accurately after that explosion, and our subsequent follower growth was very stable.

Although the absolute number of fans is not as large as other platforms, the fans are loyal and the channels for monetization are more complete. Through mutual advertising and small tasks, the monetization income in two months exceeded the total of the previous six months. "

A post-90s pan-entertainment creator from Changsha said.

"A duck knows first when the river water warms in spring." In fact, a large number of creators in the industry have already voted with their feet and increased their investment in video accounts.

The core reason behind this is that creators can get continuous positive feedback in terms of traffic and monetization within the video account system.

Conclusion

I once wrote in an article titled "WeChat has a rare ability to maintain its long-term effectiveness" that WeChat has always been good at fighting protracted wars.

The most intuitive external manifestation of this style is that it often causes practitioners to overestimate WeChat’s short-term dominance and underestimate WeChat’s long-term dominance.

Obviously, the Video Account product undoubtedly continues the consistent style of the WeChat team - neither hurried nor slow, ambitious, and more patient.

In fact, creators should also adhere to this long-term style: do their work in detail and put their heart into it.

A steady stream of water will eventually change the direction of the tide.

Author: Wei Xi

Source: WeChat public account "Wei Xi Zhi Bei (ID: weixizhibei)"