I no longer believe in buying traffic from outside, but can I count on the video account?

WeChat is gradually shifting more traffic to video accounts, and the "C position" of video accounts is becoming more and more stable. So, as the "hope of the whole audience", can video accounts support other businesses within Tencent? How much traffic support can the current video accounts provide? In this article, the author expresses his views, let's take a look.

Although it is only three years old, the "proud" video account has become what Ma Huateng calls "the hope of the whole village", which means that it will not only gradually take on the responsibility of supporting the family, but also play a key role in "supporting" its sister businesses. After all, WeChat is currently pouring traffic to the video account with the power of the entire platform, and for this purpose it has repeatedly compressed the living space of subscription accounts.

However, judging from its current performance, Video Account is still unable to support Tencent’s internal businesses such as games, long videos, and music, and is still far from being a fertile soil where “a pole can bloom”. In 2023, when Ma Huateng no longer believes in the story of buying traffic from outside, can Video Account become a new traffic center within Tencent?

1. Why did Video Account fail to stop ByteDance from encroaching on Tencent’s usage time?

Recently, QuestMobile released the "2022 China Mobile Internet Annual Report", in which the most concerned issue is the increase and decrease of user time between various platforms. The report shows that short videos have become the application with the highest user time, increasing from 25.7% to 28.5%, while instant messaging has further declined from 21.2% to 20.7%. The user time share of Tencent decreased from 35.7% to 33.6%, while the share of Douyin increased from 21.0% to 24.5%.

From this, we can roughly draw the following two conclusions: the speed at which the time spent by Tencent users is being eroded is higher than the speed at which instant messaging is being cannibalized; the growth in the time spent on short videos is concentrated on the Douyin system, and Douyin's position is more stable. Although the user penetration rate of Video Account has grown rapidly, and its monthly active users exceeded Douyin last year, it has not been able to help Tencent resist the attack from ByteDance. The attack of Video Account has more to do with the redistribution of internal traffic in WeChat.

In the Q2 2022 financial report, Tencent revealed that the usage time of Video Account users has exceeded 80% of the total usage time of Moments users. This calculation method is intriguing, which means that the WeChat team is more concerned about the changes in user content consumption behavior brought about by Video Account.

The "videoization" of Moments is achieved by limiting the length of direct video posts and guiding users to post video accounts. This approach certainly helps to quickly increase daily activity data, but because it cannot be grouped or blocked, it forces users to change from private sharing to public broadcasting, further dampening the desire of young users to share and accelerating their escape from Moments. Only middle-aged and elderly users who have no social concerns and are keen on sharing with acquaintances are happy to see this, which is why Video Accounts have not been able to get rid of the trouble of "aging" three years after its launch.

WeChat is not only making every effort to promote the videoization of Moments, but is also accelerating the videoization transformation of subscription accounts by guiding traffic. Recently, non-starred subscription accounts no longer display headlines to make more display space for video accounts. This move will undoubtedly sound the alarm for more graphic creators, and will also prompt more deep content enthusiasts to shift positions. In the past two years, the booming vitality of podcast platforms such as Xiaoyuzhou and paid content platforms such as Xiaobaotong is due to the loss of high-quality content creators and readers on WeChat.

However, as more and more subscription accounts turn to videos, it means that the media attributes of video accounts are further enhanced, and the user UGC atmosphere and entertainment attributes are further separated from Douyin and Kuaishou. With the further acceleration of the trend of "videoization of Moments" and "videoization of subscription accounts" this year, the self-strengthening of the content tone of video accounts deserves attention.

2. Why is the WeChat index of "Dawn Awakening" lower than that of "Egg Party"?

In the face of NetEase's "Egg Party" with 30 million daily active users and "After Tomorrow" with 200 million cumulative users, Tencent's highly anticipated game "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" was recently launched with a high profile. DataEye Research Institute data shows that on the day of the release date, the purchase volume of "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" soared across the entire network. However, this Tencent self-developed game has a huge momentum on platforms such as Kuaishou, Bilibili, Douyin, and Weibo, but it has not caused much splash on WeChat's own video account. The WeChat index is two orders of magnitude lower than that of "Egg Party".

In the video account, most of the content related to Dawn Awakening: Vitality is official material, and there are few game players sharing their experiences. Not only is there a lack of game experts who have appeal among players like Douyin and Bilibili, there is a lack of content ecology such as game commentary, clearance tips, and game live broadcasts. The traffic does not match the young players that Dawn Awakening: Vitality hopes to attract.

In December last year, video accounts were fully open to information flow advertising. The industry generally predicted that this might break the path of "TikTok buying traffic to WeChat mini-games" and realize the self-circulation of traffic within WeChat. However, for heavy games that account for half of Tencent's revenue, video accounts are still difficult to become a reliable source of traffic for their own products.

Video accounts not only failed to provide traffic support for Tencent's game masterpieces, but also failed to help Tencent Video when it gradually fell behind. Last year, Tencent Video had few hits and lost members, so it was particularly in need of traffic from short videos. However, as iQiyi joined hands with Douyin and "Kuang Bi" broke the record of domestic dramas on short video platforms, the internal cooperation between Tencent Video and Video accounts has been slow to move. Not only that, the existence of Video Accounts also blocked the possibility of in-depth cooperation between Tencent Video and other short video platforms.

Recently, Li Ronghao's "Wumeizijiang" has set off a cover craze on Douyin. Tencent Music's investors are particularly jealous of this and have proposed that TME should further cooperate with Video Account, not just stay at online concerts. After all, the biggest challenge for Tencent Music at present is the continued decline in social entertainment revenue, which is due to the migration of music interaction to short video platforms. However, Video Account has not yet been able to make any song popular, and the content related to "Wumeizijiang" is almost all media comments and analysis.

At the internal staff meeting at the end of last year, Video Account was selected by Ma Huateng as "the hope of the whole village". Of course, this may be due to WeChat's cautiousness in the commercialization of Video Account and the "firewall" between Tencent departments. However, Video Account will sooner or later have to shoulder the responsibility of supporting the family, not only to realize Tencent's e-commerce dream that has been coveted for many years, but also to become a traffic entrance to support games, entertainment and other businesses. Can Video Account, whose platform ecology has already solidified, shoulder the "expectations of the whole village"?

3. After surpassing Douyin in monthly active users, where is the gap between Video Account and other platforms?

According to data from QuestMobile, based on the huge traffic of WeChat, a super app, the monthly active user scale of Video Account reached 813 million in June 2022, surpassing Douyin and Kuaishou. This also means that the growth space of Video Account in user penetration is becoming increasingly limited. The next task is to increase user time. After all, the average daily usage time of Douyin is 118 minutes, Kuaishou is 119 minutes, and Video Account is only 35 minutes.

However, based on the data from all parties, the slow growth of video account users is ultimately due to the limited user participation in the content. The "snowball" effect of Douyin in the early stage was due to the endless stream of short video gameplay on the platform, which set off waves of imitation crazes and greatly mobilized the participation of ordinary users. In contrast, at present, most video account users are still in the "shallow participation" stage - just likes, likes, and comments. Lacking platform guidance and the atmosphere of national entertainment, the psychological threshold for ordinary users to publish content is still too high.

Of course, WeChat encourages daily life sharing, but the algorithm recommendation rate is still relatively low, making it difficult for short video experts who love to shoot and play to stand out on the video account platform. At present, only institutional accounts with strong media attributes and strong content operations can stand out on the video account, but these accounts are too purposeful and lack entertainment. The video account is becoming the last traffic depression for creators from other platforms to flock to, but it is difficult to grow its own celebrities.

For middle-aged and elderly users, video accounts may mean calling friends to watch, but for the younger generation who are generally "socially anxious", they are more likely to entertain themselves in their own corner. In comparison, they are more willing to join the group carnival on Douyin.

This year will be an especially critical year for Video Account. After three years of development, it needs to prove its value to Tencent, a company with a huge business and a thirst for traffic.

Author: Zhang Yuan, Editor: Mei Qi

Original title: Ma Huateng doesn’t believe in buying traffic, but video accounts can’t be counted on

Source: Public Account: Cultural and Entertainment Value Officer (ID: wenyujiazhiguan), value deconstructor of cultural entertainment, new consumption, and commercial technology.