How long will it take for e-commerce to keep a low profile if it is given the video number of C?

Text/thick code
December is undoubtedly one of the busiest months for electric merchants.
Just after the Double Eleven, the day of "Double Twelve before, Christmas New Year’s Day in the middle, and New Year’s Day after" is coming … Although it is not as exciting as 618 and double 11, the tight rhythm still makes Lillico, the person in charge of a clothing brand e-commerce, breathless.
Among them, she is most concerned about which platform can attract new users. "Amoy traffic is close to the top, and Tik Tok Aauto Quicker relies on the anchor to play, and the video number is one of the few potential tracks." Lillico, yeahYiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha)Said.
At the beginning of this year, the brand operated by her entered the video number and successively participated in the platform’s 618 and double 11 promotion.Although it has not achieved tens of millions of outstanding results, it still touches some fresh customer groups that have not been involved before.
For Tencent, video number has become an important incremental market for its commercialization.

Source: Network
On November 16th, Tencent released Q3 financial report, which mentioned that the income of video number live broadcast service and music paying membership service increased. Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, also said: "We launched the information flow advertisement in the video number, made a breakthrough in the international game distribution, and refocused the core business through cost reduction and efficiency improvement measures to effectively control the cost growth."
Although Tencent has not released the specific data related to the video number, according to QuestMobile data, as of June 2022, the number of active users of the video number reached 813 million, ranking first in the short video track. In addition, Li Hao, the founder of Mars culture, directly predicted that the GMV of the video number in 2023 is expected to reach the order of 400 billion.
It has been nearly three years since the video number was put into online testing in early 2020, in which the e-commerce business bears a major share of commercialization. However, after experiencing several 618 and double 11, the video number still has no head anchor and live broadcast room, and the market is still in these important "festivals", directly ignoring its name.Compared with Tik Tok, it took one or two years to stir up Taobao’s sense of crisis. Is there really such a big expectation for the video number that is still silent?
Low-key, low-key and low-key
Low-key is one of Lillico’s deepest impressions on video number e-commerce.
This is first reflected in the entrance of e-commerce live broadcast.
Users need to click on the secondary page of "Live Broadcast" and select "More" to see the shopping live broadcast room. In addition, "the information flow of the video number recommendation page will also randomly appear live broadcast rooms with goods. After our test, 1-2 live broadcast rooms will randomly appear in every 10 short videos, and the frequency is not prominent enough", Lillico is right.Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha)He added, "Although the video number has introduced such functions as broadcasting reminder and making an appointment in advance, the most effective thing for us is to rely on community publicity to attract private users to watch, and we can’t take the road of public publicity like Taobao."

Wechat screenshot
Low-key is also reflected in the public propaganda caliber of the video number to the outside world.
On the 11th of this year, Tmall JD.COM didn’t release the specific data report for the first time, but it mentioned such words as "Steady progress" and "Create new achievements" one after another, or summarized the growth ratio of the number of merchants and orders. On the other hand, the video number does not disclose the data war report, nor does it disclose the development of merchants and service providers in the station.
Lillico confirmed this phenomenon: "Almost completely blind,It is difficult for us to know the level of our store except to inquire about the situation with our familiar peers or video number two. Sometimes, even if Xiao er gives the battle report, he will repeatedly emphasize that he should try not to disclose it to the public.It is reported that the accumulated sales of the brand she is in charge of in double 11 are close to one million yuan. For her, sales are not the most critical. What’s more important is to tap new customers in 40-50 third-and fourth-tier cities. They are not familiar with the traditional e-commerce platform, but they are senior users of WeChat and can accept the trading scenarios of video numbers faster.
Although the water seems quiet, there are still undercurrents under the water.
According to Tech Planet, Estee Lauder’s sales in double 11 exceeded 8 million this year, and the turnover of video number on that day was 750,000, with more than 40,000 viewers. The total sales of skin care brand Mojie VideoNo. was 13.84 million, and IQOO double 11’s total sales exceeded 8 million. The total transaction volume of double 11, the service provider’s video number Aikao, reached 530 million, and the live broadcast increased by 800% year-on-year. The cumulative order volume was 1.38 million, with 125 people with over one million transactions and 91 merchants with over one million transactions.

Source: Network
However, these bright data rarely appear in the public eye.
A video number service provider AlexYiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha)It is revealed that the official’s low-key move is to balance the head, hoping to create a fair competition situation and avoid the gathering of talents and brands to head service providers, thus creating a monopoly situation.
For video numbers, this situation may achieve the low-key behavior that the platform hopes.However, as far as practitioners are concerned, the style of making money by focusing on silence also encourages them to seldom use video numbers as the main platform, which in turn affects the building of brand teams.Lillico bluntly said that although he was optimistic about the new potential of the video number, the company obviously paid more attention to sales, so it did not set up a separate video number team, but called on the store to broadcast directly.
Invisible, this affects the operation strategy of the head blogger in the video number to a certain extent.
Take "Crazy Brother Xiao Yang", a blogger with over 100 million fans in Tik Tok, as an example, as early as March 2021, it has been stationed in the video number and distributed videos simultaneously. Since then, it has also established a matrix video number of "Xiao Yang Zhen Xuan" to authorize the distribution of live broadcast rooms with goods. On October 15th this year, the team behind "Crazy Brother Xiao Yang" conducted a pilot broadcast on the video number, but there has been no live broadcast with goods since then.
At the same time, the video number is also actively recruiting bloggers from all platforms to settle in and giving incentives to traffic coupons.

However, it is worth mentioning that, like WeChat official account, the number of fans is not displayed on the homepage, so the public can’t know the information of the bloggers at the head of the video number, which brings inconvenience to the brand screening partners. Lillico said that because there is no public reference to the number of bloggers, the team rarely considers the cooperation of bloggers to bring goods, but chooses the form of brand self-broadcasting.
The advantages of private domain are not outstanding,
"Grey production chain" hinders professionalism
If the video number is chosen to be low-key in the hope of making money in silence, then from another perspective,This is also closely related to the private domain attribute of video number.
In July this year, video number launched the function of "video number store" to replace the application of "WeChat store" in video number.
Since then, at the end of October, the video number has tightened the access rights of third-party applets for non-brand businesses and strengthened the systematic management of non-brand businesses.
In essence, these two functions are related to the video number "shopping cart", which is also the desire of the video number to establish a closed loop in the station. As early as before the video number, Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker had similar actions to break the chain. However, although the action of "cutting off" the outer chain is easy, how to not affect the situation in the station is another difficult problem.

Wechat screenshot
Take e-commerce in Aauto Quicker as an example. Before double 11 this year, Aauto Quicker announced that it would fully open the direct link function of Taobao and JD.COM. As for how long it will take, it remains to be seen. Some media reported that after Aauto Quicker cut off the external chain, the SKU of goods in the station decreased, which affected the conversion rate and the increase of customer unit price. In Aauto Quicker’s second-quarter financial report, the growth rate of Aauto Quicker’s e-commerce GMV was 31.5%, which was significantly slower than that of Aauto Quicker’s e-commerce GMV in the same period last year.
It may be that the chain reaction of cutting off the external chain is predicted, and the status of rivers and lakes is not stable at this time. The video number only cuts off the external chain of third-party applets of non-brand merchants, and encourages brand merchants to submit screenshots of their operations on third-party platforms such as Tmall and JD.COM simultaneously when they settle in, which can speed up the official review.
As can be seen from this,Even with the proud private domain advantage, the video number has to compromise with the more powerful traditional e-commerce platform.If we compare the e-commerce process in Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker next door, even if the video number has more users, it may not form an equal advantage.
Not only has the closed loop of private domain not been fully established, but there is also a certain gap between video number and Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker in streaming play.
It is reported that in the first half of this year, the video number introduced the traffic coupon mechanism, and bloggers or service providers can obtain traffic coupons by completing the official designated goals, and cast streams for their short videos or live broadcasts.

Video number Polaris project
At the same time, the video number introduces the mode of changing private domain into public domain, that is, "every time a merchant leads a private domain user into the live broadcast room, the platform will at least encourage a public domain user to give it to the merchant", which means that the video number encourages the merchant to take private domain operation as the core.Because traffic coupons are not supported to be bought and sold from official channels for the time being, platform incentives have become a few forms of obtaining traffic coupons, and thus a gray production chain has emerged.
According to the new broadcast report, some MCN are willing to provide cash incentives for the people who have settled in by inviting them to settle in, so as to resell the higher-value traffic coupons awarded by the official video number.
It is understood that there is a great demand for video number traffic coupons, and most of the customers are sellers.
This gray production chain began to sprout in April this year, and it was not until November 22 that the video number formulated new regulations that it was constrained.This also makes practitioners feel that "the professionalism of the video number team is not enough".
Is it "development" or "appearance"
At the beginning of its launch in 2020, the video number had a fantastic start, and many content creators who missed Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker heard the news, hoping to reproduce the miracle of WeChat WeChat official account. However, due to the imperfect product functions, the video number gradually showed a low tide trend. After that, the concert plan of the video number once screened the circle of friends, allowing the creators to see hope again, but there is still a long way to go from commercialization.
At the start of this year’s World Cup, a group of big V’s lamented that the video number and even the entire Tencent Department failed to win the copyright of the World Cup and missed this traffic topic of concern to the whole people. But even if the copyright can be won, how much impact can it have on the video number?
After all, the video number still lacks the original exclusive content of the creator.Just like Tik Tok has "Crazy Brother Xiao Yang", Aauto Quicker has "Simba" and bilibili has "Luo Xiang", the root of video number lies in the lack of native content ecology.

Even if there are concerts, sports events, news events and other content that can cause discussion among the whole people, the video number is still on the shoulders of WeChat ecology such as friends circle and WeChat group chat, and it cannot be self-sufficient.
This also indirectly affects the development of video e-commerce.
Obviously, video number e-commerce is not the traditional e-commerce mode of Taobao and JD.COM, but the short video e-commerce mode of Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker.However, the lack of content ecology has led to the delay in the emergence of representative bloggers in video numbers.
Whether it is the market-oriented head anchors such as Crazy Xiao Yang Ge and Oriental Selection, or the first-line MCN organizations such as Yuanwang, they all use the statement of opening an account to recognize the potential of the video number, but no one has stopped for a long time and started professional operation. It can be seen that the public’s traffic difficulties for the video number are not limited to this.
On the road of brand self-broadcasting, the video number does not have a sound supply chain.On the black cat complaint, there have been cases where customers said that there was no reply in the background of the video number.

Source: Network
"Low-key" is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can hide its edge and "develop" a wave in the dark. On the other hand, it will also affect the public’s attention to it, and it is lacking in cultivating users’ minds.
The video number standing at both ends of the "development" and "appearance" scales has left it with little time to make a choice.
* Lillico and Alex in this article are anonymous.






































