
In front of the video number, it is not just the content problem.
writing| "China Entrepreneur" reporter Yan Junwen
edit| Li Wei
Toutu photography| Zeng Jing
ChatGPT has triggered a science and technology competition among major Internet companies in China, and even Wang Huiwen, the co-founder of Meituan, who has retired, has announced his entry, claiming that he has raised nearly 300 million US dollars (about 2 billion yuan).
Opportunities for technology are equal for all companies and businesses.
ChatGPT triggered the AIGC revolution, which greatly lowered the threshold of content production.More content can emerge better content,Will this be the video number that Ma Huateng called "the hope of the whole audience", a solution to retain users and expand commercialization?
The video number that started in 2020 is hardly satisfactory. Compared with Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker, the duration of users has always been a shortcoming of video numbers.
durationAffect the placement of advertisers. Tencent disclosed in the conference call in the third fiscal quarter of 2022 that the video number is expected to complete more than 1 billion yuan in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter, while in the third quarter, Tencent’s online advertising revenue was 21.5 billion yuan.
According to the report released by QuestMobile, a third-party organization, from January to October 2022, Tik Tok ranked first in Internet advertising revenue, accounting for 28.4%. According to the agency’s previous report, the Internet advertising market in China will be 655 billion yuan in 2021, so it is estimated that,Tik Tok’s advertising revenue has already reached hundreds of billions.
Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker and bilibili, which have emerged from UGC (user-generated content) and PGC (professional production content), have occupied the best creators and content ecology of China Internet.Relying on the traditional path of attracting creators, it seems difficult for video numbers to break through the barriers established by other content platforms.
Can the emerging ChatGPT provide video numbers with opportunities to overtake in corners? Besides the content supply, what is the video number short of to surpass Tik Tok?

Wechat WeChat official account "Planet Institute" has nearly 4 million fans and 1.35 million fans on the video number. Wei Zhen, editor-in-chief of Planet Institute, told China Entrepreneur that in 2022, they updated less than 40 graphic messages, but 94 videos, one of which was "Is it difficult to build an aircraft carrier? The video of ""has reached 6 million.
Since its launch in 2012, WeChat official account has provided rich content cornerstones for the video number, which can be said to include a large number of high-quality creators, but it also means that these creators have extremely high requirements for content quality, and they need better technologies and tools.
"Our in-depth video content production cycle is two to three months, usually about 10 minutes. It takes only one month to polish the text, and manpower and shooting are the big costs." Wei Wei said.
The number of official employees of Planet Research Institute has expanded from nearly 20 in 2019 to nearly 100. It is reported that the Star Institute’s visionfrequentlyThe quotation has reached millions, and the partners are mainly brands such as automobiles and 3C.
What does the video number need to do after getting through to WeChat official account?
Zhang Peng, the founder of Geek Park, said in a podcast program that in the past five years, the increment of content (short video) consumption was one order of magnitude higher than that of content production, that is to say, the demand and supply of content did not increase in a matching way.
This contradiction between supply and demand is most obvious in the video number. It can be said that if the video number can solve the problem of content supply, then the commercial flywheel may run quickly.
Guotai Junan Securities predicted in ChatGPT Research Framework (2023) that the video generation process includes three stages: data extraction, training and conversion, and the current technology is focusing on improving the video modification accuracy and real-time performance. In view of the comprehensive properties of text, image and audio of video itself, video generation is also an important application scenario in the field of cross-modal generation.
Thus, video is the most potential application field of ChatGPT. AIGC represented by ChatGPT provides an opportunity for the explosion of video numbers on the content side. For example, virtual digital people have been promoted in Taobao live broadcast, JD.COM and Tik Tok.
Wechat’s e-commerce and advertising capabilities have always been regarded as shortcomings.Wechat has always insisted on not disturbing users and not pursuing duration. This Buddhist attitude has slowed the commercialization of WeChat.
The commercialization of video numbers is mainly advertising, e-commerce and value-added services (rewards). In 2020, the video number began to be tested internally. In July 2022, the "video number shop" was launched. At the end of 2022, the video number was officially launched with the function of "native advertising bidding promotion".
From 2023, the video number will charge the merchants technical service fees. Among them, the newly signed merchants can enjoy the discount of reducing the technical service fee rate to 1% within 1 million yuan within 30 days. In terms of classification, the technical service fees for clothing, beauty and skin care, outdoor sports, food and beverage, and household daily use are 5%, 4%, 5%, 3%, and 5%.
"The commercialization of video number is probably equivalent to the level of Tik Tok in 2018, when Tik Tok launched Luban, and a large number of second-class e-commerce companies and marketing numbers rose. Almost all businesses in Guangdong and Fujian rely on the miraculous gameplay to make a lot of money. " Video number consultant Liu Shuo Pei Shuo.
When Liu Shuopei sorted out the video car list, he found that the head of the car category is the IP number of the car, but the presence of some brands and car 4S shops is insufficient.
In Pei Shuo, Liu Shuo, the commercialization of video number is not a matter of ability, but a matter of degree. Wechat doesn’t want to do too many commercial actions that may hurt the user experience. This is user first, but it can also be regarded as self-limiting to a certain extent. It takes user first as a shield, causing many people to stop thinking and not make risky attempts. "We can think backwards. Tik Tok is indeed very commercialized, but this does not necessarily mean that its commercialization will blindly hurt users, otherwise users will have left long ago."
According to Liu Shuopei, in July, 2022, the online advertising of video number was promoted by competitive bidding. When it was first released, there were 34 pieces of CPM(Cost Per Mille, charged by thousands of impressions), with an advertising loading rate of 0.02%. In September, the price of CPM was 30 pieces, with a loading rate of 1%. In October, CPM was 29 pieces, November 28 pieces and December 27 pieces, which basically dropped by one piece every month. The loading rate is increasing every month. The loading rate is 1.2% in October, 1.5% in November and 1.8% in December.
"CPM will continue to decline in the future, allowing more small and medium-sized businesses to participate in the investment. These ant soldiers have helped WeChat before in the corner overtaking of WeChat payment and WeChat applet. It won’t be an accident this time. " Pei Shuo, Liu Shuo. He predicted that,The advertisement loading rate of video number can reach 10%.According to the data of Huachuang Securities in 2019, the advertisement loading rate in Tik Tok is 12%~14%, that is, users go up and down every 100 times, with an average of 12~14 advertisements.

According to the data of January 2021, the management team of the video number is only one or two hundred people. It is reported that it takes nine rounds of interviews to enter the WeChat business group. Some people describe that WeChat recruits a person to come in.
"In Tik Tok, there will be a team of more than a dozen people in an industry to serve, and even for big brands, there will be exclusive one-on-one service for industry two; The video number is more advocating lean organization, and the service and docking of big brands are handed over to service providers. " Li Sheng, head of a head WeChat ecological service, told China Entrepreneur.
In 2022, when the commercialization of video numbers accelerated, many WeChat service organizations that entered the video number did not make any money, and the above service providers were no exception. After one year, they lost millions on the video number.
"Before June 2022, we were all losing money. In the early video number, how many brands were invited to settle in and how many traffic packages were rewarded. Because the local retail enterprises held a lot of private domain traffic, we launched a lot of local video number live broadcast rooms in the early days, but these categories did not have users in the early days of the platform, so thanks to more; After June, we focused on the live broadcast of the video number in the shoes and clothing industry. The sales volume rose from a live broadcast of several hundred thousand to a live broadcast of several million GMV, and it continued to rise, and it could immediately become profitable. " Li Sheng said that he thought the main reason was the inaccurate traffic of early video signals.
Li Sheng said,The traffic mechanism of video number live broadcast is public-private domain linkage.When the account is live broadcast, the platform will enlarge it according to the portrait of the private domain user imported into the account live broadcast room, because the early video number algorithm mechanism is still immature, and there is no private domain cold start, and the algorithm does not know what kind of users can be converted.
As the platform becomes more and more mature, it will enter the stage of two-wheel drive of "commercial investment" and "content richness". The direct recharge of brands through algorithmic investment or the creation of content can bring accurate users. "We expect that in the second half of 2023, the video number will require brands to produce more short video content than live broadcast." Li Sheng said.
In the 10 years since the outbreak of the mobile Internet, Tencent has invested in companies such as JD.COM, Meituan and Pinduoduo, and built traffic barriers for them within the WeChat system, successfully resisting the attack of Ali. Ma Huateng once said that Tencent has been acting as a connector in recent years and has safely handed over its "half-life" to its partners.
Take small programs as an example. In 2021, the GMV of small programs reached 3 trillion yuan.Major brands and platforms rely on small programs and corporate WeChat to build a huge private domain traffic pool.
"Before June 2022, even if WeChat gave us millions of traffic support, our operation was not desirable, because the traffic was not accurate, not necessarily the users who met our products, but it lowered my sales and energy efficiency." Li Sheng said.
However, the video number now has to do traffic business, do live broadcast with goods, and assume the "hope of the whole audience" of Tencent in Ma Huateng’s mouth. Obviously, it will not be smooth sailing.
Video number to do e-commerce business, the bigger challenge is self-evolution.
Li Sheng told China Entrepreneur that since "618" last year, the traffic of video number has become relatively accurate, and service providers dare to ask for the traffic of the platform.
Obviously, the video number is already doing the "difficult and correct thing".
(Li Sheng is a pseudonym in the text)





























































