Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1230
“LatePost” exclusively learned that Bilibili has continuously adjusted its organizational structure in the past week, involving multiple core business departments and six business leaders.
The first is the commercialization sector. Liu Zhi, Vice President of Station B and former head of operations, will be responsible for the commercialized middle-office system (Commercial Product Department, Commercial Technology Department, Commercial Operation Department, and Commercial Resource Management Department), as well as the main station commercial center.
Liu Zhi was the first employee of the commercialization team of Station B, and later transferred to be in charge of the core main station operation business. He has also played a key role in promoting the growth of UP owners and users of Station B in the past few years. A person familiar with station B commented that Liu Zhi is the executive who knows the content ecology of station B best. He is familiar with what users and UP owners want and don’t want.
The above-mentioned person said that Liu Zhi’s transfer this time shows that Station B is trying to make the commercial middle office play a more important role in driving various types of growth.
Another part of the commercialization of station B, the marketing center will be in charge of general manager Wang Xu. She participated in the establishment of the Bilibili brand advertising sales team from scratch. Wang Xu and Liu Zhi both reported to Li Ni, Vice Chairman and COO of Station B.
Liu Binxin, the former head of the commercial center and the main station commercial center of Station B, and vice president, will resign; Zhang Zhendong, the former head of the business of Mengpai and the marketing center, and vice president, will be transferred to the innovative business.
The main station has also been adjusted.
“LatePost” was informed that on the afternoon of July 18, station B issued an internal letter, and the reporting lines of the main station operation center, the creative platform department, the community operation department and the content cooperation department will be moved by Liu Zhiping to the vice president and the person in charge of the live broadcast business. Wang Yuyang, reporting to Chen Rui, Chairman and CEO of Station B.
Wang Yuyang is also the youngest post-90s executive at Station B. Before joining Station B, he founded the e-sports brokerage company Big Goose Culture.
At the beginning of 2021, the main station game area was independently designated as the “Game Content Department” at Station B, and Wang Yuyang was responsible for it to conduct an experiment in the integrated operation of live broadcast and video content to improve the richness of the platform’s content and the effectiveness of the live broadcast business. volume.
A person in the live broadcast business of station B said that the internal judgment of the previous experiment of integrating live broadcast and video content has achieved certain results, and now there are conditions to promote similar reforms in other content areas at station B.
“LatePost” also learned that the animation area in the main station operation center of station B will be split and become an independent “animation content department”; the film and television area, entertainment area and artist resource center will be split and merged into “Department of Entertainment Content”. The two new departments will be headed by Xu Bei, general manager of the OGV division of Station B (operations of animation, film and television, variety show documentaries; value-added services such as major members), and will report to Li Ni, Vice Chairman and COO of Station B.
According to the adjustment plan, the relevant departments of the animation content department, the film and entertainment content department, and the OGV business department will jointly form the “big animation section” and “big entertainment section” of station B, and operate the PUGV video (user original, second creation) in a unified manner. and long video (film and television entertainment copyright) content.
Based on the characteristics of animation content, film and entertainment content and games, Station B proposed the concept of “industry and ecological dual drive”. In layman’s terms, Station B intends to strengthen cooperation with the upstream and downstream of the external industry chain, hoping to use their respective advantages. Create new content.
In addition, Station B has also established a new data center, which is in charge of Zhang Zecong and reports to COO Li Ni.
According to “LatePost”, the adjustment of station B began to be brewed after the 2022 Chinese New Year, led by CEO Chen Rui and COO Li Ni.
In 2019, Station B launched the “Breaking the Circle” strategy, actively seeking user and commercial growth. At present, the number of daily active users of station B has reached nearly 80 million, and the annual revenue has reached 19.4 billion yuan, which has nearly tripled from three years ago.
However, at the end of 2021, the pressure on station B has increased sharply. The global economy has entered a new cycle, and the advertising industry has continued to decline; domestic and foreign industry supervision has increased; competition has become increasingly fierce, Douyin and Kuaishou are still strong, and the number of daily active users of Xiaohongshu is close to 60 million.
The shortcomings of Station B have not yet been filled: the commercialization of the platform and the UP master is still not fast enough, and the community atmosphere has been diluted to a certain extent due to “breaking the circle”. development brings hidden dangers. This business and organizational adjustment is the solution to these problems.
Liu Zhi, Wang Yuyang, and Xu Bei are all young executives who have grown up from the front line. A person close to the management of Bilibili said that they are the people who know the content and creator ecology of Bilibili best, and they also have a rich commercialization background and know how to combine vigorously commercialization and protection of the community. At the same time, they are all under the age of 35, full of combat effectiveness, and will play a core role in the breakthrough of the main business of the B station in the future.
Fully accelerate commercialization
In March 2022, Bilibili CEO Chen Rui said at the company’s annual financial report that Bilibili plans to break even in 2024. Three months later, he publicly emphasized again that the goal of breakeven would not change. This means that accelerating commercialization will be the most important task for Station B in the next two years.
“LatePost” learned that the advertising turnover target announced by the marketers of station B in early 2022 is about 9 billion yuan, which is between the advertising revenue of iQiyi and Weibo in 2021. This target is not radical. However, “According to the situation in the first and second quarters, there are still challenges to whether this goal can be achieved.” A person from the commercialization department of Station B said.
The above-mentioned person in the commercialization department said that despite the impact of the epidemic, changes in the economic environment, and Internet supervision in recent years, the main reason for the low degree of commercialization is station B itself, and there is a clear internal judgment on this.
In the past period of time, compared with revenue growth, station B has given higher priority to user growth, and there is a gap between the sales system and product technical capabilities and the head platform; Compared with media platforms, station B has a strong community attribute: users are more sensitive to product experience and platform atmosphere. This limits the commercialization space of Station B to a certain extent. Chen Rui once promised to never add patch ads before fan dramas because of user objections.
Station B has previously encouraged brands to cooperate with UP owners to create native video ads. A product person at station B told LatePost that when station B splits the content area, it will also consider selecting some areas with strong monetization methods and commercial value, such as food areas and fashion areas.
However, it is not easy to promote native video ads. Once the control is not good, it will have a negative impact on the image of the UP owner. There are also brands who have explored some balanced methods at station B. For example, Pinduoduo has carried out a lot of business cooperation with the UP master in the knowledge area of B station. The UP master has received corresponding incentives and maintained the update frequency. The users of station B also helped because of Pinduoduo. They “urge” and call Pinduoduo “Pin Gongzi”.
According to “LatePost”, station B will focus on exploring more content consumption scenarios this year, such as vertical screen short videos, OTT Internet TV, etc., and hopes to increase the advertising loading rate. “Now there are certain positive effects.” The above-mentioned commercial person at Station B said.
In 2021, Station B will launch the Story-Mode mode, and users can create and watch vertical short videos similar to Douyin and Kuaishou on the site. According to the first quarter financial report of Station B, the playback volume of Story-Mode mode currently accounts for more than 20% of the total playback volume on the platform, and is on the rise.
“LatePost” learned that the single-day revenue created by the Story-Mode mode is equivalent to the revenue created by the advertising space under each video frame. Story-Mode’s ecpm (ad revenue per thousand impressions) even surpassed Kuaishou in some cases.
A person close to Station B said that in the future, Station B will provide a fixed entrance for Story-Mode in the station.
Live broadcast is another important commercialization channel for Bilibili, and it and value-added services have contributed the most revenue to Bilibili in the past few quarters.
From 2021, the importance of live broadcasting will increase significantly at station B. After Wang Yuyang, vice president of station B, took over the first person in charge of the live broadcast business from Chen Rui, he clarified the core strategy, that is, to carry out in-station conversion and promote the UP master on the platform to broadcast live.
A person in the live broadcast business of station B said that in order to encourage the main live broadcast of UP, station B once gave the highest-level promotion resources such as open-screen advertisements. In the past, only S-level projects (mostly film and television, variety shows and event content) have this treatment.
At present, the proportion of UP masters converted into anchors is continuing to increase. From 2021, station B has strengthened its efforts to expand the live broadcast mode of virtual anchors, which has received a good response in the station. Take the overseas virtual anchor Shoto as an example, it earned millions of yuan after two hours of live broadcast.
Overall, Station B is still in the climbing stage on the road to commercialization. “The general environment is not good, there is only so much money in the market, and brands must choose to invest in the head platform.” said a commercialization person from a large Internet company. “In addition, continuing to grow and ‘breaking the circle’ is as important as optimizing the business system for the current Bilibili. Only when the user ecology and content are enriched can the brand ecology be enriched.”
New opponents, old challenges
Since station B has tried to “break the circle” and take the initiative to grow since 2019, the user scale has rapidly increased. But at the same time, the emergence of new opponents and the unresolved old contradictions may restrict the future development of station B.
On the consumer side, station B still needs to enrich user groups. The data shows that the average user age of station B is 22.8 years old, which is relatively low compared to other platforms. According to QuestMobile’s “Generation Z Insight Report”, the proportion of female users with more spending power in the user group of station B is 43%, and the proportion of male users is also relatively low.
A Xiaohongshu person told LatePost that 80% of Xiaohongshu’s current user usage time is contributed by video content. In 2022, Xiaohongshu, which has established a firm foothold in the female market, will focus on expanding male users between the ages of 18 and 35. The goal is to increase the number of core male monthly active users to 80 million by the end of the year.
In contrast, the next step of station B will focus on increasing the proportion of women in the working class. “Both Xiaohongshu and Station B need to further ‘break the circle’, otherwise there will be structural risks in the long run.” said an investor familiar with both Station B and Xiaohongshu.
To solve the problems on the consumer side, Station B needs to start from the supply side. Only if the content on the platform is rich and diverse enough and the UP master has the motivation to continue to create, it is possible to attract more users. This is also one of the important purposes of this organizational restructuring.
One of the current main contradictions of station B is, “Users’ demand for good content is increasing, but there is not enough good content.” Chen Rui said internally.
Among them, the low efficiency of content business monetization is still affecting the creative enthusiasm of UP owners. “This is also an old problem that has not been solved for a long time.” said a commercial person at Station B.
In 2020, the fireworks system was launched at station B. COO Li Ni said at the first quarter financial report that fireworks are a great advantage for station B. It not only reserves advertisers, but also becomes a reservoir, and at the same time UP masters creativity. It also left advertisers on the B station platform.
“But now there is still a lot of room for improvement.” The above-mentioned commercial person said that in addition to the shortcomings of technology, algorithms and products, there is another problem that has been ignored by the team for a long time, that is, the main income of different categories of UP at station B unbalanced.
For example, under the same number of fans, the income of UP masters in the food, technology and other categories of station B will be higher, while the income of UP masters in sports and automobiles will be relatively low; the main income sources of different UP masters are also different, such as life, games, dance. The main income of UP in the category is mostly contributed by users, while the main income of fashion, food, and technology UP is mostly contributed by enterprises.
The above-mentioned commercialization person said that this means that the commercialization of station B will also need to be like the operation team, thinking separately for each content category, what is the most suitable commercialization model for its UP master. And Liu Zhi is the person who knows the most about each content category and the needs of UP masters.
“LatePost” learned that the goal of the commercialization of UP masters at station B in 2022 is to increase the overall income of UP masters by 50%.
Internally cultivated management team
For a long time in the past, the market worried that CEO Chen Rui did not have many executives in the company who could share his worries except COO Li Ni. The lack of core business executives makes Chen Rui often go to battle in person and stand on the front line of business. Until 2020, the person in charge of the main station product and live broadcast of station B is still Chen Rui himself.
The early growth environment of Station B was relatively stable, it rarely participated in fierce competition, and the opportunity to make contributions was relatively limited. Therefore, from an external perspective, Station B was rarely pushed to the foreground. However, since 2020, as the company’s growth accelerates and the pressure of competition increases, the company has gradually emerged a group of backbones.
“LatePost” learned that after 2020, Station B has been promoted internally/externally introduced eight corporate vice presidents. Before that, there were only two VP-level managers in the entire company. In the first half of 2022, Station B has been promoted to more than 40 middle and backbone positions.
Looking at the executive team of Station B, 80% of the business leaders are trained from the inside. Two of the executives in this organizational adjustment, Liu Zhi and Wang Yuyang, were promoted to vice presidents at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year, respectively.
When Liu Zhi joined Station B in 2016, he participated in the construction of the commercialization system. Due to his strong infrastructure capabilities, he was transferred to the product department in 2017, responsible for the construction of manuscript submission and review systems. After getting familiar with the main station products and content ecology, he was transferred to the main station operation center to be responsible for the operation business.
After Xu Bei built the advertising system and fireworks system of station B, he was transferred to the OGV business department as the person in charge, in charge of copyright content operation and major membership business; Wang Yuyang led the live broadcast center of the main station after joining station B. It has exceeded the company’s performance for two consecutive years, and participated in the management of some operational affairs through the special zone project of the “Game Content Department”.
A high-level person close to Station B said that the products and services of Station B have their special community attributes.
Taking commercialization as an example, there are already many mature commercialization tools and experiences in the industry, but station B cannot be directly reused. The above-mentioned person said that how to place the advertising space, and what is the biggest appeal of the UP owner of station B in terms of commercialization, these can only be explored by themselves.
This article is reprinted from: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1230
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