This article comes from: Shiqu, the original title: “In-depth analysis of 20 live broadcast platforms”, the cover comes from: Visual China

E-commerce live broadcasts quickly entered the public’s field of view, relying on the outings of Internet celebrity anchors Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, and 2019 became the first year of e-commerce live broadcast outbreaks.

Affected by the epidemic, online live broadcast maintained a high growth trend in early 2020, and once again won widespread attention in the marketing circle. It was also regarded by many brands as a life-saving straw to save the decline in sales. The term live broadcast was once among the top marketing hot words, but some in the industry said that only incompetent marketing departments do live broadcasts.

Only incompetent marketing department do live broadcasting? However, the fact is the opposite. A major principle of brand marketing is that where users are, marketing should appear. So how big is the user size of live streaming? For brands, is live broadcasting a temporary life-saving straw, or a traffic depression that can continue to be dug in the future?

Let ’s take a look at a few sets of data first:

  1. According to the latest data from CNNIC, the number of online live broadcast users in China has reached 433 million. Among them, the reality TV live broadcast and sports live broadcast users were 205 million and 194 million, respectively, and the game live broadcast and concert live broadcast were 243 million and 116 million.


    2. According to the China Merchants Securities report, it is predicted that the number of online live broadcast users will reach 524 million in 2020, with a growth rate of 4.59%.

    3. According to Quest Mobile data, the use of short videos on weekdays in February 2020 accounted for 15.2%. Except for mobile social apps, short videos accounted for the highest proportion.

    According to the data, Shiqu believes that the live broadcast market has three major characteristics: large user scale, high activity, and steady growth. Live broadcasting has become a new form of entertainment, infiltrating users’ daily entertainment. In the future, brands that understand live marketing will gain more users, and brands that are the first to enter live broadcasting will have user bonuses for building private domain traffic pools.


    Three echelons of live broadcast platform

    When consumer behaviors and preferences change, all parties in the industry will sensitively capture potential business opportunities and business positioning, quickly adapt to consumer changes, and form new growth lines.

    In this environment, early 2020 also ushered in the barbaric growth of the live broadcast industry like spring rain. Compared with professional vertical live broadcast platforms, short video, social, e-commerce, integrated video platforms, etc. have also deployed live broadcast services. For brands that want to launch online live marketing, when deciding on live broadcasting, they face a difficult choice of platform. Such as platform tonality matching, user matching, traffic recommendation, content production and anchor selection, etc.

    Shiqu experienced 20 live broadcast platforms by combining TrustData, Taobang list and other related industry data and research (including to B end) , And according to the monthly activity scale of the platform, the commercial type divides the live broadcast platform into three major echelons:

    First Echelon


    1. Taobao is a strong e-commerce attribute, with rich product categories, which can be distributed as traffic based on its own traffic and external platform traffic The base number, and the users are mainly in the first and second tier cities, and the fourth and fifth tier sink markets are also covered. Taobao can directly gather goods and people in a scene by establishing a live broadcast entrance, which is ideal for brands for online sales Scene.

      However, the strong e-commerce attribute also means that there are many types of live broadcasts on the platform. This is not an advantage for niche brand merchants, and the traffic is more concentrated on the head merchants and anchors. In Taobao live broadcast, content production and anchor selection are the key factors to increase traffic.

      Douyin and Kuaishou are the obvious social attributes of entertainment. They focus on entertainment and social content, and have the advantages of high traffic and highly active platforms.

      2. Douyin mainly focuses on urban youth, and mainly focuses on the first and second lines. However, the live delivery of Douyin is relatively weak, but as Luo Yonghao became popular with Douyin Live and attracted the attention of many brands, Douyin will definitely accelerate the polishing and precipitation of the live broadcast business form.

      In addition, Douyin belongs to the Toutiao system. The recommendation method of Douyin live streaming traffic is similar to that of Toutiao. It is a logic that emphasizes the algorithm over fans.The algorithm makes accurate recommendations. For brands that start live broadcasts on Douyin, they will face the problem of how to attract traffic. The pre-live broadcast and exposure, topic selection, etc. are all important.

      3. Quick hands are mainly in the sinking market, with weak operation control, content recommendation based on social and user interests, main recommendation content on follower pages, and at the same time deepening the relationship between anchors and fans, and stickiness. The fast player anchor has a strong fan accumulation, which is the “old iron relationship” of the fast player label. For the brand, if the fast player is selected as the live broadcast position, the premise needs to have a sufficient “old iron”.

      Kaishou and Douyin are both new e-commerce marketing scenarios for brands. Traffic competition is still in the early stages, and there is room for exploration. But the premise is that you need to connect with the e-commerce store to realize the post-link link, or if the brand simply wants to expose and plant grass. It is possible to direct traffic to its own online store, but there will definitely be in the process of cross-platform drainage User churn.

      Second Echelon


      In the second echelon, the platform types are mainly social media, integrated e-commerce and video platforms.

      4. Weibo is a social and content platform with a large user scale, but because Weibo as a whole focuses on hot topics, it is too shortWen gossip is aggregated, and there is less live streaming traffic on Weibo, so it belongs to the second echelon. The content of its live broadcast type is often dominated by non-standard items such as clothing, accessories, and daily necessities. At present, it mainly depends on KOL live broadcast + hot topic search, and there are few merchants stationed in the live broadcast.

      5. Pinduoduo belongs to the rising platform of the post-e-commerce era. Due to its attribute of single-buying group buying, Pinduoduo also has the genes of Pinduoduo with social e-commerce. In addition, the live broadcast segment was launched in November last year, and the live broadcast products are mostly small commodities with low customer prices, agricultural products or local specialties, which are very grounded and have certain loyal users. There is a need for sinking The brand is a traffic pool worth trying, but the price must not be the focus of the live broadcast.

      6. Watermelon videos also belong to the headline system. The main live broadcast content covers popular game live broadcasts, including music live broadcasts, gourmet live broadcasts, travel live broadcasts, etc. The traffic comes from platform users. At present, the watermelon live streaming sector is still in the early stage, and both the anchor and the merchant are in the incubation stage. It is worth mentioning that Watermelon Video has a value mall specially built for sales conversion, which can open up the e-commerce link. For small and medium brands, it can be used as a new platform for water test exercise.

      7. JD Live has a strong e-commerce attribute, which started in August 2018. Basically, users watch live broadcasts for product purchases, and the consumption purpose is strong. And because JD.com users are mostly male, JD.com live broadcastsDifferent from other e-commerce live broadcast marketing and roaring live broadcast methods, most of them are based on evaluation and physical display. In addition, JD.com does not have representative celebrity anchors and merchants. However, JD.com will be more inclined to launch a joint mode of explosive merchants and anchors, because of its huge user base and the advantages of the entire category of e-commerce by JD.com. This attracts more merchants to join.

      8. Xiaohongshu, as a platform for growing social content for women, has been widely concerned recently because of the LV Xiaohongshu live broadcast rollover. Xiaohongshu just announced the online e-commerce live broadcast function at the end of last year. In the era of national live broadcasting, the live broadcast of Xiaohongshu looks a bit late, and it is still in the early test period. The source of livestream traffic is the platform’s own traffic and Xiaohongshuda private domain traffic.

      However, at present, Xiaohongshu’s live-view audience is mainly for private domain traffic. Most of the recommended products are beauty and clothing, and they are basically well-known brands. In addition, Xiaohongshu’s social grass and note genes are relatively strong, mainly based on Plog life record sharing, and the effect of recording and sharing video will be more suitable. The key to obtaining traffic for Xiaohongshu live broadcast is how to disperse scattered private domains Traffic and public domain traffic converge together.

      9. Station B mainly focuses on young users and the Z era, and is more focused on secondary content, ghosts and other types of content, but for brands, the value point is the younger users. Now most traditional brands are eager to make brand rejuvenation, B station is