Live Broadcast Business Is Hot, But Where Is Its Paradise?

On the evening of 11 April 1st, Luo Yonghao completed the first show of live broadcast: the total amount of payment transactions was 110 million, the income of audio and video was 3 million 630 thousand, and the total number of 48 million people was watching. From the point of view of money making, the first live broadcast, Luo Yonghao can be said to be a "win win", but "do not know live, but do not understand the electricity supplier" Luo Yonghao also "Alexander". That night, Luo Yonghao, the popular anchor of the match of the match, held a rocket in the live room of Taobao, which attracted 19 million people to watch. The original price of the rocket was 45 million, and the direct broadcast room was reduced by 5 million. It was photographed by a company for several seconds. In the live broadcast, Simba's Apprentice "egg" also won Luo Yonghao by an astonishing 480 million sales.

Since March 4th, when old micro-blog launched the news of intentional broadcast, the news of "60 million voice Luo Yonghao signing", "Luo Yonghao 80 million exclusive signing of Taobao live broadcast", and "Quick Quotation of not less than 100 million" were circulating on the Internet. From every family to the "net red Luo Yonghao" spread the olive branch's rumor, arrives at the live broadcast that night's close combat. Behind the anchor wars is fierce competition from Taobao, fast hands and jitter.

In April 6th, CCTV host, Duan Zhu Guangquan and Li Jiaqi, a young brother with a cargo, made up a combination of "Xiao Zhu Pei Qi". In April 12th, Ouyang Xiadan and Wong Cho Lam composed "no one can grow up with blue Chardin", CP, which opened the Hubei product public live broadcast and gained hundreds of millions of sales results. The entry of CCTV's famous mouth makes it difficult to think of the format of live broadcasting with goods. Is live broadcasting business new? Where is its source? Why did it break out in 2019?

1 live broadcast business three generation three generations

As early as the early 90s of last century, there was a kind of live broadcast, which was based on television and radio as the main channel of transmission, and featured with publicity and sales. The sale includes household appliances, household products, drugs, beauty products and so on. This form of shopping can be described as the originator of "live shopping" in China, but why is it not so warm for more than 20 years?

First of all, this is a market with high entry threshold. According to the state regulations, TV shopping must meet two major conditions: first, the programs broadcast are made by specialized QVC Company; two, businesses need to have relevant licenses for TV shopping. But there are only 30 people in the country who have relevant qualifications.

In addition, the logistics, payment and other supporting facilities are not perfect at that time. Therefore, the unit price of TV shopping is higher than that of TV audience, and the problem of counterfeiting is also frequent. All kinds of problems have made TV shopping very dull.

However, with the development of Internet technology, the monopoly of TV stations has been gradually broken. The content of network video is beginning to break into people's vision. From a short spoof video caused by a steamed bread, after the advent of the video platform, the content war has been opened up, and the killing in video has become fiercer. In order to avoid the endless contest of capital, the six rooms of the video platform first introduced a new situation -- live broadcast, to achieve differential competition.

In 2008, when the world financial turmoil came, many media platforms that failed to finance in time fell down. But through the live broadcast business, the six rooms survived in the cold winter. In October 2009, with the success of the first showcase of the six rooms, the direct broadcasting industry entered a new era. The so-called "show live video live" is to move the traditional "folk entertainment" scene onto the Internet, add elements to some nightclubs, and design a $100 reward plane. Formed a "platform + association + star blog + fans business" business model. Through people's sense of need and natural desire for beauty, the user stickiness is achieved. The live broadcast was later called the 1 version of live broadcast.

Since then, relying on the leading position of the industry in the field of direct seeding, the six rooms have begun to test the water in the field of live broadcast. At that time, the Shanda network, giant game, Guangyu Huaxia and other famous companies in the game industry opened the game live in the six rooms. Game anchors, while playing games, commentary, so that more people can understand, like, enjoy the game. The anchor can achieve profitability through user payment, factory intermodal transportation, self employed goods, advertising push, membership customization and gaming betting. This is the 2 version of live broadcast.

In 2012, YY, a veteran online chatting giant, successfully transferred to the NASDAQ after switching to the show mode. The live broadcasting industry has attracted more attention from capital and market.

Since then, with the popularity of smart phones, the reduction of traffic charges, and the improvement of computing power of cloud and mobile terminals, the threshold of live broadcast has been greatly reduced. In 2016, mobile phone live broadcasting has become a new industry hotspot. Different from the traditional show live broadcast, every ordinary person can join the live broadcast. In June 2016, China's Internet users reached 710 million, of which 325 million live users, accounting for 45.8%.

In the pursuit of capital, the "thousand broadcast war" started. The live broadcast of the show, represented by Ying Ke and Zanthoxylum bungeanum, and the live broadcast of the game represented by fighting fish, tiger tooth and panda, ushered in a new round of business expansion. This year, the output value of the industry exceeded thirty billion, and the number of business anchors exceeded three million. Taobao and mogujie.com also started the live broadcast business.

The hot market has brought huge commercial imagination. In 2016, the fighting fish was valued at $1 billion, tiger tooth valued at 2 billion 500 million, and Wang Sicong's panda valuation 2 billion 500 million. However, the live broadcasting industry seems to be very hot on the surface, but many platforms are actually at the stage of losing money and making money, and the profit pattern is not clear. Moreover, in order to get higher capital valuation, the platform will invest more money to increase the flow rate, and there will be many fictitious traffic data under vicious competition. The "overheated" live broadcast market was burned with dizziness, and the problems of vulgar and edge ball were frequent.

Soon, regulators and financing environment poured a bucket of ice water into the broadcasting industry. In 2016, the management regulations of relevant departments were continuously launched, and the management and control of live broadcast became more and more stringent. Moreover, the financing environment gradually became cold. When the giants such as BAT had set up the location of live broadcast, the concentration degree of the live broadcast industry gradually increased, and finally a large number of live broadcast platforms went bankrupt.

Just like the hundred regiments war and the taxi fight, the live broadcasting industry has gradually become calm after spending a thousand wars. China's live broadcasting platform has evolved from vulgar entertainment to vertical subdivision. In addition, direct seeding has begun a more diversified profit attempt, and the format of "live +" has gradually penetrated into education, medical treatment, tourism and other fields. This is undoubtedly the leader, "live + business".

In 2016, Taobao took the lead in testing the water to open the live broadcast of the electricity supplier. After that, the platforms such as fast hand, jitter, Suning and so on entered the Bureau. The exploration of live broadcasting in the field of electricity business is, on the one hand, the hottest business of live broadcasting, and on the other hand, the slowdown in the growth of traditional e-commerce business. From 2006 to 2018, the scale of e-commerce transactions in China increased from 14400 billion to 325500 billion. Between 2011 and 2015, the growth of electricity providers remained at around 33%. But its growth rate dropped sharply to 13.57% in 2016. At this point, the electricity supplier needs a new growth engine, "wake up people's sleeping cart".

Strong traffic platforms such as micro-blog, Taobao, fast hand, jitter, and live streaming have become important traffic replenishment. The electricity supplier is also an important means to realize the close loop of the live broadcast business. There is no fraud in the actual transaction volume, and businesses, anchors, platforms and users are profitable. In 2017, the market was gradually awakened, and the role of MCN institutions and supply chains began to emerge to achieve meticulous operation. In the past 2018-2019 years, the industry has entered the stage of integration of upstream and downstream industries, and the industry chain from anchor to source has been opened up, and the problem of long industrial cycle has been gradually solved.

In 2019, the direct seeding electricity supplier ushered in the outbreak year. This year, we saw hundreds of millions of goods carrying sites, and saw a large number of phenomenal goods king. In 2019, Taobao's live GMV was about 200 billion, which was only about 100 billion in 2018. The GMV of the live broadcast electricity supplier brought by the fast hand platform drainage is about 150 billion, and the GMV is about 40 billion yuan. And in 2020, the live broadcast of e-commerce is still more hot.

2 Taobao: "treasure" economy

In 2018, Jiang Fanceng, President of Taobao, said, "live broadcasting has already brought about 100 billion turnover. It has not been embellished, but has become the mainstream of business mode". As expected, relying on the huge flow support behind it, Taobao's live GMV in 2019 has reached about 200 billion, about two hundred million days, and has achieved tremendous growth. Why can Taobao's live broadcast business achieve such a good result?

In the final analysis, live broadcast is an upgrade of Internet interaction. People's interaction patterns, from letters, telegrams, to telephones, to Internet voice, video and VR, are nothing more than breaking through the restrictions of geography and space, and making the most real interaction with people instantly and freely. And live broadcast is the embodiment of this interaction. So it is a content, but it is also a tool, a means of human connection. Therefore, it is a natural thing to apply it to all kinds of scenes in real life.

Compared with the real consumption, the consumers of e-commerce are hard to make purchase decisions because of the lack of intuitive experience of products. But in the process of live broadcast, the picture with low audience confidence is displayed as an instant video display. Consumers can achieve real-time interaction with the anchor, making up for the lack of product purchase experience.

There are complex and abstract products or services, consumers will have a certain curiosity, live broadcast can satisfy users' curiosity and produce a sense of closeness to products and brands. In 2016, double 12, Taobao pearl brothers became the 12 biggest winners of Taobao by opening Bengal beads, not only the order volume increased sharply, but also won millions of fans in a week. Through live broadcast, the brand story can be well conveyed and the user's psychological identity can be formed. For example, a series of precision poverty alleviation products of Taobao, the sale of specialty products by the county magistrate enhanced the intimacy of users and products.

Live broadcast has also enabled the electricity supplier to have the ability to hawk and boost sales. Live line will be guided offline, and the one to one explanation will become one to many explanations, reducing the sense of distance and reducing the burden of early consultants. For example, "lipstick" Li Jiaqi was a former L'OREAL employee, so he accumulated knowledge in the field of makeup, and his recommendation was more in-depth and vivid. He once broadcast 389 games in 365 days, creating a world record for lipstick. Hard work has also earned him amazing sales.

Price advantage is also the reason why live broadcasting is popular. Because the live broadcast has a larger imagination, brands and stores are willing to offer profits, and the anchor can get the group buying price through their fans' advantages. This also makes the price war between live broadcast network red very tragic. In 2019, when Li Jiaqi sold the Lancome suit, he found that the price he got was 20 yuan more than that of Wei Ya. He announced in the studio that "never blocked Lancome" and "the resources for Taobao's pop up window will no longer cooperate".

The ability of the anchor to select products, that is, the role of traditional buyers, is also of great value to the public today. As an image of a big sister, she can see more good things through her products. Behind these headlines, there is a huge selection team. The final product will not only be accompanied by a reasonable price matching, but also be screened by most of the three staff members before presenting it to the user.

Lively social interaction and follow suit psychology is also the reason for promoting live sales. Many limited time spike products are not only cheap, but also a quick match in the purchase process. You will feel the pleasure of social interaction in this competition. This is also one of the reasons why Wei Ya's live broadcast products are often "second light". Through experience, consumers will gradually become loyal to the anchor and finally achieve normalization.

In addition, in the endless stream of innovation, the live broadcast is not only beautiful, but also fun. Many people live in the studio not only to play host, eat, cook, talk, sing, but also interact with fans from time to time, offering benefits and certain gambling elements. For example, in the broadcast room of Wei Ya, almost every few minutes there will be hundreds of yuan to 10000 yuan, 10000 yuan draw and free, so that people who watch the live is always in a state of tension and stimulation.

The traditional business advantages provide a unique advantage for Taobao live broadcasting, which is the reason why it leads the industry. Taobao itself as a very mature e-commerce platform, the traditional advantages of play is also very obvious. Taobao 90% live broadcast and 70% turnover comes from businesses. Taobao's live broadcast has also formed the mode of pre broadcasting and post factory, which greatly shortened the supply chain. Taobao's live broadcast will leave more profit margins to users, and third replacement methods are difficult to come up in a short time. In addition, the user to Taobao platform has the purpose of shopping, so the possibility of transformation is even higher. Compared with other platforms, Taobao has the characteristics of high stay, high repeat purchase and high customer service.

Moreover, the direct seeding electricity supplier also provided the promoter for Taobao's market sinking. According to the 2019 Taobao live ecology development trend report, the proportion of the core users of Taobao live in the low line cities is higher than that in the second tier cities, and consumers in the low level cities are more influenced by KOL. This is a good opportunity for the waist brand. If these brands can revitalize in the future, it will be a huge market increment for Taobao.

In 2019, Tmall double 11 had twenty thousand village slots, of which more than 40 county magistrate presided over the live broadcast. Selling local agricultural products. After the outbreak of the epidemic, the live broadcast economy has even become a "cloud pivot" to pry up the market.

Therefore, the traditional e-commerce platform Jingdong, many more, Suning, Xiaohong book and so on, have begun to continuously improve the weight of live broadcast business in the ecosystem.

3 old fellow: "old iron" economy

What is the difference between short live video and live broadcast of the live broadcast business? What's the difference between the live broadcast of traditional electricity providers such as Taobao? Recently, the live broadcast of Luo Yonghao has made people see the difference between the daily life and overseas development. Where is the faster hand than the trembling?

In the Spring Festival Gala of 2020, there were 780 million people watching the live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala. The total amount of red envelopes in Spring Festival Gala was 63 billion 900 million. As a short video content platform, it is not difficult to understand how to increase the live broadcast function and improve the video stream ecology.

Taobao's live broadcast has the back-end advantage of the supplier's supply chain and resources, but the fast hand has the advantages of low-cost traffic and massive anchor. The growth of traditional electricity providers has slowed down, and brand players have moved to the live broadcasting industry, providing good backend support for the anchors. Some brands even sell at a loss at the expense of traffic and brand awareness, providing an opportunity for the content platform to open e-commerce business.

At the end of 2018, there were more than 1 million 900 thousand related comments on business on daily demand, and the market demand was strong. So the fast shop opened, and introduced Taobao, Zan, magic chopsticks, etc., to help businesses sell goods directly, collect Commission and other expenses. Double eleven and double shopping days, the number of orders for fast sellers exceeded 100 million respectively. The GMV of electric business exceeded 100 billion, and it took only a year and a half for the fast runner, which is faster than that of Taobao.

The platform logic of the old fellow has produced the old iron economy which is different from Taobao and its vibrato.

Unlike voice based content based recommendation, fast drivers are more likely to share real life with a strong sense of trust. The platform also recommends computation based on user content interaction and interesting multi dimensions to achieve user connection. Because of heavy products and light operation, although the development is slow, it precipitates the social attributes of the platform.

With the rapid development of "human" as the core element, a unique private area flow is formed. The more obvious and stronger the anchor style / the stronger the private domain traffic will be. This is also the driving force of a series of extreme behaviors such as quick suicide and eating excrement.

Unlike Taobao's "pro", the fast hand "old iron" is a kind of old fellow's emotion. It is based on short video interest, long term communication, long term companionship and mutual appreciation. It embodies a long-term sticky and trusted friend relationship. In the process of generating transactions, close to the range of acquaintances. The decision-making process is faster, more loyal and more influential in decision-making.

Because the market is mainly concentrated in the sinking market, there are a lot of vertical commodities in the live broadcast, such as the sale of agricultural products, live planting and collecting honey. In 2018, the happy countryside, poverty alleviation plan, 100 city leaders brought goods, and the quick help of the "old fellow Railway" increased the income through the direct broadcast of goods. The way of live broadcasting and poverty alleviation is also reported by focus interview.

The head anchor will also use the huge fans base to win the brand name and benefit the old fellow. Unlike Taobao, live broadcaster is a way to host fans, fans and fans. When the user experience is affected, the anchor will choose to stop selling for a period of time, which will not happen in Taobao.

There is also a way to hit the list. Even through the anchor, the anchors will play five minutes with the first prize. The brand can be sold on these 5 minutes, and the anchor will also call on fans to pay attention to the list. In June 30, 2019, Liu Yan showed up in the first show of live broadcaster, and the war bulletin publicized her selling more than 15 million hours in more than 3 hours, but in fact, such a result could not be achieved without 13 fast fans and millions of fans. Today, businesses and head anchors have even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on wheat.

Under this logic, the fast hand gradually hatches out the head carrier with "Simba" and "Sanda elder brother". Simba returned from Japan in 2014 to engage in trade. In 2016, he joined the fast team, and quickly accumulated a large number of fans with the help of the local giants' brush list. In 2018, we started broadcasting live goods and founded Xin You Zhi. In 2019, its number of fans exceeded 44 million 430 thousand, and the live broadcast GMV was 13 billion yuan. This time, Luo Yonghao, who set a record of 480 million of the total transaction volume, is his apprentice egg. To achieve this result, it also stems from Simba's deep insight into the "old fellow".

With the quick positioning of the platform, more than 90% of Simba fans come from three or four cities and below, with more rational consumption and high price sensitivity. So Simba is strict, and the product has a higher cost performance, shortening the account period through the scale, reducing the cost of the supply chain, and finding the benefits for the old fellow iron companies. The 2018-2019 year is the year when the anchors and MCN agencies force the supply chain to integrate upstream and downstream resources. But quality control is a good thing for him, and cheap and good things are not so easy to achieve.

In 2019, the average price of fast hand was below 50 yuan, lower than that of Taobao's live broadcast. Instant live products include food (accounting for 29.26% yuan, 79.45 yuan per unit price), personal care (21.01%, guest price 44.45 yuan), boutique women's clothing (13.03%, guest price 69.2 yuan), and other paper products, cleaning products, fashion men's wear, perfume make-up and so on.

Although the Taobao market continues to exert its strength, it is still a lot of spells, but it still leaves a huge market space for the quick hand to dig. But to cut a piece of cake, there is still a way to go.

In contrast, because of its own content logic, the user's content consumption tendency is more obvious, and the emotional interaction with the anchor is relatively small. From the anchor itself, platform recommendation logic causes its traffic to be very unstable and not conducive to commercial transformation. From the 2019 earnings report, 80% of the revenue from the platform is from advertising, so the marketing function is obviously greater than the function of the electricity supplier. Therefore, it is not surprising that Luo Yonghao received the "pit fee" in the live broadcast.

But it is also such an operation, and the lack of "old fellow thinking", so that Luo Yonghao's live broadcast has no price advantage. At the time of live broadcast, "low Lo" has become a new selling point for many businesses. In addition, the product is not familiar with, lack of user interaction, so that Luo Yonghao did not form interaction with the old fellow iron, nor did it bring real value to users.

In April 10th, Luo Yonghao's second live broadcast was much more skilled and more skilled, but the number of viewers declined dramatically. Perhaps as he said, only when he insists on broadcasting the 100 field, can he show real value. But whether the market and Luo Yonghao have this perseverance must wait for time to answer.

At present, there are already some people who can't afford to start running away. Due to the difficulty of traffic realisation, some of the jitter networks such as Yunnan's pomegranate brother and Bai rabbit have been transferred to Taobao live platform for carrying goods. With the fierce competition in the market, this phenomenon will become more common, and will form a huge test for the platform.

4 Conclusion

According to incomplete statistics, in 2019, the total number of live broadcast providers exceeded 350 billion. Compared with last year, the overall growth is the fastest in all retail sectors, exceeding 100%.

There is no doubt that the live broadcast is hot, but the problem of live broadcast is also obvious.

For example, the live broadcast of Taobao is mainly based on shop assistants, but in contrast, stars and net red have larger traffic and exposure. However, because the stars do not know enough about the products and do not match with the users, the result is not optimistic. Because of the lack of interaction skills with fans and the lack of live streaming design, Taobao or brand store anchors will not be able to form sales transformation or even have a negative impact on brand image. Moreover, the low price promised by live broadcast may also affect the normal sales to a certain extent.

At present, the direct broadcast platform almost invariably targets low price, but the low price that hurts sellers is not sustainable. Although the live broadcast is a new retail mode, its underlying logic is not essentially different from that of the traditional Shang Chao and the electricity supplier. Minimizing the cost between producers and consumers, maximizing consumer surplus and maximizing producer profits is an eternal topic pursued by retail enterprises. But in order to get the flow, the net bottom price and the high cost of hitting the bill will break the business order after breaking the bottom line of business profits.

In addition, in the pursuit of extreme low prices, manufacturers may have a shoddy problem in order to get profits. Moreover, the anchor only wants to cash in at once, and only pursues the diversion to businesses, and lacks subsequent services, resulting in an endless stream of product quality problems. This also gives the impression that the live products are cheap and low quality, and the resulting large returns are even more damaging to the interests of the three parties. The live broadcasting platform is also aware of such problems. For example, the fast hand has launched policies and norms to protect the interests of consumers and trustworthy businesses.

Like the previous 1000 broadcast war, today's live platform also faces fierce market competition. With the admission of more platforms in the future, it is inevitable that the host in the live broadcast will leave. Therefore, how to provide a better business environment, diversified means of realization, industrial chain support and related services for the anchors of the platform is also the key to winning in the future.

There is huge room for direct seeding, but the challenge is equally obvious. The future live broadcasting business will certainly end the battle of the crowd. Just like the road that has been covered by live broadcast, the heat of a moment is not equal to lasting vitality. It is not a long term practice to unconstraint the interests of any party and to satisfy its short time flow and capital income. The future of live broadcasting providers belongs to those who are in the process of differentiation, find their own unique positioning, successfully explore the closed loop of profits, and successfully avoid the long-term political, economic, legal and moral risks.