After all, there is still a battle in the field of short video. The first half is traffic competition, and the second half is stock competition.
Editor’s note: This article href=”https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Noka5arJI39Uicb7Pc2lqw”> “billion state power” from the micro-channel public number , Author: Pan Qingqing.
After all, there is still a battle in the field of short video. The first half is a competition for traffic and the second half is a stock competition.
“For every new friend you invite, your friend gets 6 yuan for the day, and you get 6 yuan; if your friends continue to watch the video, you get 13 yuan in total; for the first time you share and invite friends to register successfully, you can receive an additional 5 yuan reward.”< /p>
This familiar user pull new routine is not from Pinduoduo or Qutoutiao, but from a short video app with more than 300 million daily active users——Quick hands.
It is worth noting that the Kuaishou “Invite New Users to Register and Receive Red Envelopes” activity encourages users to recruit new users through WeChat, QQ, etc. Every time a new user is successfully invited to register, new users can earn up to 18 yuan in cash rewards.
Some industry insiders told Yibang: “Originally, Kuaishou and WeChat ecosystems are mutually connected. If Kuaishou follows Pinduoduo’s social fission approach, it will definitely bring a lot of user increments, and this path will be shaken. You can’t do it now.”
Data from the “2020 Kuaishou E-commerce Ecological Report” shows that in the first half of this year, Kuaishou’s average daily active users remained at 302 million. As of August 2020, the number of daily active users of Douyin including Douyin Volcano has exceeded 600 million. Seeing that Douyin Daily has exceeded 600 million, Kuaishou, which originally had the first-mover advantage, has become a catcher. Daily Living has not yet passed the 400 million mark. The gap between the two sides has gradually widened, and Kuaishou is facing considerable pressure on traffic.
On the eve of Douyin’s announcement of 600 million daily lives, Kuaishou also conducted its transformation short videoThe biggest product upgrade after the community, the “single column up and down” browsing mode and the “selected” tab were officially launched, and these two product design concepts are the “native power” of the rise of Douyin.
Now, after a new round of product upgrades and new user acquisition strategies, can Kuaishou break through the bottleneck of traffic growth and catch up with Douyin? After the traffic competition, where will the two sides start their new competition?
More and more like the fast hand of Douyin
On September 3, Kuaishou version 8.0 carried out its largest product upgrade since its transformation into the short video community. The notable change was the addition of the bottom navigation bar on the basis of the three tabs on the homepage “Follow, Discover, and Same City” And “Featured” Tab, it supports both “single column up and down” and “double column click” browsing modes.
The design styles of products such as selection, recommendation, ups and downs are the same as those of Douyin. The industry exclaimed: “Kaishou is more and more like Douyin.”
For a long time, Kuaishou has followed the “fair and inclusive” traffic distribution mechanism, and the “dual-column click-and-select” interactive mode has given users the right to choose freely. Similarly, more content creators have the opportunity to be negatively selected by users.
Behind the recent revision of Kuaishou’s “Tik Tok” version, it is vaguely revealed that it has shaken its own product design philosophy, as well as the traffic anxiety that has to face the increasingly widening gap with Douyin.
The Kuaishou, established in 2011, was almost invincible in the early short video wars. Compared with the Kuaishou, whose daily activity exceeded 50 million in 2017, Douyin, which was only established for half a year at that time, seemed “unknown”.
Different from the “savage growth” of the Kuaishou community, Douyin took the initiative to create a “trend community for young people”, pushing popular content to users and providing an immersive viewing experience; combined with the activities of celebrities and Internet celebrities, The drainage effect, Douyin chased all the way.
When Kuaishou announced that its daily activity exceeded 200 million in the first half of 2019, Douyin’s daily activity had exceeded 300 million. In the traffic competition between the two sides, Kuaishou gradually became a catcher.
The cruel competition is in front of us, and Kuaishou has to rethink its product operation logic and pay attention to the importance of “single ups and downs” and “selection”.
The person in charge of a certain MCN agency told Yibang that separate recommendations and featured recommendations are good news for content creators. “As long as the content is high-quality and reaches a certain amount of playback, there is a chance to be selected as a featured recommendation, which is equivalent to being pushed to a larger traffic pool for exposure, rather than a directional push with thousands of people.. In this way, content creators will be more motivated. “
Other industry professionals pointed out that for Kuaishou who is in a catch-up state, it is necessary to see the collision between massive content and massive users. With a large-scale content library and large-scale algorithm optimization, the content ecology and social relations will become more and more prosperous. A traffic distribution mechanism that favors private domains will slow down the growth of Kuaishou users.
“The logic of the two-column waterfall flow that Kuaishou insisted before has indeed given users more choices. People can more easily gather into interest communities through their personal preferences. However, we have to admit that Douyin’s single-column recommendation logic is highly advanced. The randomness and a strong sense of immersion in the Internet allow users to see more content, and it is also easier to retain users, extend the app usage time, and have more room for traffic to be realized.” The above-mentioned person further explained.
Previously, Zhu Lantian, an old Kuaishou employee, pointed out in the article “Talking about our company’s illness”: “Kol’s private domain traffic under the double column is too sticky and too strong, which is not conducive to our users’ arpu (per user Average income) continues to rise (Although live e-commerce has a good momentum now, the essence is that KOL’s private domain traffic is too strong, so our public domain short video promotion is not effective).”
It can be seen that although Kuaishou has strong private domain traffic, it is also easy to cause top experts to gather into independent “hills” by virtue of their traffic advantages, weakening the overall control of the platform’s traffic, and Kuaishou is the latest one. The round of upgrades and revisions will help strengthen the overall control of traffic, and the degree of freedom in advertising is also higher.
Traffic battle of short video giants
Since Kuaishou CEO Su Hua issued an internal letter in June 2019, announcing the sprint goal of 300 million DAU by the end of the year, Kuaishou bid farewell to the reckless era and declared war on Douyin. A month later, the battle for resources surrounding high-quality content creators started.
From graphics, short videos to live broadcasts, high-quality content has always been an important traffic portal for major Internet platforms, and high-quality content creators have become “scarce resources” for everyone to compete for.
In late July of that year, Kuaishou launched the “Photosynthesis Project”, with tens of billions of traffic to support 100,000 content creators, and planned to reach cooperation with 2,000 content production agencies within the year. The following August, Douyin also held the first creators conference, especially for creators who had not been settled in Douyin before, and competed with Kuaishou for high-quality creator resources.
A person in charge of an MCN agency told Yibang that, compared to Kuaishou, MCN agencies that previously relied on advertising for profit were more willing to choose Douyin. “Kaishou is more inclined to inclusive traffic distribution logic. Even high-quality content may not necessarily get a lot of exposure. The’Photosynthesis Project’ clearly feels that Kuaishou is releasing traffic tilt signals to MCN and content creators.”
Cass Data “2020 Short Video Content Marketing Trend White Paper” shows that as of October 2019In June, the number of KOLs with exactly the same nickname on Douyin and Kuaishou increased by 2.67 times over the same period last year. The refined operation of dual platforms has become a common choice for these KOLs.
At the same time, with the decline of Internet traffic dividends in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, the traffic war on short video platforms has shifted from Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities to the sinking market. Kuaishou and Douyin once again face each other in the battle for users in the sinking market.
At the beginning of August 2019, Kuaishou took the lead in launching the “Kaishou Speedy Edition” app, and its daily activity exceeded 10 million in just 20 days. Tik Tok moved after hearing the wind, and soon launched the “Quick Tik Tok” app. The industry generally believes that the TikTok Extreme Edition is more like a defensive product, mainly to avoid the Kuaishou Extreme Edition from stealing users.
“From the perspective of product experience, there is not much difference between Douyin, Kuaishou Speed Edition and the original product. The only change is the design of more operational methods to pull new and promote activities.” An industry insider told Yibang This strategy for the sinking market is very similar to Qutoutiao.
According to our understanding, users can get “gold coins” in exchange for cash by completing designated tasks in the fast version of the application, such as inviting friends, signing in, watching videos, etc. “2020China Mobile Internet Autumn Report” shows that in September 2020, the fast version month There are 130 million active users and 102 million monthly active users of Douyin Express Edition.
Following the battle for resources for content creators and the sinking market for half a year, Douyin and Kuaishou are aiming at another extremely scarce “director tool”-CCTV Spring Festival Gala exclusive interactive cooperation right as the new year approaches. . Previously, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and other Internet companies have used this exclusive advantage to achieve the effect of invigorating new life.
In the battle of the Spring Festival Gala, Kuaishou almost did not hesitate to defeat many opponents such as Ali, Pinduoduo, ByteDance and so on. Data shows that on the first day of the new year, Kuaishou topped the AppStore free list.
On the other hand, although ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin, did not win the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, it spent 630 million yuan to obtain the exclusive network rights for the Lunar New Year movie “囧Mom” and completed a sneak attack. Data shows that within 24 hours of the movie’s airing, a variety of ByteDance products and applications have entered the top ten free lists in the App Store.
In addition, Douyin also copied Pinduoduo’s pull new routine during the Spring Festival, inviting friends to open the red envelope, and the amount can be withdrawn when the amount is 100 yuan, achieving the effect of user pull and retention.
However, the Spring Festival Gala red envelopes did not give Kuaishou a good retention rate. According to the “2020 China Mobile Internet Spring Report” released by QuestMobile, the average DAU of Kuaishou in March was 215 million, which is 100 million short of Douyin.
After the Spring Festival, Kuaishou, faced with traffic growth and user retention pressure, once again invested heavily in absorbing celebrity top-stream resources. Compared with Douyin’s own fashionable and trendy platform tone since its inception, Kuaishou, who followed “fairness and inclusiveness” in the early days, did not regard celebrity resources as “guests” of the platform. However, in the first half of this year, Kuaishou has clearly exerted its efforts in introducing top-tier celebrity resources.
In addition to inviting top stars such as Jay Chou, Zhang Yuqi, Zheng Shuang, and Yang Mi to enter the platform or sign contracts to become spokespersons, Kuaishou also reached commercial cooperation with star entrepreneurs such as Dong Mingzhu, Liang Jianzhang, Ding Lei, etc., in an attempt to make more brands change Kuaishou’s stereotype of “preferring to grassroots and sinking the market” re-understands its platform tonality and commercial value.
“At present, the entry of top-rated stars is still effective. Before everyone felt that the only commercial value of Kuaishou was to bring goods through live broadcast. Now many brand customers are beginning to try to use short videos to grow grass, indicating that Kuaishou has Caominzhi’, the value of brand marketing has begun to highlight, and this is becoming more and more like Douyin.” A FMCG brand marketing agent told Yibang.
The next leg of the secret traffic battle
According to the “2020 China Mobile Internet Autumn Report” released by QuestMobile, compared with the gradual saturation of the three BAT users and the slower growth rate, the penetration rate of Toutiao and Kuaishou users has accelerated.
In September 2020, Toutiao’s user penetration rate reached 67.2%, and Kuaishou’s user penetration rate reached 43.5%; from the perspective of app usage time ratio, Toutiao’s accounted for 15.4%, an increase of 3.45%; Kuaishou Accounted for 7.2%, an increase of 2.8%.
“They are not only a’killing time’ weapon for short videos, but as a traffic container, extending their reach to the pan-entertainment consumption field within their capabilities.” The person in charge of an MCN agency described.
Nowadays, the traffic confrontation between Kuaishou and Douyin is no longer limited to the short video track. They harvest a huge amount of users and user time, and by constantly adding new content forms and product features-medium and long videos, Live streaming, e-commerce, and games continuously suck the time users spend on other products.
As judged by a person who also serves as a Douyin and Kuaishou eco-service provider, there is still a battle in the short video field. The first half is a competition for traffic, and the second half is a competition for stock.
“When everyone realizes that the growth space of short video users is getting smaller and smaller, they will simultaneously think about the retention, conversion and repurchase issues of users. In other words, the inventory competition is based on the user’s Staying time and stickiness depend on the efficiency of users’ commercial value conversion,” said the person above.
Although Kuaishou’s daily life is not as good as Douyin from the final result of the traffic competition, Kuaishou is still not to be underestimated in terms of the efficiency of traffic realization.
Currently, live broadcasting, advertising, and e-commerce have become the troika driving Kuaishou commercialization. Relying on the “double column click” browsing mode and Pratt & Whitney’s traffic distribution mechanism, Kuaishou has formed a diversified societyIntersection< /a> The strong interaction and high stickiness of the fan relationship between layers and fans also contributed to its achievements in live broadcasting.
Data shows that in the first half of this year, Kuaishou live broadcast has exceeded 170 million daily activities; from 2017 to 2019, Kuaishou live broadcast revenue has increased from 7.95 billion yuan to 31.44 billion yuan.
However, Douyin’s live broadcast business has also revealed a “latecomer first” trend, according to Interface News news, at the beginning of this year, the monthly turnover of Douyin and Kuaishou Live Reward both reached 3 billion Yuan, the scale is comparable. If the volcano live broadcast merged with Douyin is counted, Douyin’s reward flow has exceeded that of Kuaishou.
With the slowdown of platform traffic growth, the revenue growth of Kuaishou live broadcast is also facing a ceiling. In the first half of 2020, the proportion of Kuaishou’s total revenue from live broadcasts fell to 68.5%. At the same time, the flow of advertising and e-commerce channels has become its focus.
Starting from September this year, Kuaishou has successively upgraded a number of commercial products such as “Magnetic Stars”, “Fan Toutiao”, “Xiaodiantong”, etc., all emphasizing the marketing advantages of opening up public and private domain traffic and efficient conversion. In addition, the Kuaishou IPO prospectus shows that in the first half of this year, online marketing service revenue has exceeded 7.2 billion yuan, an increase of 222.5% over the same period last year.
“Kaishou added a single-column model, which shows that it wants to expand the possibility of more traffic monetization. The entire product logic is pointing to the open public domain traffic entrance. In fact, it is in line with Douyin and earning advertising money. Xiang Yi, the person in charge of the MCN agency -refer-type=”2″ href=”https://36kr.com/projectDetails/31836” target=”_blank”>State Analysis.
Previously, according to “The Beijing News” quoted analysts, Douyin’s 2019 revenue forecast 50 billion yuan, of which advertising revenue exceeds 20 billion yuan; Kuaishou’s 2019 revenue is about 45 billion yuan, and advertising revenue is about 10 billion yuan. Obviously, Kuaishou is passing open public domain traffic entrances, addingFast information flow advertising monetization efficiency.
From the perspective of the e-commerce sector, at present, the number of daily active users of Kuaishou e-commerce has exceeded 100 million, and the average monthly repurchase rate of users exceeds 60%; in the first half of this year, the GMV of Kuaishou e-commerce has reached 109.6 billion yuan. According to “LatePost” news, by the end of the third quarter of this year, Bytedance’s GMV this year was less than 100 billion yuan.
A live broadcast e-commerce service provider told Yibang that at present, the content consumption users of the two platforms of Kuaishou and Douyin have been highly overlapped. Merchants have begun to use content to plant grass to achieve transaction conversion, and the platform must also hope that users can be in the ecosystem Complete the closed-loop transaction of planting and weeding, and no longer jump to third-party e-commerce platforms. “From the perspective of business closed-loop logic, they are more about competing for user retention time and user stickiness, and for the possibility of more traffic monetization.”
Now, Kuaishou, who is temporarily disadvantaged in the traffic battle, has taken the lead in applying for listing in Hong Kong, and has the opportunity to seize the “first share of short video.” The secret traffic battle that has continued for many years will also usher in new nodes. Big short video giants will usher in a new round of confrontation in the capital market.