Author | Chen Yan

Editor | Dafeng

The "Yellow of Traffic Light" that disappeared from Douyin live streams has been reborn on Video Account.

The Yellow of Traffic Light Live Streaming on Video Account

Zinc Finance found that recently, "The Yellow of Traffic Light," the top disciple of Xiao Yang Ge, launched his first live streaming debut on Video Account, a collaboration with the beauty brand Jiaorunquan. According to reports, within one hour of the broadcast, the cumulative audience reached 300,000, with over 3 million likes.

This also marks a new progress in Three Sheep's entry into Video Account.

Three Sheep's entry is not an isolated case. Since the beginning of this year, more and more large MCNs and celebrities have started live streaming on Video Account. In February, Dongfang Zhenxuan made its debut, but it was prerecorded content. In April, Jiaoge Pengyou officially launched its live streaming debut. In June, Christy Chung became the main promotional live streamer for Video Account's 618 event.

To a certain extent, attracting more influencers and agencies is a must for Video Account to deploy its live streaming business.

Over the past few years, Video Account's live streaming has given the outside world a sense of being too laid-back, with little memorable moments. It's unclear who the top influencers are or where the big live streaming rooms are. Compared to Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao Live, and even Xiaohongshu, its live streaming business has yet to create a significant impact.

To embark on the right track of live streaming, Video Account is still waiting for a benchmark to emerge.

01

Video Account Lacks a Benchmark Figure

From various indications, Video Account is also trying to create its own "god."

In addition to Three Sheep's Xiao Huang, during this year's 618 event, Video Account specifically invited celebrity Christy Chung to "train" in the live streaming room. From 11 am to midnight, nine brands participated, and the cumulative popularity of the live streaming room reached 420 million, ranking first on the list of celebrity live streaming on Video Account that day.

Christy Chung Live Streaming on Video Account

Christy Chung also became the first live streamer on Video Account with over a million viewers in a single broadcast.

However, this is more of a result of Video Account's excessive traffic tilt. Video Account officials did not disclose the final GMV of the broadcast, but according to data statistics from Xinshi, the sales amount was approximately 5.4293 million yuan. As a comparison, Dong Jie's first live streaming on Xiaohongshu in January last year, according to data service providers, exceeded 20 million yuan in GMV that night.

Currently, although Video Account has gradually increased the volume of live streaming, most people are still in a "watching the show" state.

But compared to specific sales data, Video Account's top priority is to heat up the scene first, leveraging the influence of some influencers with traffic to implant the mindset of platform live streaming in users' minds. After all, the lack of a sense of presence in Video Account's e-commerce is largely due to the platform's lack of representative figures.

In the past, Taobao Live was able to gain recognition in the general public because of the rapid rise of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya. Douyin broke through from short videos to content e-commerce by creating the first-generation "Douyin One" Luo Yonghao. Kuaishou, not to mention, the GMV of Xinba and his family's live streaming once approached nearly one-third of Kuaishou's e-commerce GMV.

The Four Heavenly Kings of Live Streaming

At present, Video Account is crossing the river by feeling the stones of its predecessors.

It continues to introduce external traffic and collaborate with celebrities, influencers, and agencies to explore a benchmark live streamer that is well-known, exposed, and influential, creating its own typical case.

In fact, Video Account has been trying to adopt a universal traffic approach, which is to distribute traffic to more people rather than creating so-called top influencers. WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong has also said emphatically that if celebrities don't want to come to Video Account without a signing fee, "we say, if they don't come, they don't come. I believe that ordinary people's creativity is tremendous."

The result is that the entire Video Account ecosystem is lukewarm, and the platform's traffic cannot support sales, leading to the current change.

02

The Live Streaming Ecosystem Needs to Be Completed

In the past two years, Video Account has also grown some native influencers, such as Guo Yiyi, Song Yuxi, Yan Yi Couple, Baoge Baosao Couple, etc., who can be considered relatively popular amateur top influencers on the platform.

Screenshot of Top Influencers on Video Account

But these people currently cannot shoulder the burden of Video Account's e-commerce.

On the one hand, Video Account's e-commerce is still in a rapid growth stage and has not been fully commercialized. The landscape of live streaming is still unsettled, and the rankings of top live streaming influencers are constantly changing. The gap between amateur top influencers is not too great. They are all relatively popular within Video Account but not widely recognized across the entire internet.

As a result, they cannot serve as a "facade" to help Video Account open up the upper limit of its e-commerce business, attract more brands, merchants, and users, and increase the platform's traffic and GMV.

More importantly, looking around, these influencers share many commonalities, basically having down-to-earth personas such as "post-90s second-child mothers" and "post-85 entrepreneurial couples." Their daily short videos often focus on topics related to mothers-in-law, family ethics, etc.

Take Guo Yiyi as an example. Her persona is: at the age of 23, she gave birth while studying for a master's degree in mathematics and became a full-time housewife after graduation, struggling with postpartum depression. After becoming popular with a content related to "mothers returning to the workplace," she started live streaming within a month.

Screenshot of Guo Yiyi's Video Account

This has led to the fact that the target audience of these amateur top influencers is mostly middle-aged and elderly groups over 40 years old, with women as the majority. The categories they usually sell well also focus on areas preferred by the silver-haired generation, such as shoes, clothing, jewelry, daily necessities, Chinese tonics, etc.

The labels are too limiting.

If Video Account wants to further develop in the field of live streaming, it must improve its platform ecosystem, covering various labels and demographics to meet the diverse needs of users.

Therefore, inviting agencies and celebrities such as Three Sheep Xiao Huang, Jiaoge Pengyou, and Christy Chung to test the waters of live streaming on Video Account is essentially an attempt to open up the market for different demographics using the shortest path. These agencies and influencers have already accumulated a large number of fans and live streaming experience on Douyin, and Douyin's user base is generally younger, which is exactly what Video Account needs at present.

03

The Outside World Is Watching

As a latecomer, Video Account's current level of live streaming is still not comparable to established players like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao Live. However, backed by WeChat, as Tencent's "hope for the entire field," Video Account still has some inherent advantages.

As a nationwide app, WeChat has over 1 billion monthly active users, creating a huge potential audience for Video Account's live streaming. Leveraging WeChat's social relationship chain, Video Account has the opportunity to obtain free traffic from multiple channels such as official accounts, communities, and moments, thus achieving efficient growth.

In other words, Video Account has a good foundation of traffic from the start.

In addition, as internet traffic dividends peak, live streaming e-commerce has not escaped the pressure of the "ceiling." According to data from the Network Economy Society, the growth rate of domestic live streaming e-commerce transactions has declined year by year over the past three years, from 83.77% to 40.48%. Therefore, in recent years, all platforms have shifted from "traffic" to "retention," with private domain operation becoming a core aspect.

Compared to other platforms, Video Account grows within the WeChat ecosystem based on acquaintance social networking, making it easier to connect public and private domains and keep users within its own pool.

Although Video Account's overall e-commerce market is still small, its potential imagination has attracted attention from the outside world. No one wants to miss this potential opportunity.

According to market reports, in 2023, the Dongfang Zhenxuan team sent two vice presidents to visit WeChat to discuss the possibility of entering Video Account. After officially entering and broadcasting in February this year, according to insiders, there are no current plans for live streaming on Video Account, but future arrangements may change.

Screenshot of Dongfang Zhenxuan's Video Account

Jiaoge Pengyou has not invested too many resources on Video Account, and Luo Yonghao has not appeared in the live streaming room, but it has already begun exploring regular live streaming.

Video Account e-commerce seems to be a "high-speed train" poised to take off. Everyone is waiting for an opportunity, a tipping point, to achieve a win-win situation.

In terms of live streaming, Video Account still has a lot of work to do, but its future is still worth looking forward to.