Content e-commerce, a panacea for TVB to realize monetization?

Last September, Taobao Live began to enter the "new content live broadcast". Recently, Taobao and TVB have started the road of content e-commerce cooperation. What is the effect? ​​Will it become a new trend in the future? Let's take a look at the author's interpretation and analysis. Recommended for those who are interested in e-commerce live broadcast and new content live broadcast.

“Check the box below with me, don’t buy anything!” On March 7, TVB launched its first live broadcast on Taobao. TV King Moses Chan and leading actress Sharon Chan opened the store “Seafood Shop”, bringing the audience back to their dreams of “Heart of Greed”.

The live show attracted more than 4.85 million viewers and brought in RMB 23.5 million in sales. The number of fans on the second day of the first live show reached 101,000 (currently 141,000). According to the cooperation intention between Shanghai Jade Oriental Communication (TVBC) and Taobao, the two parties will jointly bring more than 48 e-commerce live shows within the year.

Compared with the live broadcast data performance, the market feedback is much crazier. After TVB announced its cooperation with Taobao, the Hong Kong-listed TVB (00511) rose by an exaggerated 272% in four working days. On March 8, the daily increase was close to 100%, until it fell back on March 9, down 14.93%.

Behind this craze is the market's expectation for TVB to engage in live streaming sales. On the one hand, the development of the e-commerce live streaming field has become increasingly mature in the past three years, driving huge consumer demand and cash flow; on the other hand, TVB + Taobao Live easily reminds people of the latter's content e-commerce that started last year.

Taobao, which has made a big move into content e-commerce, meets TVB, which is under pressure from performance. It seems to be a good story. But there is still a lot of uncertainty. The data of the first live broadcast was average, and the next one is scheduled for March 22. Perhaps TVB will use this half month to make some corrections. And will Taobao Live's dream of content e-commerce find an answer with TVB's resources?

1. Content e-commerce in the past two years: Douyin relies on originality, Taobao is a platform

The e-commerce content represented by Taobao Live and the content e-commerce represented by Douyin and Kuaishou have the same goal of increasing user stickiness and conversion rate by stimulating user interest and desire to spread.

However, whether it is Taobao Live, which has been focusing on "new content e-commerce" since September last year, or Douyin, which continues to build infrastructure, they will find the actual problem: non-deep users will not watch short videos on Taobao, and the number of users shopping on Douyin will also find it difficult to break through the private domain and form a common consumption habit.

Content e-commerce has thresholds. The first is whether the quality of the content can occupy the minds of users, which determines the degree of completion of content e-commerce; the third is whether the goods sold can obtain the blessing effect brought by content matching; and the second is whether the platform has the gene for content consumption.

These three points have become the "people, goods, and venues" of content e-commerce. It is not difficult to see that the current platforms have more or less gaps in these aspects; since last year, a group of people have been able to break through these gaps and let the industry see the efficiency of content e-commerce, represented by Liu Genghong, Dongfang Zhenxuan, and Crazy Xiao Yangge.

But these representative figures basically come from Douyin and Kuaishou. The advantage of the content platform in this regard is that it can continuously output popular figures. Even if not all of them are suitable for conversion to the live streaming sales track, it can still maintain a screening efficiency.

Taobao Live's strategy is to rely on the e-commerce platform's good user consumption habits and conversion rates to attract content influencers who already have advantages in content dissemination, such as Li Dan, as well as the poached Kuaishou "Xiao Shenlong", Douyin influencer "Yili Xiaoshazi" and Weibo maternal and child blogger "Nian Gao Mama", as well as cross-platform operations such as Oriental Selection and Make Friends.

But at present, these content influencers have also shown certain defects.

Content producers who mainly produce short videos rarely have a mechanism to continuously and stably output high-quality content, especially a lack of innovation mechanisms. Once the audience becomes aesthetically fatigued or reaches the threshold of dissemination, it will be difficult to achieve a breakthrough in traffic. Or if Oriental Selection relies too much on a specific individual like Dong Yuhui, the market will maintain a more cautious investment attitude.

Stars like Li Dan actually return to the discussion scope of star live streaming sales. There are barriers in the conversion of their content to the live streaming sales end, especially it is difficult to empower specific products.

It is not difficult to find out from the comparison that TVB still has its advantages.

2. Will TVB be the panacea for Taobao’s content e-commerce?

Looking back at TVB's first live broadcast, there are many points worth mentioning for the industry, such as the entire setting that incorporates "Heart of Greed", the feelings and personalized style brought by Hong Kong style and Cantonese, and the fact that TV Kings and actresses will be the main actors in the live broadcast. The market's expectations are not difficult to understand, and there are many comments such as "TVB has more than 400 stars, and one star a day can last for more than a year."

Compared with e-commerce content that uses short videos as its main content pool, it is not difficult to find the advantages of this approach. The sense of immersion brought by long videos, the arc formed by the charm of characters, and especially the feelings brought by classic content are all more advantageous than short video content.

The essence is still IP monetization. Whether it is the TVB brand itself, or the specific drama content, scenes and characters (and actors), they have gained a new monetization space in the live broadcast scene, converting the audience's mindset of the content into products and completing sales.

This is not a unique approach of TVB. In fact, there are many companies that have tried to sell products in the long video field. For example, Mango TV's Xiaomang e-commerce is considered to be the one that has gone relatively far in the platform-side experiment. Its feature is that it combines the platform IP and creates a unique mentality of "trendy domestic products". It also has evening shows during traditional festivals every year.

In Xiaomang's product selection, the promotion of Hunan local products is a feature, but the main competitive advantage still lies in the fact that the platform will put a batch of "buy the same style" and sell products that appear in top dramas and variety shows, such as "Mingxue" baseball uniforms, the same shower gel as "Go Where There Is Wind", etc. In addition, there are also co-branded products of the program.

This not only enables IP products, but also becomes an advantage for the platform to attract investment, finding a win-win solution for commercialization. However, the disadvantage is that the operation of the new platform itself still has a growth threshold.

However, TVB has not yet achieved such a close integration between IP and content e-commerce.

TVB put 131 products on the shelves on the first day of live broadcast, including food, cosmetics, luxury clothing, 3C electronics, travel cards, sunscreen and other categories. The products that were sold out in seconds were small bread, cola, AD calcium milk at 9.9 yuan, and iPhone14 mobile phones at 4,899 yuan. The best-selling products are still low-priced and highly discounted products.

From the perspective of product selection strategy, TVB is actually consciously magnifying its brand advantage and targeting the relatively elite Hong Kong drama culture consumption circle, but the shelf e-commerce model determines that the correlation between products and brands is not close. If TVB can bring some famous scenes and products together, even if it enhances the Hong Kong flavor of the products, there is room to further increase the audience's interest.

This is not the first time that TVB has focused on e-commerce business. More than a year ago, TVB has created a "sales matrix" on Douyin. However, the number of fans of TVB's three major accounts (Hong Kong-style selection) is less than 1 million. According to data from Chanmama, the "Hong Kong-style selection" with the highest number of fans has an average of 73,000 viewers per show, and average sales of 100,000 to 250,000.

In fact, TVB still has room for development. With the complete copyright of more than 45,000 hours of programs and the continuous production of Hong Kong dramas every year, its content sustainability is not bad. In 2021, it acquired control of Hong Kong's local e-commerce company Ztore (75% of the issued share capital), and has control of the two major e-commerce platforms, Ztore and Neigbuy, so product selection resources and team building are not a problem.

The future of TVB e-commerce will be determined by whether it can fully activate the potential of its content. TVB has announced that the next live broadcast will be on March 22, and pointed out in the announcement that "e-commerce live broadcast activities in the mainland are still in the early stages", and subsequent adjustments are worth continuing to pay attention to.

3. IP monetization, content e-commerce is the future

If you were to look for a company that could immediately enter the live streaming e-commerce market and fully activate the advantages of content e-commerce, which one would you think of? I would immediately name Disney.

When it comes to IP monetization, whether it is peripheral sales, theme parks or online sales, the key lies in completing the transformation from content to consumption. Relying on brand transformation is obviously the least efficient, because the sentiment of brand sustenance is limited. For example, if TVB still does shelf e-commerce and lacks content sustenance, the audience will return to the internal competition of cost-effectiveness and live broadcast time after the novelty wears off.

Oriental Selection is actually taking another path for content live streaming, which is to produce content through individuals. However, this model that is highly dependent on individuals is not replicable for entertainment companies.

What Disney has done over the past few decades is to build a complete conversion link from content to consumption and establish a mature user consumption mentality. Not to mention the co-branded products authorized by copyright every year, the various products in Disney boutiques are enough to support the live broadcast room for several hours; if Lingna Belle is moved into the live broadcast room, the sales volume is estimated to be considerable.

Building this transformation link from content to consumption is the main problem facing the domestic entertainment industry in terms of IP monetization, and it is also a problem that content e-commerce still needs to face. There is content that can open up this link, but the amount is too small and the transformation model is too simple.

A typical example is the crowdfunding of peripheral products for the Spring Festival movie "The Wandering Earth 2" this year. Saifan Science Fiction raised over 100 million yuan in just 9 days, which led to many people in the industry discussing the maturity of the peripheral business.

The current limitations of this business are also quite obvious. The development of peripheral products in China is still in its infancy. Relying on crowdfunding after the content becomes popular, the production cycle and supply of goods cannot be guaranteed. If the life cycle of the IP is missed, the ceiling of sales volume will be lowered.

On the other hand, non-standard products such as peripherals need to be designed and produced individually. Under the premise that the prospects of most content are uncertain, except for a few animation peripherals for children (and long-term IP brands have been created), only a few leading players have the courage to prepare peripherals in advance.

To build an IP monetization chain, the core issue lies in the attractiveness, influence, and periodicity of the content IP, whether there are enough good content that audiences are willing to pay for, and whether it has the ability to be continuously updated; at the same time, whether it is peripheral crowdfunding or content e-commerce, the IP monetization model should be diverse and adapted to different circles, and the industry needs to further enrich its approach.

Therefore, the entertainment industry needs the opportunity of content e-commerce. The effect of TVB + Taobao Live needs further verification, but the industry trend of content e-commerce does show enough possibilities for IP business. TVB will not be the only entertainment content company to be listed on Taobao. The content e-commerce department may become the standard of most entertainment companies in the future.

Author: Fat Department; Editor: Park Fang

WeChat public account: Rhino Entertainment (ID: piaofangtoushijing)