Alipay is doing live streaming, what is the future potential?

Many Internet companies want to develop live broadcasting business. So for Alipay, if it wants to do live broadcasting, what problems may need to be solved in the process? Combined with its own product attributes, what advantages does Alipay have in the process of developing live broadcasting business? In this article, the author expresses his views, let's take a look.

As the saying goes, a year's plan starts with spring. At the beginning of 2023, major Internet giants have launched new business models. Looking at recent news reports, Douyin opened a supermarket, WeChat did food delivery, and Alipay did live broadcasting. It seems that everyone is crossing borders.

Today, let’s talk about Alipay’s live streaming, after all, this is closely related to the live streaming industry.

Recently, Alipay launched a new function that supports merchants to configure live broadcast cards on the brand direct access platform, providing users with services such as pre-live booking, live broadcast viewing, and post-live broadcast playback. Simply put, as long as users search for the brand merchant name in the Alipay search bar, they can immediately find the entrance to its live broadcast room.

Alipay has also recently increased its product support for short videos and live broadcasts. Users can see relevant short videos and live broadcasts by opening the "Life" channel at the bottom of the Alipay App.

Audio-Visual Observation opened Alipay and browsed it, and found that most of the live broadcasts on Alipay are e-commerce live broadcasts, but there are also live broadcasts on education, tourism, and knowledge. No traditional entertainment live broadcasts have been found yet.

1. The entry of traffic giants is good for the live broadcast industry

First of all, we can be sure that Alipay is betting heavily on live streaming, which is good news for the live streaming industry. Although the entry of Alipay will intensify the competition among live streaming platforms, it has undoubtedly added a new option for the industry.

From the perspective of commercial competition, only a fully competitive market can maximize commercial efficiency. The live broadcast industry has now reached a stage where giants compete with each other. To be honest, it is difficult to enter the platform-based live broadcast platform without the support of more than 100 million daily active users.

In addition to the three platforms of Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat Video Account, Alipay, a traffic giant with over 300 million daily active users and over 1 billion monthly active users, suddenly entered the live broadcast industry, which obviously stirred up the live broadcast industry and also gave users a new choice.

As we all know, Alipay started out as a payment service and is everyone's internet wallet, managing a large amount of users' payment information and wealth. With the help of big data, Alipay can make a very accurate portrait of its users, including but not limited to the user's age, gender, personal consumption preferences, consumption capacity and other information.

Then, through the algorithm, Zhibobao can match its users to the corresponding live broadcast room and achieve accurate push of the live broadcast room. If the paid live broadcast content is rich enough, it can greatly improve the efficiency of traffic distribution, which is a dream come true for e-commerce live broadcast practitioners.

The summary is: there are many opportunities for practitioners in the live broadcast of Wealth Tools.

2. Alipay’s heavy investment in live streaming: why?

Why does Alipay want to do live streaming? I guess there are many reasons, but in the end it all comes down to one reason: commercial interests. Alipay needs to improve the efficiency of traffic monetization as much as possible. Alipay itself is also an important window for Ant Group's "digital interconnection" business, and has been committed to exploring appropriate methods to help merchants transform digitally.

Alipay is a domestic financial management tool with 1 billion monthly active users. However, if it is only used as a payment tool, its value is limited, and it still needs to return to being an Internet product.

At the same time, the number of Alipay users in China has reached the ceiling of the population, and a breakthrough must be made in another field. Short video and live broadcast are two major businesses that are gaining popularity. At the same time, short video and live broadcast are inseparable and have become the standard of short video platforms. Short video and live broadcast are precisely industries with very high ceilings.

3. What is the future prospect of Alipay live streaming?

If Alipay were to do live streaming, the current problem it faces is not where the users will come from, but to cultivate the habit of users watching live streaming and short videos on Alipay and keep users on Alipay.

Watching live broadcasts and short videos is an entertainment need, which is somewhat different from the payment scenario needs of Alipay. Alipay must create relevant scenarios and cultivate users' usage habits.

In my opinion, there are several key factors for the success of Internet products (personal understanding is for reference only):

First: the overall environment. Short videos and live broadcasts are currently very popular, so the overall background is very good.

Second: The user base of the product is also the traffic. Alipay has over 300 million daily active users and over 1 billion monthly active users, so it naturally has a huge amount of usage.

The third factor is to look at the user's usage habits. That is, the positioning of these Internet products in the minds of users, or in layman's terms, the first impression. For example, when you think of Meituan, you think of group buying, when you think of WeChat, you think of social networking, and when you think of Douyin and Kuaishou, you think of short videos and live broadcasts. It depends on whether these products can solve the needs of users. It is best if they can. The more urgent and "rigid" the demand, the more users will rely on these apps.

Now, users think of Alipay as a wallet. How to change the image of Alipay in the public mind is a key issue.

The fourth and last one is the importance attached by the product leadership, or the so-called determination. How many resources can Alipay get, how much support can it get, and how long is the development period. Internet products are often impatient and cannot be eaten hot tofu, but sometimes without a set direction, you can accidentally plant willows and willows grow into shades.

The fifth one is, of course, a people issue. If people are reliable enough, ambitious and patient, far-sighted and able to execute, and full of desire and fighting spirit for success, then there will be many more chances of success.

Finally, we must exercise restraint. As far as I can remember, in 2016, Alipay launched the "White-collar Diary" and "Campus Diary", which can only be posted by white-collar ladies and female college students respectively. Users who cannot post status can choose to like and reward, and as for commenting on status, a Sesame Credit score of more than 750 is required. As a result, this function was used by some people with ulterior motives and became a customer acquisition tool for some special industries, which attracted various criticisms and was eventually forced to be offline.

So I hope that people will exercise restraint in the future and not say things like “Congratulations to the big brother from Sesame Credit 790 for coming to the live broadcast room…”

Finally: The wind of live streaming continues to blow, and the wave of short videos continues to surge. Who can become the next trendsetters on these waves?

Author: Liu Bugong, WeChat public account: Audio-visual Observation (ID: shitinggc)