Qianwen's 'Spring Festival Hosting' Goes Beyond Traffic Generation

While Tencent Yuanbao's Spring Festival red packet campaign garners mixed feedback, Alibaba's Qianwen joins the fray among AI giants during the 'Spring Festival' period. On February 2nd, the Qianwen App announced a 3 billion yuan investment to launch the 'Spring Festival Hosting Plan'.

Commencing on February 6th, Qianwen will collaborate with Alibaba's ecosystem businesses, including Taobao Flash Sales, Fliggy, Damai, Hema, Tmall Supermarket, and Alipay, to offer complimentary dining, entertainment, and leisure experiences nationwide during the Spring Festival.

Qianwen's AI Battle for the Spring Festival Seeks Innovation

In contrast to Tencent Yuanbao's and Baidu Wenxin's cash red packet strategies, Qianwen's approach is more substantive and multifaceted in terms of scenarios.

On the surface, this seems like Alibaba's continuation of the Spring Festival red packet war. However, in reality, Qianwen aims to wage an asymmetric AI war. The core strategy is to deviate from competitors' advantageous paths, leverage its own systemic strengths, and engage in its unique form of competition to achieve a decisive advantage.

In my article 'In the Age of Agents, AI Wars Still Hinge on Spring Festival Red Packets,' I humorously noted that AI has entered the Agent era, with AI applications transitioning from chatbots to Agent competitions. Nevertheless, in the race for the next super AI gateway, red packets remain the familiar 'seasoned performer,' serving as the prime tool for companies to attract users.

Tencent Yuanbao, Baidu Wenxin, and even ByteDance's Doubao still rely on the 'social + cash' fission logic from the mobile internet era, aiming to vie for user traffic.

For instance, Yuanbao capitalizes on WeChat's social network, attempting to integrate with WeChat, QQ, mini-programs, and other ecosystems through red packets. However, AI merely serves as a traffic generator, with more attention directed towards claiming red packets and saving money rather than the AI product itself, Yuanbao. It's crucial to note that the user experience of AI products is the pivotal factor determining long-term user retention.

This 'red packet for traffic' approach only addresses the issue of 'enticing users to visit,' leaving questions about whether they will stay or be directed to other ecosystem products.

Without superior operational strategies from WeChat or Yuanbao, such a rudimentary experience will bring not excitement but annoyance to users. The most direct consequence is that many group admins or friends will manually set up blocks.

This is where Qianwen's asymmetric warfare finds its breakthrough. Previously, I predicted that Qianwen would participate in the AI war during the 'Spring Festival' season, adopting a systematic 'corps-level operation' model that integrates with Alibaba's commercial ecosystem across various businesses. Red packets and subsidies merely serve as conduits to seamlessly introduce AI's 'problem-solving capabilities' to more merchants and ordinary consumers.

This also forms the logical basis for Qianwen's decision on whether and how to participate in the Spring Festival red packet war. The 'Spring Festival Hosting Plan' adheres to this principle and provides a clearer understanding of the 'corps-level operation' model.

This model is not a mere aggregation of business or marketing budgets but a systematic combat matrix centered around the Qianwen App. It links Alibaba's e-commerce (Flash Sales), local life, travel, payment, and other business sectors to form an 'AI + full-life scenarios + full-consumption chain' system.

The 3 billion yuan in complimentary orders acts as the pivot connecting these links, with the ultimate goal of 'ushering in a new way of life in the AI era.'

Hosting Entails More Than Just Red Packets

From keywords like 'hosting,' 'dining, entertainment, and leisure,' and 'way of life,' it's evident that Qianwen's 'Spring Festival Hosting Plan' transcends mere 'red packet distribution':

Firstly, Qianwen bypasses the traditional 'cash red packet' routine and employs 'complimentary orders' to draw users into the scenarios of Alibaba's ecosystem businesses, such as Taobao Flash Sales, Fliggy, Damai, Hema, Tmall Supermarket, and Alipay. Users receive not just 'digital red packets' but tangible consumption benefits when utilizing Alibaba's lifestyle services.

This model design further underscores Alibaba's elevation of AI from a 'Q&A assistant' to a 'lifestyle service manager,' bringing this experience to the general public during this Spring Festival.

Qianwen has laid the groundwork for this Spring Festival offensive. On January 15th, the Qianwen App announced its integration with Alibaba's ecosystem scenarios, including Taobao Flash Sales, Alipay, Fliggy, and Gaode, to test AI shopping functions. Since then, Qianwen has continuously iterated, expanding from initial support for Taobao and food delivery to incorporating richer AI shopping functions. For example, the AI movie ticket purchasing feature is currently in beta testing and will be fully launched soon.

This signifies that in the Spring Festival AI battle, Alibaba has deployed a strategy that is 'imaginable but hard to imitate': integrating the Qianwen App with Taobao, Alipay, Fliggy, and other ecosystems, and effectively popularizing 'AI problem-solving' functions through clever 'complimentary order' means during the Spring Festival.

Secondly, the 3 billion yuan investment will be 'collectively funded' by Alibaba's ecosystem businesses, with costs distributed across their marketing budgets. Qianwen effectively becomes a gateway, exchanging traffic for data sharing and verifying the closed loop of AI problem-solving capabilities to retain users and dilute acquisition costs.

This joint operation model not only amplifies the impact of individual investments but also avoids the 'one-time' depletion associated with pure cash red packets. Caption: Yuanbao launches public beta. Screenshot by Tang Chen

The issue of users departing after claiming benefits is a common dilemma in traditional red packet wars. Pan Luan from the renowned tech media outlet Luan Fanshu pointed out that in 2025, WeChat red packets achieved a cold start among users. However, the red packet function at the time was very limited, essentially just a peer-to-peer transfer tool. Users received red packets, and the money remained in their change, but to spend it, they needed suitable venues.

Alibaba aims to make these 'spending venues' concrete, skipping the stage of merely distributing money and directly entering the service layer. Users no longer need to switch between apps; they can complete the entire consumption process through Qianwen and even enjoy complimentary orders. This 3 billion yuan investment can also be transformed from mere account numbers into actual lifestyle consumption.

In fact, Qianwen has already outlined a new vision for user consumption during the Spring Festival through technical demonstrations and functional implementations: users only need one Qianwen App and a single command to complete tasks like ordering milk tea, booking flights, and planning tours. Moreover, from demand proposal and product screening to payment and fulfillment, a little assistant will handle everything, requiring only confirmation and authorization from the user.

More crucially, Qianwen will further refine the path of AI problem-solving through the 'complimentary order' experience. Data on user usage duration, consumption preferences, lifestyle scenarios, and decision-making paths will be accumulated within Alibaba's ecosystem, optimizing the Qianwen App's user experience while providing 'fuel' for the AI-ization of subsequent AI e-commerce, AI local life, and other businesses.

If we include Alipay's Five Blessings collection activity, Alibaba's investment in Spring Festival activities this year will not only reach a record high but also rank first among internet giants in the AI war during the Spring Festival.

This directly stimulates users' senses, as Alibaba aims to wage an asymmetric AI race.

If we say that the surprise attack of WeChat red packets during the 2015 Spring Festival helped WeChat Pay secure a foothold in mobile payments, its additional value was that the traditional cultural courtesy of giving red packets was redefined with a sense of the mobile internet era and technology.

Now, Qianwen is redefining 'hosting,' incorporating it into the context of the AI era, making 'hosting' correspond to AI's lifestyle service capabilities, and endowing it with new connotations. For example, with a single command, AI can assist you in booking restaurants, purchasing airline tickets, and reserving hotels.

This is the fundamental difference between 'red packet distribution' and 'hosting,' and it is also the key to driving the paradigm shift in the AI war through this asymmetric battle.

Of course, Qianwen will not overinterpret this change. 2026 is widely regarded as the 'Year of the AI Agent Explosion,' but many of its capabilities are not yet mature. Specifically, after the Qianwen App fully integrates with Alibaba's ecosystem businesses, the rapid user growth will be accompanied by amplified experience shortcomings.

For example, compared to Doubao's 'lifestyle and entertainment' and Wenxin's 'multimodal all-rounder' labels, Qianwen's positioning as a 'problem-solving AI' still requires refinement. Meanwhile, the shortcomings of general Agents are also evident, with cross-scenario complex task execution efficiency potentially lagging behind vertical models. Moreover, the collaboration among Alibaba's ecosystem businesses still needs continuous optimization, as the connection between AI and businesses in some scenarios is not seamless enough to achieve 'effortless problem-solving.'

Why Do AI Giants Adopt Different Strategies in the Spring Festival Competition?

The differences in competition strategies among AI giants like Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent during the Spring Festival season stem from their company DNA, as I analyzed in my previous article 'AI Race Among Giants: ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent Compete in the Spring Festival Season.' The AI strategies of ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent are essentially determined by their core business models, resource endowments, and commercial ecosystems. Caption: Baidu Wenxin distributes 500 million yuan in red packets during the Spring Festival

This differentiation became even more pronounced during the 2026 Spring Festival.

Specifically, ByteDance relies on C-end traffic to achieve rapid breakthroughs through a 'traffic-content-commerce' closed loop; Alibaba leverages its e-commerce and cloud ecosystems to build a 'technology-commerce' barrier through full-stack technology; Tencent adopts a steady penetration strategy based on the strong stickiness of its social ecosystem, vigorously promoting product AI-ization and continuously exerting itself in its areas of expertise; Baidu, with its search gateway, uses red packets to support other businesses.

Alibaba can be considered the most comprehensive player among the major AI contenders. However, Alibaba suffers from a lack of high-channel exposure comparable to WeChat or Douyin within its internal ecosystem, relying solely on omnichannel marketing and the 'word-of-mouth' traffic generated by its large model's reputation for AI-to-C traffic.

This also determines that Qianwen's path will not be easy. In the short term, the 'Hosting Plan' can swiftly attract new users, but Qianwen seeks more than just traffic; it also desires 'retention.' That is, after the complimentary orders end, whether Qianwen's AI services can retain users will be crucial.

In the long run, the core significance of this asymmetric war lies in scenario validation, and Qianwen may emerge as the 'AI middleware' of Alibaba's ecosystem.

As evaluated by Huxiu, this represents Alibaba's unique route. Ordering food and booking tickets are high-frequency scenarios for ordinary users. If this model succeeds, Qianwen will truly usher in a new era of AI lifestyle and become the biggest beneficiary. Moreover, if AI can seamlessly become everyone's lifestyle assistant, it may truly trigger an explosion in AI lifestyle consumption.

This will also compel the industry to shift from 'traffic competition' to 'scenario cultivation,' and the era of merely distributing red packets may soon draw to a close.

However, regardless of the outcome, Qianwen's entry signifies that the red packet war among AI giants has transcended the mere stage of 'distributing money' to a 'ecosystem + scenario' positioning battle. All AI giants will come to a clear realization: merely distributing red packets can no longer secure loyal users; only by binding needs with scenarios and building barriers with ecosystems can they stand firm in the AI war.

Moreover, this AI war is unlikely to be decided in the short term. Objectively speaking, it has accelerated the popularization of AI and truly brought AI into the homes of ordinary people. For ordinary users, this is a carnival, as groups previously indifferent to AI and those not yet accustomed to using AI will undergo market education at this node.

I also hope to witness this Spring Festival AI war becoming even more vibrant.

References:

Tang Chen, 'AI Race Among Giants: ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent Compete in the Spring Festival Season'

Luan Fanshu, 'Tencent Wants to Replicate 2015, but Alibaba Aims to Surpass It'