From the growth story of virtual anchors, we can see the diversified ecology of Douyin live broadcast

Starting from Douyin live broadcast, this article objectively analyzes the new stage of the development of the live broadcast industry from the new opportunities of virtual anchors and the transition from niche tracks to diversified and high-quality era. It is recommended for those who are engaged in the live broadcast industry.

Douyin Live has been live for five years. Recently, Douyin Live released its five-year anniversary TVC, featuring Chinese dance anchor Ya Axi, Yue Opera anchor Yu Yuchan, and traditional musical instrument anchor Peixian Caojiaban Suona. In addition to these real anchors who create high-quality content, two virtual anchors @金桔2049 and @许安一 also appeared in the TVC for the first time.

The TVC reads: "Witness the recognition of high-quality content, the inheritance of tradition, and the transformation of new trends into waves." It can be seen that no matter whether they are traditional or new, popular or niche, the common point that makes these anchors recognized is the high-quality content, and they have eventually become part of the diversified ecosystem of Douyin live broadcast.

Recently, Xinbochang also interviewed the operation teams of two virtual anchors, @金桔2049 and @许安一, to learn how they planned and grew on Douyin live streaming. Their growth stories also reflect the changes in Douyin live streaming.

1. Live streaming brings new opportunities

"In the past five years, some people have traveled through history, and they came from the future."

In the TVC for the fifth anniversary of Douyin live broadcast, two representative virtual anchors of Douyin, @金桔2049 and @许安一, appeared one after another. The two people in another dimension communicated and interacted with users through Douyin live broadcast.

This is the first time that a virtual anchor has appeared in a Douyin Live TVC, and it happened to be at the important node of the fifth anniversary of Douyin Live. This reflects the platform's emphasis on the virtual live broadcast track and also shows the changes in Douyin Live.

Jin Ju, the core founder of the @金桔2049 team, told Xinbochang that the company was established in September 2021. At the beginning, the team planned for more than half a year to launch @金桔2049, aiming at the 3D realistic virtual human track, which is still very scarce in China. The plan is to make an entertaining and lightweight virtual anchor. The early planning was very rich, even "very complicated."

Jinju is also the person behind the virtual anchor "@金桔2049". She has operated a top IP account, so she also takes on the content work of the team. In addition to her, the founding team has three other members, including a senior modeler who graduated from an art academy, a technician who graduated from the United States, and a "housekeeper" who takes care of both marketing and operations.

Opening the homepage of @金桔2049's Douyin account, you can see that the earliest video was posted on November 3, 2021. This video of less than 1 minute shows @金桔2049 in various postures, including standing, sitting, and exercising, through multiple scenes.

However, after @金桔2049 was officially launched, the team encountered a situation where "there was no improvement after making three or four videos." The team originally planned to gain traffic by producing short video content and then develop commercial monetization. When the short trial of short videos did not achieve a big breakthrough, the team turned their attention to live broadcasting.

In November 2021, @金桔2049 launched his first live broadcast on Douyin, and the effect was unexpectedly very good. "On the first day of the live broadcast, there were already 500,000 viewers, and the maximum number of people online at the same time was nearly 30,000." When talking about this Douyin live broadcast debut, Jinju's tone and emotions showed some excitement.

This live broadcast also gave them a new direction for account operation - skipping short video content and going straight to live broadcast.

"When we first started broadcasting, we gained 150,000 followers in a week."

Jinju said in a review to the new broadcast site that they also enjoyed the traffic support from Douyin Live for new anchors at the beginning, so all the data performed very well. At the same time, during this period, the team provided users with a new visual experience through cool scenes and novel appearances, and on the other hand, they connected with real anchors to make jokes and create laughter, which effectively carried over the traffic.

By combining short videos with secondary production and dissemination of live broadcast content, @金桔2049 soon achieved stable traffic and revenue performance, and user perception gradually increased.

It is understood that live broadcast income currently accounts for more than 50% of @金桔2049's income, but the Jinju team uses most of the live broadcast income in the technical optimization of @金桔2049, and continues to polish and expand the value of the IP.

"We now make changes to @金桔2049 almost every one or two months, adding some of the latest technologies to her live broadcast room to ensure that fans can get the latest and most interesting things." Jinju revealed that the company is no longer a small team of four people. After the expansion of personnel, it has launched a second virtual anchor and is currently actively planning a third virtual anchor to bring more fun and interesting content to everyone.

2. High-quality anchors emerge from niche tracks

The production and operation company behind the virtual anchor @许安一 is Jiguangmiao Technology. @许安一 just entered the Douyin live broadcast in March this year, and also took the 3D realistic style route.

"Our fastest growth in followers was when we first joined the platform in April, because at that time most users on the platform had never seen a realistic virtual person live broadcast , and were quite curious about 'who is this handsome guy, is he a real person?'"

At the end of 2021, Jiguangmiao Technology started project preparation for @许安一. On March 21, 2022, @许安一 released a pre-launch video on Douyin; on March 25, he started his first live broadcast. By April 26, in just one month, @许安一 had gained 130,000 followers through live broadcasts.

Its operations manager told Xinbochang that @许安一 is the second virtual human anchor launched by Jiguangmiao Technology. Earlier, Jiguangmiao launched "Princess Miaoshan" in March 2021, who is also an active virtual anchor on Douyin. @许安一 is the first case to try a realistic style.

In fact, Jiguangmiao Technology is a company that focuses on the research and development of real-time virtual human technology products. Its core product is real-time virtual human software, which is mainly used in virtual live broadcast and short video production, serving B-side brands and animation IP companies. When @许安一 was first established, "I considered more the exploration of technology research and development, and the need to verify market acceptance."

But to their surprise, this "chatty fox demon from another dimension" suddenly became popular on Douyin live streaming. This not only brought @许安一's account a good increase in fans, but also a good performance in the traffic of the live streaming room. @许安一's live streaming room had a maximum of over 40,000 people online at the same time, and a maximum of over 1 million viewers.

"Most of my fans are attracted by my handsome looks and charming voice, but they also seem to like my funny side." When @许安一的中之人 was asked by the new show what he thought of @许安一's popularity, he summed it up in three factors: looks, voice and humor.

In fact, like @金桔2049, @许安一's popularity is inseparable from the team's advantages in virtual human live broadcast technology and content. With these advantages, as well as the traffic blessing of Douyin live broadcast to support newcomers, @许安一 finally gained recognition from users in a short period of time.

"Since the launch of the broadcast, we have received more than 1,000 hours of live broadcast feedback. Based on this feedback, we continue to optimize the software and hardware configuration to achieve high-definition and high-smoothness live broadcast effects. The income obtained from the live broadcast is also used to optimize the live broadcast tools, including one-click dressing, interactive special effects, lens control, lighting control, scene change and other real-time functions, to ensure that operators can realize their ideas conveniently and quickly during the live broadcast and grasp every highlight moment in the live broadcast." said @许安一's operations manager.

From @金桔2049 to @许安一, two virtual human anchors with basically no fan base and audience recognition, were able to find their target audiences through Douyin live streaming in a short period of time and quickly grow into top anchors in the virtual live streaming segment.

The reason is that the content ecology of Douyin live streaming is changing, and support for diverse and high-quality anchors is increasing.

In the TVC for the fifth anniversary of Douyin live streaming, together with the two virtual anchors @金桔2049 and @许安一, there are also anchors from many fields such as dance, opera, outdoor, musical instruments, and sports.

These anchors, like the two virtual anchors, also experienced the journey from 0 to 1 in Douyin live broadcast, found the precise audience who liked and recognized their content, and finally achieved rapid growth.

From the growth stories of these anchors, we can see that Douyin Live is no longer the show live broadcast platform represented by entertainment anchors. Traditional, modern, and trendy live broadcast content, as long as the content is high-quality, will attract the corresponding audience and achieve good results. The diversified and high-quality ecology of Douyin Live is gradually emerging in these anchor stories.

3. Tik Tok live streaming has entered an era of diversity and quality

In fact, Douyin live streaming has been changing since November 2017. In the past five years, Xinbochang believes that Douyin live streaming has roughly gone through three stages:

(1) 2017-2020: 1.0 period, with a strong traditional show atmosphere

When Douyin entered the market, the live streaming industry was still in the explosive growth period of show live streaming, and the operating model of mainstream live streaming platforms was mainly the show model. During this period, Douyin recruited guilds, attracted high-quality entertainment anchors to settle in, and began to hold annual ceremonies, gradually building the basic ecology of platform live streaming content consumption.

(2) 2020-2021: 2.0 period, diversification begins to emerge

In 2020, affected by a series of factors, offline businesses in many industries were affected, and they turned their attention to online. Some groups and institutions took the lead in trying, and new live broadcast content such as cloud performances and online concerts began to appear and were recognized and sought after.

During this period, Douyin Live, which has an advantage in user base, has become the preferred platform for many offline content to be transferred online.

For example, some traditional art troupes have opened up a "second stage" on Douyin. Data shows that in 2021, Douyin's traditional cultural live broadcasts increased by 1 million year-on-year, of which more than 20,000 were intangible cultural heritage live broadcasts, covering 97% of national intangible cultural heritage projects; quyi live broadcasts covered more than 230 types of opera, and the income of anchors increased by 2.3 times year-on-year.

On the other hand, Douyin Live has also begun to invest in the construction of new content, organizing and planning a number of online concerts and traditional cultural performances such as folk art and folk music, and cooperating with high-quality content production teams to create online live variety shows. The content of show live broadcasts has begun to be diluted, and the diversification trend of Douyin Live has begun to emerge.

(3) 2022: 3.0 era, high-quality and diversified ecosystem matures

With the emergence of Douyin's diversified live broadcast ecosystem, it is necessary to continue to carry out refined operations for anchors and develop high-quality live broadcast content. Therefore, Douyin improves the live broadcast content ecosystem through richer functions and gameplay, more precise traffic support, and more effective operation guidance.

At the Douyin Live Broadcasting Organization Conference held in November this year, Qian Jing, the person in charge of Douyin Live Broadcasting products, revealed that in 2022, Douyin Live Broadcasting will have an average of 600 million exposures per day for anchor growth support, which is 6 times that of 2021. These traffic does not flow to the top anchors, but has exclusive recommendation strategies for anchors at different stages. For example, new anchors can get an average of nearly 3,000 exposure opportunities in the first 7 days of Douyin Live Broadcasting, which is twice that of 2021.

With the strong support of the platform, in addition to new trendy content such as virtual live broadcasts, traditional cultural live broadcasts are also growing rapidly on Douyin, and many national and industry-level professional content players have also been attracted to become Douyin anchors. At the same time, theater, performance and even large-scale events have appeared in Douyin live broadcast rooms. These contents have enriched the Douyin live broadcast ecosystem, and the diversification and quality labels of Douyin live broadcasts have become increasingly obvious.

In response to such changes, Douyin Live continues to support high-quality content, encourages various vertical tracks to take root on Douyin Live, and through a series of operations such as traffic support, tool optimization, and event planning, allows these anchors with high-quality content to generate revenue and achieve long-term development.

Nowadays, "content upgrade" has become a consensus in the entire live broadcast industry, and more and more platforms have begun to pay attention to and focus on high-quality content. Standing at the fifth anniversary time node, Douyin Live has entered an era of diversified high-quality content, and is also pushing the entire industry into a new stage of development.

Author: Aligu

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