100 million people use Bilibili every day. How to make money?
Latest update time：2024-01-26
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The dilemma between content ecology and commercialization, Bilibili gave its own answer.
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Author | Dai Congfei
Editor | Lin Juemin
“I officially settled in Station B in 2020, started earning income in 21, and established a studio in 2022.” This is the story of the rapid growth of a Station B UP owner. However, in contrast, Bilibili’s rapid growth and commercialization process in the past three years has triggered a series of controversies from the outside world.
Undoubtedly, making money is one of the most important things at Station B right now. More than ten days ago, Station B held its annual AD TALK Marketing Partner Conference (hereinafter referred to as the AD Talk Conference).
To put it bluntly, this is the business conference held every year by Station B since 2017. At this conference, based on the needs of brand owners, Bilibili proposed four major scenario marketing solutions: "new product launch, rejuvenation, transaction conversion, and big nodes", and released a series of efficiency improvement plans for commercial products and technologies. This series These measures reveal Station B’s determination and confidence in the future.
But Bilibili is not only focused on making money, but also content ecology, user growth, and community atmosphere. These are the basics for Bilibili to decode commercialization. Giving up eating due to choking is definitely not the result that Station B expected.
In the past few years, Leifeng.com has had many exchanges with UP owners, agents, and industry insiders at Bilibili. In this article, we try to restore the true status of Bilibili’s development in the past few years and where it will go.
01
After "breaking the circle"
On the last night of 2019, a New Year’s Eve party kicked off the explosive growth of Bilibili and also laid the groundwork for subsequent controversy.
Similar programs were once exclusive to TV stations. Station B was the first Internet video platform to vigorously host cross-night programs. Previously, Station B only held New Year greetings on New Year’s Eve every year.
Different from the former, Happy New Year is a program organized to meet the needs of two-dimensional fans. Kuawan, which has not yet been launched, has received "greetings" from 2D enthusiasts: "As long as it does not affect New Year greetings, I still support it. But if it affects New Year greetings, I guess many people will scold me."
After the New Year's Eve party gained popularity, Station B did not abandon "New Year greetings". It is still a New Year's Eve feast for many 2D fans. Similarly, although it has suffered some criticism, the core users and ecology of Bilibili have not undergone qualitative changes.
Feedback from more than one user to Leifeng.com is that most of the old users of Bilibili are not disgusted by its breaking out of the circle. Relevant data provides further proof: as of now, 68% of users who first registered in 2009 are still active in the community.
A senior person who has been paying attention to community products for a long time believes that after breaking out of the circle, Bilibili not only did not dilute its two-dimensional atmosphere, but instead used other categories to feed back the core category. In his view, the user growth of station B is not blind growth, it is to expand the two-dimensional consumer group and convert users into the ACG field.
An example that can prove the above fact is that the "Cross Night" held by Station B for many consecutive years has always had distinctive "two-dimensional" characteristics: from "World of Warcraft" and "Harry Potter" in 2019 to 2023's " Ultraman" and "Dragon Ball".
What may surprise many people is that long ago, Station B was no longer the "little broken station" that people thought. By developing content such as nationally created animations and documentaries, and continuing to build more diversified categories such as knowledge, fashion, automobiles, and home furnishings, Station B’s user growth and rich content are not achieved overnight.
Phil, the account director of Tachen, the core agent of Station B, started to look at Station B in 2015. He told Leifeng.com that what he looked at the most at that time was the food area. He also noticed that at that time, the advertising formats at Station B were relatively simple, mostly embedded in long videos.
Since 2015, especially since 2020, the quality and quantity of Bilibili’s content have improved significantly. From a content perspective alone, the financial, technological, and digital districts are already very prosperous.
A two-dimensional user who started paying attention to Bilibili in the early years said that rich content is definitely a thing that has more advantages than disadvantages. A larger scale brings more revenue, more copyrights, and more dramas to watch. He still remembers that at the beginning, Station B was just a two-dimensional content discussion community. Although there was a small amount of second-generation content, there was almost no copyright for any dramas.
Phil believes that on the one hand, the continuous enrichment of content must be a better experience for users. On the other hand, when Bilibili introduces some big names, it is not simply an invitation to join, but a real integration into Bilibili.
Take Phoenix Legend as an example. They have been completely integrated into the young community of Bilibili, releasing videos regularly, and even won the top 100 UP masters in 2023.
Under this circumstance, while Bilibili users continue to grow, the community ecology, barrage atmosphere, etc. are always at a high level, and they also gain more monetization opportunities. In addition to the continued growth of users, a key figure worth noting is: Bilibili’s revenue and gross profit continue to grow. This means that there is a direct relationship between the DAU data of station B and commercial growth.
Ji Liqiang, head of Yilian e-commerce, also told Leifeng.com that before 2020, Yilian and Bilibili had already tried to cooperate, but at that time it was more of a single-point cooperation and the scale was small.
The change occurred from 2021 to 2022. Officials of Station B took the initiative to find Yilian to cooperate. After trying for a period of time, they found that the effect was good, so they cooperated more and more with Station B.
Ji Liqiang said that one of the difficulties encountered in the early days of product promotion at Station B was that the crowd size was not enough. In this case, even if you put it in, sometimes you would not be able to spend it. When Bilibili completes breaking out of the circle and the number of users is large enough, the cooperation with Bilibili will continue to deepen.
When talking about the controversy surrounding station B’s breaking out of the circle, he said: “Station B was very cautious in the process of breaking out of the circle, trying its best to retain its own characteristics and present its unique circle cultural characteristics.”
02
Growing infrastructure
Behind users breaking out of the circle is inseparable from Bilibili’s heavy investment in content and support for creators. This has also led to the capital market’s continuing doubts about Bilibili’s profitability: Although Bilibili’s commercial revenue is also increasing, the problem of losses continues due to factors such as weak early infrastructure and limited monetization efficiency.
At the financial report meeting in March 2022, Station B CFO Fan Xin once stated that Station B’s mid-term goal is to achieve Non-GAAP breakeven in 2024.
The break-even in 2024 is not based on “guanhao”, but is based on the development of station B. On the one hand, Bilibili’s daily active users have exceeded 100 million; on the other hand, the effect of Bilibili’s strategy of accelerating commercialization and community growth in parallel is emerging.
The financial report shows that in the third quarter of 2023, Station B’s DAU exceeded the 100 million milestone, and its total advertising revenue reached 1.64 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21%. Behind this, it is not only inseparable from Bilibili’s loyal users, but also has an inseparable relationship with Bilibili’s continuous investment in commercialization and refined operations in the past few years.
In 2020, the Huahuo platform was launched, gradually building a relatively complete platform for advertisers, clients and UP owners. In the early years, Station B also released a similar Oasis Plan. Officially, it said it was an institutional plan launched to protect the creative ecology and help UP owners seek harmony between creation and business.
We can also see from this that Bilibili always puts ecology first, which is the magic weapon for Bilibili to still have quite high user stickiness.
Phil, the core agent of Station B, told Leifeng.com that compared with the previous platform, the Huahuo platform has more standardized processes and increasingly comprehensive functions, solving many problems left over from the past. This also means that the commercialization of Station B has embarked on standardized channels. .
In the past, many manufacturers and UP owners placed orders privately; after the launch of the Huahuo platform, both from the perspective of customers and agents, there are official channels to establish contact with UP owners and place normal orders.
An important factor behind such changes is that Huabi provides customers with richer data dimensions.
For example, Phil and their Tachen team used to think that girls in the food area might have limited influence on fans, and everyone naturally felt that there were more girls who paid attention to food. Later, through Huahuo, I discovered that there are many fans of Food UP owners, and the proportion of them are men. This will be very helpful in helping UP owners seek cooperation and advertisers in the future.
Ji Liqiang, the person in charge of Yilian e-commerce, told Leifeng.com that in the past, Yilian contacted these UP owners alone. One trouble point was that some UP owners were uncontrollable and lacked mature awareness of business cooperation. The content released today may be temporarily postponed. The emergence of the fireworks platform has strengthened the contractual relationship between the two parties. At the same time, he also said that through Huahuo, brands can see the main UP owners of the entire B station and their user portraits, and conduct further detailed analysis.
Of course, Huahuo has also gone through a growth process. Ji Liqiang told Leifeng.com that when Huahuo first launched, there were not many UP owners covered, and it was difficult to cooperate because the volume was too small and it was difficult to find suitable partners. However, in the past two years, the coverage of Huahuo's UP owners has expanded a lot, and the situation has improved a lot. The platform's control over the UP owners' platform has been improving, and it has a certain say in the cooperation process of these UP owners, starting from With the coordination role of a third party, the entire cooperation process becomes smoother.
The improvement of the platform's commercial infrastructure is not only beneficial to the brand, but UP owners have also gained tangible fruits from it. Station B has provided very detailed operational support to the creators. Senior Wilson, the UP leader of Station B, told Leifeng.com that in 2022, when he only had 10,000 or 20,000 fans, he received an official invitation from Station B.
At that time, it was just in time for Station B to promote commercialization measures such as bringing goods. To this end, Bilibili launched many training courses to teach UP owners how to monetize their videos, how to edit videos, etc. It was then that Wilson began to systematically learn things related to Bilibili and videos.
Wilson lamented that Site B was probably the most attentive platform in terms of connecting and operating with UP owners. He felt that the platform really cared about the creators, and he was a little flattered.
When he only had 20,000 to 30,000 fans, the operators also created a separate group. Multiple operators specifically connected with one of his creators. If he had any questions, he could directly provide feedback in the group. What impressed me deeply was that one Saturday night there was a bug in a function. After he reported it in the group, the operation immediately invited the engineers to solve it together.
Different from categories such as film and television, Mr. Wilson focuses on very niche vertical fields such as home appliances. Currently, he has only a few hundred thousand fans, but user stickiness and trust are very high. He told Leifeng.com that the unit prices of categories such as home appliances, 3C digital, and automobiles are relatively high. Users, especially young people, are very cautious when making decisions. They will read a large number of reviews or follow the trust relationship of UP owners on a daily basis. Finally, the order is placed offline. Most of the user's decision-making process is completed through the UP main assistant.
Wilson’s explanation indirectly responded to the outside world’s doubts about the weak commercial value of Bilibili users.
According to Lin Ziwu (pseudonym), a senior user of Station B, the subtext of weak commercial value is that "users of Station B are not easy to deceive." When there is absolute trust between creators and users, monetization will be within reach.
03
Accelerate commercialization
To a certain extent, the fact that Bilibili has not yet made a profit is also due to Bilibili’s restraint on commercialization.
For example, while the AD loading rate of Internet products generally reaches 10%, Station B has maintained it at around 5%. Moreover, Bilibili is one of the few platforms that does not include pre-roll advertising.
Excessive commercialization and squandering everything is not conducive to user experience, nor is it the goal of Bilibili.
Looking back on past development, Bilibili has always been balancing the experience and interests of users, creators, platforms, etc. This shows its huge ambition: Bilibili is trying to achieve healthy and long-term growth, and then solve the dilemma of community ecology and monetization.
A good signal is being released - the commercial value of users continues to emerge. At the recent AD Talk conference, Li Ni, vice chairman and COO of Bilibili, shared a set of data. The advertising value of new users of Bilibili increased by 43%; the advertising value of old users increased by 4 times, and 74% of the post-90s generation contributed over commercial value.
An advertiser told Leifeng.com: "Gathering people together based on interests or a certain topic to expand the circle culture may be a direction for Bilibili in the future, and it is also the difference between Bilibili and other platforms. For For merchants, concentrated crowds make it easier for brands to cooperate. As long as they penetrate the corresponding circles, they can gain more people than their peers. "
The core advantage of Bilibili lies in the high-value content created by users, which is a barrier that other platforms currently cannot match.
It is true that in terms of monetization efficiency, current medium and long videos are not as high as short videos. But as Wilson said, for high-priced products represented by 3C digital, many consumers are willing to watch longer and more professional content. This is exactly what Bilibili is good at.
In recent years, Bilibili has also launched Story Mode (vertical screen mode), which is close to the short video format of Douyin and Kuaishou, but it has not changed the foundation of Bilibili’s content ecology.
Lao Yu, an agent at Station B, said that from 2022 to 2023, a lot of short and quick videos appeared on Station B, and some very straightforward content for selling goods began to be put on Station B, but its overall efficiency has shown a downward trend. Under this circumstance, in
2024, the focus of Bilibili’s brand placement may still be to combine native content. To put it more bluntly, combined with the native UP owners like Bilibili who really produce content, adding the attributes of carrying goods to comprehensively consider the delivery will become the focus.
The underlying logic is actually relatively simple. In the past, most merchants habitually obtained transactions through paid traffic. The highlight in 2024 may be to combine the natural traffic and commercial traffic on the site to complete transactions. This method can also help brand owners save certain costs.
At the recent AD Talk conference, Zhang Yi, general manager of Bilibili’s Commercial Products and Operations Strategy Center, mentioned that Bilibili will open up more commercial traffic scenarios in the future, open up the linkage between various business scenarios, improve efficiency, and allow commercial traffic and community traffic. Better circulation.
In the past few years, Bilibili’s commercialization efforts have achieved initial results. For example, the Huahuo platform has become an important link for cooperation between brands and UP owners.
Data from Station B’s “Double Eleven” in 2023 show that the number of UP owners who gained merchant cooperation through the Huahuo platform increased by 40% year-on-year. A domestic beauty brand continued to cultivate high-quality content on Bilibili and exploded during Double 11. During the pre-sale period only, the brand accurately covered 20 million target users through Huahuo cooperation orders, and finally achieved a total store turnover of over 100 million.
At the AD Talk conference, Station B announced the first “Firework Awards”. Award-winning brand Fang Yunjing mentioned that when he first came into contact with Bilibili, he didn’t have many expectations, or how many possibilities Bilibili could bring. But after the cooperation, I found that the users of Bilibili are indeed of high quality, and the content is enough to speak for the brand.
Li Ni admitted at the meeting that the overall infrastructure capabilities of Station B are still in the early stages. From another perspective, this actually means that the commercialization of Bilibili still has considerable potential.
Zhang Yi said that in terms of products, we will continue to upgrade the delivery tools and fireworks platform to make delivery more intelligent, efficient and simple. This includes providing intelligent recommendations for UP owners in the early stage, and strengthening the visualization of delivery data in the later stage.
At the technical level, Li Yongbao, general manager of Bilibili Business Technology Center, mentioned that Bilibili will help brands and merchants optimize the conversion cost of advertising, reduce creative production costs, and launch the mobile self-service advertising platform "Bihuo" for small and medium-sized UP owners and customers. This is another platform launched by Bilibili to promote merchants and UP owners to place and trade after Huahuo gradually matures.
Another highlight of this conference is that combining ecological advantages and brand needs, Bilibili shared four major scenario marketing solutions: new product launch, rejuvenation, and transaction conversion.
As for the effectiveness of the series of new measures provided by Station B, I believe we will see soon.
04
Conclusion
Su Qingyang, a senior practitioner in the Internet community, once wrote that in 2021, he and Chen Rui had an in-depth conversation and talked about the issue of "what is more important, growth or commercialization".
In this regard, Chen Rui's view is
that commercialization and growth are not binary opposites, and both are not goals but means, which are necessary prerequisites for the community to grow more sustainably.
It is based on this kind of thinking that in the past few years, although Bilibili has continuously strengthened its commercialization capabilities and is committed to increasing revenue, it has always been based on the content ecology and user experience.
It is in this process of progress that Bilibili's revenue and users have maintained a state of growth, and DAU has exceeded the 100 million mark.
Some people in the industry once pointed out that 100 million DAU is the life and death threshold that Station B has to cross, and called it the "Fengling Ferry" for the commercialization of community products
.
After passing this hurdle, Station B will have the opportunity to form a business model similar to "circle scarcity → circle users' rigid needs → UP master participation → platform provides standardized processes".
Station B, starting from "Fengling Ferry", is getting closer to the dawn of profitability.
The author of this article, Dai Congfei, has long been paying attention to companies such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili. Readers are welcome to add WeChat
Congc_a
to communicate.
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