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Text/Hua Yu
Source/city boundary (ID:ishijie2018)
Luo Yonghao appeared on Taobao Live as scheduled on October 24th, intending to “manage the needs of men”. Taobao recommended the homepage and advertised everywhere.
Luo Yonghao’s followers are also very enthusiastic. Although the number of audiences and reservations is not as good as Li Jiaqi’s, Taobao’s determination to announce the content of its live broadcast has indeed been seen.
Behind this, Taobao, which has been in the traffic business, is anxious about the peak of industry traffic and rising stars such as Douyin.
As early as September, Taobao announced that it would establish a content-centered traffic creation field in addition to the traffic consumption field, enter the era of live broadcast 2.0, and search for anchors with content attributes everywhere. Luo Yonghao, the head anchor, made his debut on Taobao. Show, blow a horn.
However, although the purpose has been achieved, it is not a simple matter for Taobao to truly “contentize”.
Taobao grabbed not only Luo Yonghao
The specific price paid by Taobao for “snatching” Luo Yonghao has never been reported on the market, but compared with the 60 million he signed with Douyin, Taobao must have spent a lot of money or promised resources. After all, Huang He, the founder of “Make Friends” who was labeled Lao Luo, said that cross-platform live broadcasting will not be considered for the time being, and he will give priority to cultivating Douyin.
It has only been 6 months, and Lao Luo came to Taobao with great fanfare. It is very likely that the other party “gives too much”. According to Jiemian News, Taobao promised to give 50 million unique visitors to its live broadcast debut, which means one mobile phone per person. It will be pushed to 50 million different people.
Lao Luo’s joining and Li Jiaqi’s comeback made Taobao live broadcast a long-lost excitement, in stark contrast to 618’s indifference.
In the days when the top anchor was absent, it was not only the popularity that affected Taobao, but also the power of upward growth.
This is because the live broadcast platform needs a super head, so that those who have not come in, those who want to come in, and even those who are watching the lively, can see the high benchmark.
Internet industry analyst Ge Jia believes that only when the benchmark is erected can more people be motivated to come in and work toward an unattainable goal. If a platform is a waist anchor, you can see the ceiling of traffic and GMV at a glance, and it is likely to gradually decline.
In fact, Lao Luo is just an “appetizer” for Taobao Live. This time on Double 11, Taobao’s anchor configuration is different from the past, and the types are wider. Yu Minhong, who will appear on Taobao Live on the evening of October 31, is also invited. Has Cecilia Cheung’s head MCN Yuanwang Technology, Changsheng Finance host Yao Changsheng and other financial anchors.
In fact, this kind of change runs through 2022. In the words of the person in charge of the new ecological business line of Taobao Live, “We have basically talked about everything you can think of (all short videos or live broadcasters on the entire network).”
On the one hand, Taobao delivers ferry tickets to anchors outside the station, such as Douyin’s outfit anchor “Yili Xiaoshazi”, Weibo mother and baby blogger “Nian Gao Mom”, and Kuaishou’s “Xiao Shenlong”. On the other hand, Taobao selects new anchors through a competition that promises billion-level traffic support, and the top ten finalists include comedy creator Zhu Once, and experienced modeling teacher Xiao P. In addition, Taobao has also launched a series of support programs for the waist and tail and new anchors.
So for a while, the Taobao live broadcast platform appeared with different styles of anchors such as designer merchants, intangible cultural heritage merchants, and camping players. There are anchors who moved the live broadcast room selling honey to the forest, those who picked and sold them in the orchard, and those who made traditional food.
Under the leadership of Taobao, as Taobao’s mainstream “selling” anchor, it has made room for content anchors, and Taobao is “content-oriented”.
In terms of strategy, in May, Taobao’s strategy was adjusted to “from transaction to consumption”, hoping that users should not only spend money on Taobao, but also make decisions about spending money on Taobao; in September, Taobao Live announced that it would In addition to the traffic consumption field, a content-centered traffic creation field has been established. Entering the era of Taobao Live 2.0, the traffic tilt indicator has also changed from pure transaction volume to dual indicators of content quality and transaction volume.
Obviously, Taobao is not ignorant of the grass-growing capabilities of Xiaohongshu and Douyin, and with the “e-commerce” of Xiaohongshu and Douyin, Taobao’s panic about its lack of content is deepening , the content that can create traffic is what Taobao lacks and desperately needs.
Taobao’s main business is traffic
In the final analysis, it depends on the person who creates the content. Taobao invites various anchors to act like they want to “eat a fat man in one go”.
This anxiety about traffic has a lot to do with Taobao’s business model. “To a certain extent, Taobao’s main business is traffic,” said Internet industry analyst Ge Jia.
Taobao’s main source of income is not consumers, but merchants who buy traffic from the platform. That is, the advertising fee that the merchants hand over to Taobao, and the promotion tools used are through train, super drill exhibition, Taoke, Wanxiangtai, speed push and so on.
It is easy to see that the first-ranked product on the product search page is most likely marked with the gray word “Advertisement” at the bottom left. Another example is that when a merchant buys a super diamond exhibition, Taobao will take the initiative to display its products in front of accurate customers.
This is different from JD.com’s model. In 2021, JD.com’s self-operated business revenue will account for more than 90% of its retail revenue. JD.com buys goods from suppliers and sells them to customers to earn the difference.
As the originator of online shopping, a dominant Taobao has formed a large-scale natural flow. In the early days, to attract merchants to the platform, Taobao did not charge commissions. Taobao also advertises everywhere to buy traffic, including small and medium websites, Gezhan, Baidu, Google, Weibo and other search engines and media.
Zhang Fan, a veteran netizen, still remembers that when he browsed the website, he would see pop-up windows of Taobao and small advertisements in Tieba. According to his understanding, Taobao hired Baoma to do it, and the founder of Taobao would also run around to preach and expose. It is also this experience that allows Taobao and the entire Ali to integrate into the blood of traffic promotion and operation.
During this process, Taobao has continuously deepened its moat to serve merchants. The promotion tools have ranged from “lucky fortune” to Alimama and Taobao through trains, and the mainstream display methods have changed from listing (directory display) to search (search), recommendation, etc.
For the sake of traffic, Ali has also invested in many content companies, such as Yahoo, UC Browser, Youku Tudou, Xiami Music, Tiantian Music, Wandoujia, etc.
Through the above channels, Taobao sells the wholesale traffic to merchants on the website to earn the difference. It is precisely because Taobao is doing e-commerce by means of traffic operation, serving merchants, and user conversion efficiency is not particularly high.
“The proportion of traffic purchased by Taobao may be converted into loyal users after consumption. Compared with JD.com, which has achieved quality control, logistics, and services, it is much less, and the efficiency of traffic utilization is different.” Ge Jia gave an example.
In the era of easy access to traffic, Taobao may not need to care about these branches and leaves, as long as it can continuously inject new traffic, it can support the business of wholesale traffic. But now, traffic has become harder to come by.
Luo Yonghao alone is not enough
Because of the disappearance of demographic dividends and traffic dividends, traffic bottlenecks have become a problem that almost all Internet companies must face.
As of June 2022, the number of netizens in my country has exceeded 1.051 billion, and the Internet penetration rate has exceeded 74%. In comparison, as of March 31, 2022, the number of Chinese digital merchants on Alibaba (Taobao, Tmall, Xianyu, Taote and other multi-platforms) has reached 1.003 billion annual active buyers.
Scale is the foundation of retail, not to mention Taobao is not the only place in the e-commerce arena.
In addition to JD.com and Pinduoduo, the most eye-catching new generation of players is Douyin. In Yao Changsheng’s view, Douyin is now the same as the traffic infrastructure, and the only thing that can compete with it is the WeChat video account.
According to data released by ByteDance CEO Zhang Nan, as of August 2020, the daily active users of Douyin, including the Douyin Volcano version, have exceeded 600 million.
The effect of Douyin’s “e-commerce” is amazing. According to Star Map data, in the “Tao Dou Kuai” live broadcast e-commerce landscape, as of September 2022, Douyin’s GMV share reached 40.5%, Kuaishou and Diantao (Taobao exclusively used The platforms that come to live broadcast) are 32% and 27.5% respectively, and Taobao has become the “elderest”.
Taobao, which is caught in traffic anxiety, is more urgent for content that can create traffic under the background of excess supply and weak consumption.
“On the premise that there are so many goods on the supply side and the willingness to consume is not high, only interest can inspire desire to place an order. What consumers buy is not something, but the same values as the anchor.” Yao Changsheng said.
Obviously, online shopping has entered an era of fighting for “people” after passing through the stages of lack of supply, selling land and selling goods, and fighting for brand power. The store, but the place where it exudes charisma.
Content has become the best choice for e-commerce platforms to drive traffic and revitalize stock, so now Taobao, “realizing that it has been hit by Douyin’s dimensionality reduction, it hopes that it can keep up with Douyin’s pace,” Yao Changsheng added.
However, inviting one or two anchors can only solve the momentary urgency, and building an ecology that can provide nutrition for creators is the fundamental.
It’s easier said than done, Taobao’s “contentization” is not as easy as Douyin’s “e-commerce”. Ge Jia explained the different logics of the two sets of practices.
Douyin’s “e-commerce” is equivalent to “from people to goods”. With traffic, transactions can be completed through external chains or Douyin stores. “Although it will take a long time to do a good job in supply chain, after-sales and other links, but The logic makes sense.”
But Taobao’s “e-commerce” is equivalent to “from goods to people”. Taobao has been marked with a transaction attribute label, and consumers’ appeal to it is transaction. People who go to Taobao will not stay for too long, watching funny or popular science videos, and they will not think of Taobao. Taobao’s “contentization” is equivalent to changing from an efficient purpose-oriented trading platform to a pan-entertainment social platform without purpose, in a “dimension upgrade”.
Therefore, according to Zhang Dexin, editor-in-chief of the China Cultural Tourism Innovation and Entrepreneurship Think Tank Series, under the gene of Taobao platform’s transaction attributes, even if Dong Yuhui comes to Taobao to live broadcast, it may be difficult to get ahead.
Watching content on Taobao and swiping videos? Consumers will not be able to adapt to this change for a while.
From people to goods is a matter of course, from goods to people is hard to beat. As content creators, they may not care which platform they go to to create. They are like rangers cruising in various tribes. Wherever there is a lush grassland, they can take root. However, the dirty work in the early stage of ecological creation, the platform must do a good job , to fully serve creators, and making money is just an incidental thing.
“It may take at least three years for content to be commercialized.” Ge Jia believes that Taobao is obviously difficult to restrain. “When Taobao acquired Yahoo, Yahoo became the world of psoriasis advertising.”
In Yao Changsheng’s view, content must be based on love. People who play content and people who operate it have two attitudes in content creation. If content is compared to beauties, then in the eyes of the former, beauty is a rare item worthy of appreciation. , but in the eyes of the latter, beauty is just a commodity. On the other hand, as far as Taobao itself is concerned, it is precisely because its ability to operate and sell traffic is too strong that it is difficult for content creators to gain the right to speak, just like Nokia’s feature phones back then. And the egg breaking from the inside is not very realistic.
Change is hard, but the results are worth the risk. Maybe Taobao doesn’t want it either. Suddenly one day, opening Taobao shopping has become a strange thing, and Taobao shelves are full of goods, but no one is there.
(Zhang Fan is a pseudonym)
This article is reproduced from: https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-10-26/doc-imqmmthc2189503.shtml
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