Taobao, Mogujie and Kuaishou are "fighting"! How much money is e-commerce live streaming?

　　Every day, tens of thousands of e-commerce anchors will appear on Taobao Live, Mogujie, Kuaishou and other platforms. During a few hours of live broadcast, they will recommend various products such as clothes, bags, shoes, etc. to their fans, which also changes China's original product-led e-commerce model.

　　The ability of e-commerce live streaming to sell goods is obvious to all. Not only Taobao live streaming, but also short video apps Douyin and Kuaishou are racing in this stadium. Earlier this month, NetEase Koala, which focuses on cross-border e-commerce business, also officially launched the live broadcast function, hoping to get a share of the pie. In addition to live broadcasts, various content e-commerce forms such as graphic information and short videos have also emerged like mushrooms after a rain. Everyone wants to use this to harvest traffic and seek monetization.

　　E-commerce live broadcasts have become a "hot spot", with the number of anchors, MCN institutions (i.e. "Internet celebrity economic operation agencies"), e-commerce platforms, commodity supply chains, etc. soaring, and all walks of life have entered the market.

　　Hot live track

　　As a new product of the e-commerce era, live streaming is reaching a continuous explosion stage with the influx of platforms, merchants, institutions and consumers.

　　The "2019 Taobao Live Ecological Development Trend Report" released by Taobao Banglan and Taobao Live shows that in 2018, the live broadcast platform sold goods to 100 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of nearly 400%; consumers can watch live content for more than 150,000 hours a day, and the number of products they can purchase exceeds 600,000.

　　Zhao Yuanyuan (native name), the head of Taobao Live Operations, revealed that in fact, no one had much expectations when doing live broadcasts at the beginning. "Because for merchants, it is already very tiring to operate stores, read data, launch new products, and participate in platform activities every day. If they still have to put a full-time anchor to say a day, they are unwilling to do so. Merchants are more willing to hide behind the products and let consumers watch it first and then introduce it to them; they don't think that consumers don't read anything, so they will tell consumers the model that is good."

　　Therefore, the main thing that started live broadcasts was Taobao stores, and mainstream merchants did not have a strong desire. In order to promote the project, Taobao brought Zhang Dayi to live broadcast through targeted invitations. Since its launch in March 2017, Taobao Live has maintained two major camps: merchant live broadcast and expert live broadcast.

　　2017 was a huge turning point for Taobao Live. Via sold fur worth 60 million to 70 million in a live broadcast, which completely sensationalized the industry and also made more people pay attention to the e-commerce live broadcast method. In 2018, Zhao Yuanyuan increased her publicity for live streaming and let more people know that "live streaming is a business that can be done for a long time, and it is a major development direction for e-commerce in the future."

　　In order to attract more merchants and experts to join, Taobao has optimized both the people and goods ports. On the people's port, the anchor qualifying competition is opened to enhance the competitive awareness of the anchor room; on the port of goods, the live broadcast is encouraged to go out of the live broadcast room, enter the factory, and promote from the source. While making efforts at both ends, Taobao Live's position on mobile Taobao App has also been adjusted, gradually increasing from 2.5 screen to the first screen, and entered Taobao's "Six King Kongs" in the second half of 2018. Such adjustments bring a very intuitive effect: Taobao live broadcast GMV in 2018 has exceeded 100 billion yuan.

　　In 2019, Li Jiaqi, the "No. 1 lipstick" was born on Taobao live broadcast. Taobao Live has expanded from the "single-core" model of Viya, which focuses on clothing sales in the past, to the "dual-core" model of Viya + Li Jiaqi. "Because beauty and makeup have less traffic than clothing, Li Jiaqi was stuck and could not break through. At this time, he asked if he could go out. We made a plan for him and said that he could go out to get some content traffic in." In Zhao Yuanyuan's view, Tao Nei is like a supermarket, while Douyin and other live broadcast platforms are like a theater or concert site, and the two styles are different. Therefore, Li Jiaqi's fans in other live broadcast platforms are his private domain traffic, which can follow the anchor and then convert to Taobao.

　　Li Jiaqi, who understands the characteristics of the pan-entertainment ecosystem, became completely popular. Correspondingly, his sales volume is also increasing rapidly, gradually approaching Via. The two of them have also become two "golden signs" for Taobao live broadcast.

　　However, for Taobao Live, what we currently value is not data like GMV. "We are not shopping guides, but content e-commerce," Zhao Yuanyuan revealed. "The points that assess our assessment are not numbers, but stay time, interaction rate, re-view rate, fan increase rate, etc.."

　　Among them, the platform's user stay time has an amazing growth rate. Zhao Yuanyuan introduced: "The app 'Taobao Live', which was launched at the beginning of this year, is now downloading very high, and it is rising every day. The average daily stay time in June has exceeded one hour." The "2019 Q2 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report" released by Aurora Big Data shows that in the second quarter, the daily use time of China Mobile Internet users reached 4.7 hours. Based on the above two sets of data, nearly one-fifth of the average daily time for mobile netizens to use Taobao live broadcasts.

　　Taobao Live, Mogujie, and Kuaishou "fight"

　　Since its launch of e-commerce live broadcast business in early 2016, Mogujie has empowered "people" as the core of the platform operation model. At the beginning, in order to solve the source of the anchor, Mogujie, on the one hand, became an anchor by itself, and converted some Internet celebrity shop owners, dressing experts, etc. to become personal anchors; on the other hand, some agency companies began to try the anchor business, converting them into models, TV shopping station hosts, etc. in the past.

　　Mogujie has targeted empowerment measures for top anchors, mid-level anchors and new anchors: for top anchors, branding is implemented; for mid-level anchors, the platform launches supply chain base projects, and anchors can broadcast live when they go to the scene to select goods; for new anchors, there are many comprehensive online and offline training, as well as different traffic support policies. It is rare to see live e-commerce companies that have such meticulous and layered measures to support anchors.

　　As of the end of June this year, more than 60,000 fashion KOLs (key opinion leaders) and 22,000 anchors were active on the Mogujie platform, providing users with more than 3,100 hours of live content every day. In July this year, Mogujie Live announced the launch of the "Double Hundred Plan", recruiting high-quality celebrity anchors, institutions and supply chains from the entire network, helping new anchors complete a single sales breakthrough of 0 to 1 million within 100 days, and will successfully incubate 100 anchors with sales exceeding 10 million in 2019.

　　Driven by the live broadcast business, Mogujie's performance is also growing.

　　On August 26, Mogujie released its financial report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 (as of June 30, 2019). The platform's total transaction volume (GMV) in the first quarter was 4.172 billion yuan, of which the GMV of the live broadcast business increased by 102.7% year-on-year, accounting for 31.5% of the total GMV of the platform. The average mobile monthly active users (MAU) of the live broadcast business increased by 40.6% year-on-year.

　　Chen Qi, Chairman and CEO (CEO) of Mogujie Board, said: "It is planned to continue to accelerate the development of the live broadcast business through three key measures. First, continue to strengthen the infrastructure construction of the live broadcast business; second, quickly increase the total number of active anchors and the duration of live broadcast content that can be watched; third, help anchors expand diversified monetization methods to better exert KOL's talents and creativity. In the future, Mogujie's live broadcast business will contribute more and more to GMV."

　　Taobao is also paying attention to Mogujie's live broadcast. Taobao Live’s target GMV from 2019 to 2021 is 500 billion yuan. On August 26, on the day Mogujie released its financial report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 (as of June 30, 2019), Taobao announced that it will continue to invest 500 million yuan in the next three years to fully build the Taobao Shenren IP. Within one year, Alibaba will help 1,000 "Taobao Gods" from all walks of life to create personal IP, and find 10,000 merchant partners and become close partners with 50 MCN institutions.

　　"Taobao God" refers to all kinds of celebrities, anchors, experts, and special sellers. As long as every ordinary person has a skill, whether he can check houses, make-ups, or knows how to dress, he can influence millions of consumers through Taobao.

　　"What Taobao lacks the most is goods, what it lacks the most is people, and the lack of anchors who can show the goods vividly." Zhao Yuanyuan, the head of Taobao Live Operations, told the First Financial reporter that in the past year, 81 live broadcast rooms in Taobao live broadcasts have annual transaction volumes exceeding 100 million, 130 anchors have monthly incomes exceeding one million, a single transaction volume exceeding 150 million, and a single-day transaction volume exceeding 800 million.

　　If Mogujie has the advantage of "people" and Taobao has the advantage of "goods", then Kuaishou and Douyin have the advantage of "field" when doing live e-commerce.

　　In June this year, Kuaishou announced its high-profile goal of achieving the goal of 300 million daily active users before the Spring Festival next year. In the early July less than two weeks later, Douyin officially announced the latest data - the daily active users (DAU) has exceeded 320 million.

　　After gathering a large number of users, the pace of commercialization is also accelerating.

　　Xu Hanxi, head of Kuaishou's business ecosystem, introduced that at present, the number of Kuaishou merchant accounts has exceeded 600,000, the number of new users per day has exceeded 10,000, the number of new merchant works per day has exceeded 500,000, and the average daily live broadcast sessions exceeds 200,000. Merchant accounts will focus on three core directions: brand, e-commerce and local, covering six key industries: local catering, scenic spot hotels, online clothing, retail, clothing, and beauty.

　　How should e-commerce live broadcast be done?

　　Unlike Internet celebrity stores that mainly use pictures and texts, which usually have new products twice a month, live broadcasts are basically broadcast every day, and broadcasts for at least 4 to 6 hours a day, which requires huge styles of goods.

　　The characteristics of "multi-style and small inventory" put forward high requirements for the speed of the supply chain.

　　"The proportion of live streaming commission is much lower than that of e-commerce platforms. It sells clothes worth 300 yuan on some e-commerce platforms and 200 yuan on live streaming, and the profit margin is roughly the same. "

　　A summer dress with a tag price of 700 yuan in offline brand stores. If it is sold on some e-commerce platforms, it may be sold for 400 yuan, and it may be sold for more than 150 yuan in live broadcasts. After supply chain optimization, the clothes on the live broadcasts may be sold for 99 yuan, and it is still profitable. Of course, this requires the coordination of all links such as factory, quality inspection, risk control, etc., and it is done in detail.