Has the “Hope of the Audience” video account realized Tencent’s short video dream?

On December 15, at an online internal employee conference held by Tencent, Ma Huateng declared that the video account is "the hope of the whole audience". This statement went viral on the Internet and brought the video account to the public's attention again. Can the highly anticipated video account break Tencent's development curse in the short video and live broadcast industries? This article will find out.

Video account once again becomes the center of attention.

After Tencent’s financial reports repeatedly mentioned the video account, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng recently emphasized in an internal speech: “The video account is the hope of the whole field (the whole company).”

The video account was launched in the WeChat ecosystem in early 2020. When it was first launched, it was considered to be the carrier of Tencent's final short video and live broadcast dream. It has been in operation for nearly three years and has received much attention from both inside and outside the industry.

Even at the third-quarter earnings conference, Tencent President Martin Lau declared: "Video account advertising revenue is expected to exceed 1 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2022."

Can the highly anticipated Video Account break Tencent’s development curse in the short video and live streaming industries?

1. "Video Account is the hope of the whole audience"

On December 15, Tencent held an internal employee meeting online, with approximately 100 employees attending the meeting on site.

At the meeting, Ma Huateng declared that the video account is "the hope of the whole field". He said that the most eye-catching business of WXG is the video account, which is basically the hope of the whole field (the whole company). Ma Huateng's speech was screened in major media, and it also pushed the video account to the public again.

In his speech, Ma Huateng also emphasized the importance of short videos. "Short videos have had a significant impact on the entire Internet globally over the past three years, and all platforms and companies have to pay attention to this area. It will erode the time of a lot of long videos, games and other products. This is an objective law of development."

Looking back over the past few years, Tencent can be said to be "AII in short videos", constantly making various attempts. According to media statistics, Tencent has nearly 20 short video products. So far, Tencent has launched Weishi, Penguin Kankan, Shanka, Tencent Video, Maobing, DOV, MOsheng, Yintu, etc. However, most of them did not make a splash, and it seems that the only one that can carry Tencent's short video ambitions is Video Account.

In fact, before Ma Huateng affirmed Video Account in his internal speech, Video Account had already been the focus of Tencent Group's growth business in 2022 and frequently appeared in financial reports.

In the first half of this year, Tencent released its 2021 fourth quarter report and annual report, in which video account appeared 13 times as a high-frequency word.

In the third quarter 2022 earnings conference call, Tencent President Martin Lau declared: "Video account advertising revenue is expected to exceed 1 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2022."

It is not difficult to see from the above 1 billion target that high hopes are placed on Video Account.

Earlier, Gong Haihan, founder of the video account digital marketing platform Baizhun, revealed that the daily active users of the video account in 2022 had reached 450 million, with an average usage time of 35 minutes per person. The current number of daily active users of Douyin has exceeded 600 million, and Kuaishou announced 346 million daily active users in the first quarter of 2022.

This means that the rapidly growing video accounts have already surpassed the latecomers, and Tencent has made a great comeback in the short video field.

At the same time, industry insiders analyzed that Ma Huateng's speech this time revealed that WeChat Video Account may usher in huge operating resources in 2023. In the future, in the field of short videos, the situation of "Video Account VS Douyin" coexisting will be completely formed, and other platforms will only be relegated to the vertical category.

In fact, the fundamental difference between Video Account and Tencent’s previous attempts in the short video field is that all of them, including Weishi, Sukan Video, Shanka, Maobing, etc., were launched as independent apps. But Video Account has never been a vertical video content product, and it has always been closely and inextricably linked to WeChat.

2. Development Enters the Fast Lane

At the WeChat Night in 2021, Zhang Xiaolong, Vice President of Tencent and founder of WeChat, spent almost an hour talking about Video Account. He believes that from the perspective of consumption and personal expression, video expression will become a future trend.

The video account began internal testing in January 2020. Initially, users could only post videos of less than 1 minute with a maximum of 9 static pictures. The entrance was below the "Friends Circle" on the discovery page, and the presentation was a single-column information stream.

In September of the same year, Video Account Live started internal testing and introduced top MCNs and content creators from outside; in October, Video Account opened up small stores and supported long videos of more than 30 minutes.

Today, the video account, which has been developed for two years, not only has a good performance in short videos, but also has good results in live streaming and e-commerce.

Xinbochang briefly reviewed the major moves of Video Account in live streaming and e-commerce in 2022:

First, in terms of live broadcasting, Video Account continues to create benchmark cases of phenomenal concerts, inviting well-known veteran singers such as Jay Chou, Cui Jian, and Luo Dayou to hold concerts on Video Account. Among them, Cui Jian's concert is an important node in Video Account's exploration of the commercialization of live broadcasting concerts.

In April this year, the concert titled "Keep Going Wild" lasted nearly three hours, attracting more than 45 million viewers, over 110 million likes, and more than 170,000 comments.

From last year's Westlife and Mayday, to this year's high-definition restored version of Leslie Cheung's "Passion" concert, to Cui Jian, concerts have become an important way for video accounts to break the circle and cultivate user habits.

Moreover, compared with the previous concerts, Cui Jian's concert is more comprehensive. This concert is also the first time that Video Account has tried to broadcast a concert under the name of a sponsor, and the image of the sponsoring brand Polar Fox was revealed throughout the whole process.

According to estimates by people close to the project, the current cost of a video concert has reached tens of millions, including artist fees, guest fees, publicity and promotion fees, stage costs, etc. The marketing and investment promotion price of Cui Jian's concert has even reached tens of millions.

Secondly, in terms of e-commerce, as early as March this year, Video Account adjusted the entrance and external links for live broadcasting. Before that, the entrance to live broadcasting e-commerce was relatively far back. After the adjustment, after users enter the video account live broadcast square page, the first section of "More" live broadcast is live broadcasting e-commerce. Such a reinforcement is enough to show that Video Account attaches great importance to live broadcasting e-commerce.

In July this year, the Video Account Store officially launched its store entrance, built its own e-commerce closed loop, and connected to information flow advertising; in October, Enterprise WeChat released the new version 4.0.18. After this upgrade, the Video Account Store can be connected to WeChat customer service, and customers can directly initiate inquiries on the store’s product details page or order page.

At the same time, the video account has also launched a traffic support plan for new anchors, issuing traffic subsidies; as well as access to functions such as live broadcast explanation playback and live broadcast heating, and the service account can also push video account live broadcasts.

Not only that, Video Account also announced the closure of personal small stores, rectified chaotic live streaming behaviors, and further improved the platform's live streaming e-commerce ecosystem.

In addition, during this year's Double Eleven, Video Account attracted a large number of well-known brands and top anchors. Zhu Guagua, once known as the "No. 1 e-commerce anchor on Douyin", launched her first live broadcast on Video Account, which eventually attracted 241,300 viewers and an estimated sales of 189,600 yuan.

It can be said that nowadays, video accounts have blossomed in all aspects of short videos, live streaming, and e-commerce.

3. Can it carry “the hope of the whole village”?

Today, the video account, which has been online for nearly three years, has begun to stride towards commercialization. This is undoubtedly a good thing for practitioners on the video account, as it means that more traffic will be released and more advertisers will be attracted.

Especially this year, the upgrade and optimization of video accounts in traffic delivery tools, as well as the promotion of advertiser tools, have given new opportunities to many practitioners who are not familiar with the video account ecosystem and want to enter the market. In their view, perhaps video accounts will usher in a year of rapid development in 2023.

On the other hand, many practitioners who once had high expectations are unsure of the opportunities in the video account market because of the platform's unpredictable traffic distribution logic, the official Buddhist operation, or some factors such as the imperfection of the overall development environment and the rampant black and gray industries.

For example, not long ago, the traffic voucher rewards issued by the recruitment plan on the video account gave rise to a series of gray business. This prompted an industry insider to say: "(Video Account) originally had great opportunities, but I didn't expect it to be a series of gray businesses."

This also seems to have led to the lack of originality in short video content on Video Accounts, making it a distribution platform for many organizations and influencers. Xinbochang has also conducted an analysis on this.

In addition, in the e-commerce field, some people complained that the platform's algorithm logic was unreasonable. Semi-unmanned live broadcasts, which were severely suppressed on other platforms, were booming on Video Accounts.

In the field of live show broadcasts, in addition to a number of guild presidents complaining about the difficulty of the platform's monthly task assessment, there are also guild presidents who say that the platform's operations are not strong and there is no effort to poach top or high-quality anchors.

For a platform that has only been online for three years, there was originally a lot of time and space to adjust these problems. But now, Video Account is not only placed at the center of Tencent Group, but also carries an important position in business growth and market share. More importantly, the competition from external TikTok and Kuaishou is becoming more and more fierce, and the stock competition in the short video and live broadcast market is becoming more and more brutal.

As for whether it can eventually help Tencent break the curse of the live short video industry, there are actually not many choices and time left for Video Account.

Author: Aligu, Xiaolongguo

Source: WeChat public account "New Broadcasting Field (ID: New_bc)"