In August this year, Alipay announced the launch of the "Lights" marketing and promotion platform (hereinafter referred to as "Lights"), which refers to the commercialization of public domain traffic on the platform. Three months after its launch, the "Lights" began to work at an accelerated pace. The testing of brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Apple, and Honor means that these advertising brand "wind vanes" are paying for Alipay, a "new increment" platform.
In the past few years, Alipay has undergone a round of product transformation. The most intuitive is the change of the product page on the homepage, from adjusting the number of display bits on the homepage and making it editable, to adding a new life channel, going straight to the homepage, and then to the online pop-up screen advertisement, every subtle adjustment has triggered a discussion on the positioning and development direction of this super app.
And this time, the eyes of the outside world fell on the commercialization of Alipay. In the process of Alipay's churning its own traffic pool, how can merchants participate in it?Will the launch of "Lights" be able to make more commercial splashes?
Judging from the growth cycle of the platform itself, Alipay has not launched a commercial promotion platform too early.
According to public data, Alipay currently has 1 billion users. In terms of scale, Alipay has no less traffic than Tencent, Bytes, Ali and other head Internet companies, but it was not until this year that it launched its own commercial traffic promotion platform, even later than emerging platforms such as Bilibili and Xiaohongshu.
At the Alipay Partner Conference in August this year, not only the "lights", but also the Alipay live broadcast made its debut, and the three major products of mini programs, merchant groups, and sesame were upgraded at the same time. For a national-level APP like Alipay, the establishment of the commercial promotion platform "Lights" is a necessary infrastructure in this series of commercialization paths.
According to Alipay insiders, Alipay has always been cautious about commercialization, and after a year and a half of polishing, the "lights" came to the forefront.
For this "sluggishness", Alipay has its own interpretation.
Before the launch of "Lights", Alipay has tried to cooperate with brands many times, and has used the combination of "public and private domains" to create many marketing cases similar to New Hope, Disney, etc., and the results are remarkable. This year, Alipay and Fosun Group cooperated, and the two sides also practiced similar operation methods: in more than a month, 60 brands under Fosun issued more than 2 million coupons;Lao Miao's live broadcast on the life channel won 5.5 million sales in a single game;The main tourism and vacation brand "Fuyou Club" has accumulated more than 1 million users in more than a year through cooperation with member channels and other channels.
But as a platform, how to systematically and quantitatively solve the needs of merchants for "traffic"?Under such a problem, the "light" came into being, which also means that the commercialization of Alipay's public domain traffic has entered a new stage.
At the partner conference in August, Lin Yi, Alipay's commercial product manager, said that the operation of small programs, commodity transactions, and live broadcasts accumulated within the Alipay platform have very high commercial value, but merchants have a common appeal after using it for a period of time, that is, how to expand the scale of salesThis is about getting more traffic to your brand. To this end, Alipay has been providing methods including private domain mini programs and public domain recommendations.
The business promotion platform is a new option provided by Alipay in addition to these two major channels. Lin Yi said that the purpose of the launch of "Lights" is to help merchants reach Alipay's global traffic more controllably and further expand sales scale from three aspects: effect, scale and location.
Data is the most effective enabler. The "lights" are long overdue, did the first people who eat crabs get the expected harvest?
Previously, in the internal testing stage of "Lights", the mobile phone brand Honor participated in the first batch of internal testing. It is understood that on the occasion of the launch of the Glory 90, the brand launched the Alipay applet simultaneously, and through the "lights", it was launched on the Alipay homepage, member channels, student channels and other scenes, using member tasks to get points and red envelopes, buy new products and give good gifts, etc., to expand new customers and operate members. According to the data, during the period, the number of users of the Honor Alipay Mini Program increased by 7 times, and the transaction amount increased by 166%.
At present, "Lighting" mainly promotes three products, global intelligent investment, search treasure and brand treasure. The three products cover global traffic delivery, search promotion and marketing at special time nodes, and the goal is to make good use of traffic. Some industry insiders believe that with the support of the above-mentioned test and verification effects, the "light" may become a key turning point in the commercialization of Alipay.