2023 is coming to an end, and looking back on the past year, there have been too many changes and too many dramatic events in the live streaming e-commerce industry. The game between e-commerce platforms and super-head anchors, the entanglement of interests between top anchors and NCM institutions, the overturning of anchors with goods, the low-price competition of live broadcast e-commerce, and the damage to consumer interests, etc., have aroused great concern from everyone.
The chain of interests involved in live broadcast e-commerce is very long, and platforms, anchors, MCN institutions, merchants, and consumers are all in it. What are the problems in the live broadcast industry and what is the current development trend? Focusing on these issues, let's take stock of several major development trends of live broadcast e-commerce this year and review 2023 together.
"De-heading" continues, and middle-waist anchors and store broadcasters rise
In recent years, the live broadcast e-commerce industry has begun to appear "de-headed", and the industry trend has been changing in this direction, and it is still obvious this year.
In terms of NCM institutions, starting from 2021, Make a Friend will gradually reduce the weight of Luo Yonghao's IP, and by June 2022, Luo Yonghao will withdraw from management, and at the same time, Luo Yonghao's Douyin account will also be renamed "Make a Friend Live Room". This year, Luo Yonghao has gradually reduced the number of times he has brought goods in the live broadcast room, and the "assistant broadcast group" has also become the main force in bringing goods.
The Xinxuan company behind Ba Ming also continues to "de-Simbaize", and strives to support anchors such as Dandan. Li Jiaqi and the company behind it, Mei One, and Qian Xun behind Wei Ya are all establishing anchor matrices, and even Dongfang Selection has tried to "remove Dong Yuhui", for example, two months after Dong Yuhui was just popular, Dongfang Selection removed him from the ** time period in the live broadcast room, and the image of Dong Yuhui, the "square-faced teacher" on the packaging of the self-operated brand steak, disappeared, and the label of "Yuhui pushed" was removed, supporting anchors such as Dunton and Yoyo.
At the end of this year's Double 11, Li Jiaqi's sales on the first day reached 9.5 billion yuan, down more than half of the 21.5 billion yuan in the same period last year. The pre-sale GMV of Qianxun's two live broadcast rooms has also shrunk by nearly half compared with two years ago.
Nandu Big Data Research Institute.
In terms of platforms, "de-head anchors" has also become a mainstream trend, and ** has successively launched policies to support new anchors and middle-waist anchors, such as the New Pilot Plan, the Light Leader Alliance, the New Simulcast Plan, and the New Star Entry Plan. In July this year, Yuan Ge, the head of the ** live broadcast team, clearly pointed out that "now is the bonus period for the growth of vertical anchors".
Douyin's decentralized traffic distribution mechanism has made "iron-clad platforms and flowing anchors" a norm, and the platform firmly grasps the power of traffic life and death to avoid the phenomenon of over-the-top anchors dominating. Kuaishou is also continuing to carry out actions related to removing head traffic and supporting middle-waist anchors.
"De-anchoring" has become the unanimous goal of live broadcast institutions and platforms. While the trend of de-"heading" continues, with the increase of platform support, middle-waist anchors and brand store broadcasts have grown rapidly, and more stores have tried to broadcast themselves, such as Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, Procter & Gamble and other brands have also tried to access virtual anchors in the live broadcast room.
iResearch data shows that in 2023, the turnover of corporate self-broadcasting will account for 498%, and the live broadcast of the talent accounts for half of the country.
During the entire Double 11 promotion period, ** live broadcast ushered in a double outbreak of Dabo store broadcast, Tmall data shows that there are 89 live broadcast rooms that break 100 million yuan in the whole cycle, including 25 live broadcasts and 64 store broadcasts;834 live broadcast rooms exceeded 10 million live broadcasts, of which 159 were broadcast and 675 were broadcast in stores.
For platforms, brands, and MCN agencies, the risk of over-concentrating resources and attention on a small number of top streamers is very high. Once there is a problem with these top anchors, it will bring huge losses to the platform and institutions.
In the long run, the trend of "de-head anchoring" of live broadcast e-commerce platforms will continue.
Major platforms rectify vulgar live broadcasts
There is chaos in the live broadcast room every year, but this year's rectification and supervision are more stringent. Especially for accounts such as vulgar pornography and marginal content, the platform and relevant departments have adopted stricter rectification measures.
Some time ago, when Brother Xiao Yang's apprentice "Yellow of the Traffic Light" brought the air cushion of Yves Saint Laurent in the live broadcast room, his hair was scattered, his expression was hideous, and his posture was **, which caused a lot of negative ** because of his too vulgar way of bringing goods**, and the yellow of the traffic light stopped broadcasting for more than half a month after that. On the evening of December 6, Huang at the traffic light resumed live broadcasting, but was banned after just 3 minutes of live broadcast on Douyin.
From this, we can get a glimpse of Douyin's continuous strengthening of the rectification of violations such as edge rubbing and vulgar content. In June this year, Douyin's official account released the "Douyin Illegal Fan Growth Governance Norms", listing punishment measures for violations including publishing vulgar, side-rubbing and other eye-catching content, homogeneous content, false information, inappropriate remarks, etc., and dealing with illegal accounts.
In August, Douyin released the "Outdoor Live Broadcast Management Specification", emphasizing that the platform will no longer warn about vulgar pick-up, vulgar PK and malicious hype, and directly ban live broadcast permissions in the short or long term depending on the severity. In September, Douyin released a new version of the "health score" system to evaluate the health of anchors' live broadcasts.
Let's talk about Kuaishou again, in May this year, Kuaishou issued the "Announcement on Carrying out Special Governance of Live Broadcast Chaos", saying that it will seriously rectify a series of problems such as vulgar soft pornography, vulgar PK, pornographic diversion, and vulgar interpretation in the live broadcast room.
In August, Kuaishou issued an announcement on further strengthening the governance of live broadcast PK content, and also took warnings, current restrictions, blocking, functional permissions, and banning live broadcasts for such vulgar and vulgar, shouting, insulting, and slandering live content. "Exploiting loopholes" such as changing numbers and using trumpets to carry out punishments will be punished more severely. In November, Kuaishou issued another relevant announcement to continue to inspect and crack down on illegal live broadcasts.
Kuaishou Live Strengthens Live PK Content Governance Source: Kuaishou Blackboard News.
In general, the rectification of vulgar live streaming is a necessary measure taken by major platforms to maintain social order and good customs, protect the rights and interests of users, enhance the image of the platform, and comply with laws and regulations. Only by abiding by the relevant rules can live streaming develop in a more healthy and orderly manner.
Reserve price agreements are prohibited
In the live broadcast e-commerce industry, perhaps the most criticized is the vicious competition method of "lowest price agreement". Some top anchors, due to their huge traffic advantages, have more say in negotiations with brands, and conspire with relevant brands to concoct the "lowest price agreement", which will inevitably undermine market fairness.
This year's floor price agreement, the most uproarous example is undoubtedly Li Jiaqi's lowest price incident on the whole network. On October 24th, Jingdong's procurement and sales staff publicly shouted Li Jiaqi in the circle of friends to "choose one of the two", the staff member said that Jingdong received a lawyer's letter from the brand Hai's, and was complained that the price of a certain oven ** was lower than the price of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, violating the reserve price agreement that Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room required the brand to sign, and asked for huge liquidated damages.
Source: WeChat Moments.
As soon as the incident happened, it sparked a debate about the reserve price agreement. In fact, price control is an unhealthy phenomenon in live streaming, which does bring a low-price advantage to the head anchor, but it also means that consumers cannot enjoy a lower **.
From the brand's point of view, the floor price agreement may lead to the brand making compromises in production and the first chain, resulting in a decline in brand profits and product quality. In addition, floor price agreements restrict market competition and reduce the efficiency and fairness of the market.
Therefore, major departments have issued relevant policies to restrict the "lowest price agreement" in the live broadcast room. For example, on October 30, the Hangzhou judicial department issued an announcement on the public solicitation of opinions and suggestions on the "Compliance Guidelines for the Live Broadcast E-commerce Industry", which mentioned that live broadcast e-commerce practitioners shall not abuse their independent pricing power through low-price dumping, collusion, price gouging, fraud, etc., and draw a red line for the live streaming industry.
On November 7, Article 6(1) of the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation's newly revised Guidelines for Compliance with Online Livestreaming Marketing Campaigns in Shanghai states that operators on the platform should not be required to sign "lowest price agreements" or other unreasonably exclusive mandatory terms.
Now it seems that the so-called "lowest price agreement" is no longer working.
Live streaming has changed from "selling" to "content".
Another industry event that is different from the past is the gradual shift from live streaming to content, which means that streamers are no longer simply selling products, but are providing valuable content to attract and retain consumers.
For example, streamers can build deeper connections with consumers by sharing their own life experiences, expertise, cultural insights, etc., thereby increasing consumer purchase intent and loyalty.
When it comes to this kind of content-based live broadcast method, Xiaohongshu's buyer e-commerce is undoubtedly a typical representative. Xiaohongshu's buyer e-commerce model focuses on driving product sales through content sharing and social interaction. Star Dong Jie is very popular on Xiaohongshu with her "eloquent" live broadcast style, and has become the "first sister" of Xiaohongshu's live broadcast with two live broadcasts.
Platforms such as Douyin are also shifting to content-based live streaming. In February this year, the Douyin anchor "Big Mouth Girl" opened her debut with goods in **. Different from the previous magic of Douyin's whole process of shouting microphone and bringing goods, but recommending products, introducing discounts, tasting and other content, the live broadcast room also invited rapper Tangoz to teach how to rap more professionally, turning a live broadcast room with goods into a rap teaching live broadcast room.
It is worth mentioning that Douyin, which used to be a shouting live broadcast, has also begun to change to a content-based live broadcast method, actively encouraging the development of content-based anchors.
The integration of e-commerce and content has brought new breakthroughs to live e-commerce, bringing more traffic and user attention. But this convergence is far from the end, and there are many more possibilities to be explored in the future.
Author |Zhou Wenjun.