Papi sauce can be regarded as an "evergreen" among Internet celebrities.
In 2015, Papi sauce began to publish short ** on various platforms, and since then, it has gained wide attention with its unique spit style and fast language rhythm and has become the first generation of Internet celebrities.
Now that nearly ten years have passed, she still keeps her short content updated, and is active in major variety shows, TV series, and movies.
And recently, the news that "Papi sauce was punished" came to her, which once again attracted her attention.
The cause of this incident was that the Internet celebrity of the MCN agency founded by Papi sauce published an illegal advertisement, which was finally punished by the regulatory authorities.
But behind the incident, everyone is discussing the rapid development of short and short Internet in the era of mobile Internet, and the madness and barbarism of Internet celebrities, advertisements, and traffic.
The whole incident, official information has been disclosed very clearly.
According to the official website of the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation, Beijing Chunyu Tinglei Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Chunyu Tinglei") was fined 180,000 yuan.
The administrative punishment decision shows that after investigation, Chunyu Tinglei Network Company posted a message titled "I have had enough of Mao Changmeng's many days" through the account 9500199506 on the Xiaohongshu platform! Hair remover save me! The name of the product advertised in the **note,** is the intense pulsed light ** instrument, the model is U106PR, it is a medical device, the advertisement has not been reviewed by the advertising review authority, and the advertising fee is 180,000 yuan.
Xiaohongshu account 9500199506, is an account named "Da Mao Mao", the account label shows "beauty blogger", "fashion blogger", belongs to the MCN agency papitube, the number of followers is 3030 thousand.
*: Little Red Book.
At present, the content related to the "hair removal device" can no longer be viewed in the account, but according to the screenshot on the Internet, the relevant content was published on September 22, 2023.
The text describes: "In autumn and winter, it is a good time for overtaking in corners to become (white), but Guangmei (white) is not good; Body hair: You are so presumptuous to leave me alone in this abrupt, so "cutting the grass and removing the roots" is also a shortcut to beauty (white) in disguise, don't tell me that you don't like to copy the shortcut, the hair removal device is used, and when you wear a small suspender in the summer next year, you will come to thank me".
*: Little Red Book.
As early as May 2018, the State Food and Drug Administration issued the "Notice on the Classification and Definition of Intense Pulsed Light Hair Removal Products", which clarified that strong pulsed light hair removal products are managed according to Class II medical devices. From January 1, 2023, IPL hair removal products shall not be produced, imported and sold without obtaining a medical device registration certificate in accordance with the law.
Tianyancha shows that the legal representative, chairman and manager of Chunyu Tinglei Network Company is Yang Ming, the founder of Taiyang Chuanhe, and the directors include Jiang Yilei (papi sauce). The equity penetration chart shows that Yang Ming and Jiang Yilei both indirectly hold shares in the company. In addition, Chunyu Tinglei Network Co., Ltd. is wholly owned by Hangzhou Free Network Technology, the main company of Papitube.
In other words, PapiTube is an MCN institution under Taiyang Chuanhe, and the official website of Taiyang Chuanhe also shows that PapiTube was co-founded by Yang Ming and Papi Sauce in April 2016, and the two are college classmates.
Back to PapiTube, the year it was established was the time when the IP of Papi sauce was pushed to a new height by capital.
In February 2016, the original short ** content of papi sauce became completely popular; In March of the same year, Papi sauce received a total of 12 million financing from Zhenge**, Luoji Thinking, Light Source Capital and Xingtu Capital, with a valuation of 1About 200 million.
Since then, Luo Zhenyu has planned the first ** patch advertising auction for papi sauce; Although this auction was questioned as a hype at the time, the auction of 22 million ** also made the entire market smell the economic value behind the Internet celebrity.
At the same time, Papitube, a short MCN agency, was established; The capital behind the papi sauce is naturally to realize that the papi sauce will not be popular forever, and they need to create more papi sauce and spread the "pie" very big.
It is worth mentioning that according to Crowley's "2021 China Content Organization (MCN) Industry Development Research***", there were only 420 MCN institutions in China in 2016, and by 2020, the number has come to 21,000.
It can be seen that when Papitub was established, whether it was internal capital assistance or the external industry environment, it was in a favorable position.
Like most MCN institutions, Papitub has a very complete system from the discovery of talents to the establishment of personalities, from content production to account operation and management; Through multi-account, multi-platform, multi-content, and multi-subject, commercial monetization is finally realized.
After several years of development, PapiTube has also signed and incubated more than 100 short creators.
According to the official website of Taiyang Chuanhe, papitube has incubated @网不红萌uncle joey, @玲爷, and @张二狗等优秀短** creators, covering vertical fields such as grass evaluation, food, beauty, funny, lifestyle, family scenes, mother and child, and culture.
*: Taiyang Chuanhe.
In terms of monetization, Papitube's COO Huo Nifang once said in an interview with **: Monetization efficiency is indeed the most important part of testing the operation and development of MCN institutions, and from the perspective of the Internet celebrity team, the monetization ability depends on his income level, his own brand value and longevity. Papitube also mainly helps bloggers from these three aspects.
From the perspective of monetization methods, advertising and e-commerce are undoubtedly two important ways for PapiTube and most MCN institutions.
For example, the head anchor papi sauce is mainly advertising, and the papi sauce tuba has 3106 on Douyin40,000 fans, a total of 11 works have been updated in the past three months, with an average of one update every 8 days.
However, among the 11 videos, 6 are advertisers, which means that advertisers account for more than half. According to the giant star map, Papi sauce is calculated according to the minimum **660,000 pieces, and the advertising business realization in the past three months is 3.96 million.
*: Tik Tok. In addition, Papi Sauce also opened a small account "Planting Grass Papi Sauce", which has 118 on Douyin3W fans, mainly sharing snacks and beauty products. In the past three months, 19 works have been released, about half of which involve advertising**, according to the giant star map, the minimum account of the trumpet "planting grass papi sauce" is 220,000.
Compared with Papi sauce, other anchors of PapiTube are more "active" in monetization; In addition to advertising, most of them have expanded into the field of e-commerce.
For example, "Uncle Joey", who has always only started live broadcasts on small accounts, will also start its first live broadcast on large accounts in 2023; And the trumpet of "Uncle Meng is not popular Uncle Joey" has brought goods 7 times in the past month, with an average of more than 4 hours per live broadcast, and the average sales per game are between 250w-500w.
For another example, Papitube's "Yunnan West Little Brother" is more focused on e-commerce monetization, and it is worth mentioning that the account is not a simple e-commerce diversion, but has established its own e-commerce brand, selling some Yunnan specialties and other foods.
In general, from the popularity of papi sauce to the birth of papitube, the process is almost "in one go". As MCN, PapiTube provides Internet celebrities with services such as content planning, publicity and promotion, fan management, and contract signing, and ultimately realizes a larger, batch, and standardized monetization process, so as to maximize benefits.
Behind the Internet celebrities stand the major MCN institutions, which seems to have become a kind of normalization.
According to preliminary statistics, taking a key platform as an example, there are more than 300,000 MCN accounts on this platform, with an average annual production of more than 33 million pieces of information. Today, in 2024, that number will only increase.
At a time when traffic is peaking and competition is intensifying, the content production and commercial monetization of MCN institutions have begun to move towards disorder and barbarism.
In terms of content production, it is not uncommon for MCN agencies to create some false information on the Internet and incite the emotions of netizens in order to deceive traffic. For example, a 25-year-old Internet celebrity faked cancer, and a 3-year-old child was fed 70 pounds by his parents for "eating and broadcasting", etc.
For another example, in April 2023, the well-known beauty blogger Luo Wangyu put goodnight powder at the last step of evening skin care in the exclusive ** for oily acne skin released on Douyin, and said that he has been using goodnight powder for 5 years, and the more he uses it, the more he loves it.
However, this remark of "nourishing skin with powder" was faked by ** science experts. In June 2023, Professor Mao Yueping, deputy chief physician of the ** Department of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, responded on Douyin that good night powder is unreasonable and definitely an IQ tax.
In terms of business monetization, under the trend of interests, the relationship between MCN institutions and platforms, and between MCN institutions and merchants has begun to become delicate and even tense.
MCN institutions and platforms should be interdependent, with the platform providing traffic and functions for MCN institutions to conduct business; MCN agency operation expert, output content to ensure the development of the platform.
However, under the trend of interests, MCN institutions either bypass the platform and cooperate directly with merchants to affect the business development of the platform; or publish relevant illegal content, affecting the content ecology of the platform.
MCN institutions and merchants should be in a relationship of mutual cooperation, and MCN institutions can realize their own commercialization through the promotion and publicity of merchants' products; Merchants use the traffic of MCN agencies' anchors to improve the sales performance of their own products.
However, under the trend of interests, MCN institutions forge and tamper with core data such as the number of followers, the number of fans, and the sales volume of their anchors in order to get higher anchor cooperation fees.
In this context, it is no longer uncommon for platforms to go to court with MCN institutions, and for merchants to go to court.
For example, in January 2022, Xiaohongshu filed a lawsuit against four notification platforms and MCN institutions, including Micromedia Notice, Chengbao, and Nanjing Mussel. The reason is that it is engaged in the business of "** dropshipping" false grass notes, helping merchants and bloggers to carry out false promotion, causing great harm to the platform's content ecology and platform reputation, and seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of users.
It should be pointed out that no matter what kind of "fighting" between the platform and the MCN institution, the merchant and the MCN institution, it is the majority of consumers who will be hurt in the end.
In fact, in recent years, the supervision of relevant departments has been continuously strengthened for the chaos of MCN institutions.
In July 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the Notice on Strengthening the Management of "Self-Awareness", and the 13 requirements in the "Notice" are interlocking, pointing to the chaos of self-disclosure. Article 11 of the article requires that the management of MCN institutions belonging to "self-a**" be strengthened. Before the issuance of the "Notice", "rectifying the chaos of information content of MCN institutions" was listed by the Cyberspace Administration of China as a key task of the "Qinglang" series of special actions in 2022.
It's just that at the moment when live broadcast with goods, short ** with goods, and grass advertising is in full swing, no MCN agency wants to give up this cake.
According to iiMedia Consulting data, there will be more than 60,000 MCN institutions in China in 2025. With a huge market and fierce competition, it may be difficult to make this war free of gunpowder.