Tencent Yuanbao has gone viral, primarily through buying traffic.

After integrating DeepSeek, Tencent Yuanbao began its money-spending spree. Whether it's Tencent-related apps like WeChat and QQ, or platforms like Bilibili, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu, and even overseas media and app stores, you can always encounter Tencent Yuanbao unexpectedly.

The funds burned by Tencent Yuanbao have almost faded competitors like Doubao and Kimi from people's sight; Tencent, which once disdained buying traffic, saw the access pressure on DeepSeek and Yuanbao's own insufficient strength, and immediately chose to go all in.

Now, various Tencent apps have collectively integrated DeepSeek. Besides the suspicion of blindly following the trend, there also seems to be concern about the search traffic entrance after the advent of the AI era.

Therefore, Tencent chose to both partner and spend money to maintain its dominant position; however, has Tencent, which has repeatedly won in traffic competition, been able to continue its good luck this time?

Buying Traffic is Also Crazy

After partnering with DeepSeek, the once low-key Tencent Yuanbao instantly occupied the center stage of traffic.

On Apple's China free app ranking, Tencent Yuanbao surpassed Doubao, ranking second on the list, second only to DeepSeek.

However, just two months ago, this up-and-coming player in the AI large model was just a small fry.

AI Product Ranking data shows: In December 2024, the monthly active users of Doubao, Kimi, and Wenxiaoyan were 71.16 million, 16.69 million, and 13.47 million, respectively.

While belonging to the same AI large model camp, Tencent Yuanbao's monthly active users were only 2.91 million, ranking 12th on the list.

Why could Tencent Yuanbao, which used to stand like a lackey, quickly complete its comeback? Besides DeepSeek being strong enough, money power also seems important.

Not long ago, some WeChat users said that the current search section of WeChat has integrated DeepSeek, allowing users to use AI search and also choose in-depth thinking provided by DeepSeek.

Tencent also stated: Users who have not yet been grayscaled for AI search will have the opportunity to see the words "Download Yuanbao (Use DeepSeek R1)" on the page by clicking the search bar at the top of the WeChat dialog box.

Recently, the download link for Yuanbao has also appeared in the "Services" section of some users' WeChat; within WeChat Moments, many people often encounter Yuanbao.

WeChat, with over 1.3 billion monthly active users, is undoubtedly a national application. Its efforts to drive traffic to Yuanbao show Tencent's preference for it.

On the other hand, Tencent apps such as QQ, QQ Browser, QQ Music, Tencent Docs, and Tencent Meeting also continuously advertise for Tencent Yuanbao.

Besides Tencent's own apps, Tencent Yuanbao's ads also frequently appear on other platforms.

From Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Weibo, Hupu, to various app stores, and even functional apps like Moji Weather and Mint Health, Tencent Yuanbao's ads are like street flyers, crashing into your eyes from all directions.

On Bilibili, UP hosts such as Hou Cuicui, Qiuzhi2046, Lightning Spaceship, epcdiy, and Qingfeng Shixiong appeared with different styles to support and call for Tencent Yuanbao.

Besides investing in the domestic market, Tencent Yuanbao has also achieved advertising overseas. Some netizens opened the Lianhe Zaobao app in Singapore and unexpectedly saw a familiar face; others watched NBA games where the commentator mentioned downloading Tencent Yuanbao to predict the probability of winning.

To double the advertising effect, Tencent Yuanbao is also trying to buy competitors' keywords during the advertising process. When Pan Ge searched for "DeepSeek" on Xiaomi's app store and Baidu, Tencent Yuanbao was the first to be displayed.

Tencent Yuanbao's crazy advertising has only recently erupted.

AppGrowing data shows: Before February 18, 2025, Tencent Yuanbao's advertising was at a low level, significantly weaker than peers like Kimi and Doubao.

But starting from February 18, Tencent Yuanbao quickly surpassed both, and the current daily advertising volume has exceeded 50,000 groups, much higher than the combined total of Doubao and Kimi.

How much did Tencent Yuanbao spend on advertising?

Regarding this, a Bilibili UP host told Pan Ge: "Bilibili ads are generally divided into CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per mille), with a minimum CPC click price of 0.5 yuan and a CPM price of 5 yuan for one thousand impressions."

On the other hand, according to AppGrowing data, in the first 20 days of February 2025, Tencent Yuanbao's advertising scale was about 20 million yuan; from February 21 to February 25, the number of Tencent Yuanbao's advertising groups exceeded twice the total of the first 20 days.

Based on this trend, the advertising expenditure of Tencent Yuanbao in February 2025 is expected to reach 80 million yuan, equivalent to the total advertising expenditure in the third quarter of 2024.

However, the above results are only calculated by Pan Ge, and the data has not been verified by Tencent officials.

Who Won the Collaboration?

Tencent's crazy buying of traffic for Yuanbao seems weird.

After all, as early as December 2022, Pony Ma said in an internal speech: "Don't tell me about buying traffic stories anymore. I don't believe in it anymore. Even if others can succeed, it's not suitable for Tencent. Let others do it. We won't buy traffic in the future."

Now, Tencent seems to have easily broken its previous strategy, revealing some lack of confidence in AI large models.

The more lacking in confidence, the more Tencent needs to find external support. Therefore, Tencent Yuanbao merged with DeepSeek, using others' strength to compete with rivals.

However, what are the differences between Tencent Yuanbao, which is integrated with the full-blooded version of DeepSeek R1, and the original DeepSeek?

Regarding this question, Tencent Yuanbao replied: "We have a technical cooperation relationship with DeepSeek. Compared with the original DeepSeek, it integrates content from the WeChat ecosystem and has a faster response speed."

DeepSeek stated: "The generation results of Tencent Yuanbao differ from the official website. The knowledge base update speed sometimes lags behind DeepSeek, and some answers may contain advertising information."

In this regard, if users are heavy WeChat users who need seamless integration with the WeChat ecosystem and efficient handling of workplace tasks, Tencent Yuanbao is a better choice; if professionalism and accuracy are pursued, especially in fields like law and medicine, or if flexible secondary development is required, DeepSeek has more advantages.

Are Tencent Yuanbao and DeepSeek satisfied with this partnership?

For DeepSeek, the emergence of Tencent Yuanbao has relieved its access pressure.

Because many users encounter server busyness when conversing with DeepSeek, and its response speed is far behind other AI large models.

For Tencent Yuanbao, besides giving it technological and traffic support in its competition with Doubao and Kimi, DeepSeek also helps train and promote its own Hunyuan large model.

Pan Ge found that when opening the Tencent Yuanbao dialog box, the default AI is not DeepSeek but Tencent Hunyuan; when Pan Ge asked the same question to both AIs, he found that their thinking logic and answering styles were highly similar.

Traffic Anxiety

Tencent Yuanbao's operation of integrating DeepSeek and then frantically buying traffic after being an average AI large model shows that it fully understands the strategy of "if you can't beat them, join them."

Besides Tencent Yuanbao and WeChat, Tencent apps such as Tencent Docs, WeChat Work, Tencent Maps, QQ Music, and QQ Browser have also integrated DeepSeek.

Why are various Tencent apps embracing DeepSeek? One view is that it's blindly following the trend.

After all, after DeepSeek's popularity during the Spring Festival, various apps such as Baidu, WPS, DingTalk, Feishu, Xiaoyuan Kousuan, and Nano AI Search have successively announced their integration with DeepSeek.

At the same time, Huawei, Honor, OPPO in the mobile phone industry, Geely, Li Auto, BYD in the automotive industry, Ninebot, Niu, and Yadea in the electric bicycle industry, and various brands in other fields have all expressed their intention to cooperate with DeepSeek.

Even YY Live, where girls sing and dance, recently announced the integration of DeepSeek, allowing users to experience the real YYDS.

It can be said that DeepSeek has now become the infrastructure of the internet industry, with a status akin to water and electricity.

However, some netizens believe that some apps' integration with DeepSeek is completely a pseudo-demand.

For example, asking QQ Music about the theme song of "Nezha 2" requires the AI to think for more than ten seconds before giving a playlist, making the search efficiency slower; telling Geely's in-car system to call me later results in the AI analyzing at length and finally reclining the user's seat.

However, some believe that Tencent's decision to partner with DeepSeek and then frantically spend money on buying traffic has a far-sighted plan.

Because, with the two largest social apps in China, Tencent's own traffic entrance advantage has become precarious under the impact of various AI large models.

In the PC internet era, Tencent relied on QQ to start and gradually became a national-level application, carrying an entire generation's initial memories of the internet.

When the mobile internet wave hit, WeChat helped Tencent secure the first ticket, enabling it to maintain its traffic advantage in various competitions thereafter.

However, since the popularity of short videos, ByteDance's Douyin has rapidly risen and begun to compete for WeChat's traffic and time; in the era of AI large models, Doubao, also belonging to ByteDance, has gained an early advantage over Tencent Yuanbao.

Perhaps, by seeing the future where AI large models will become the search traffic entrance, Tencent feels alarmed, resorting to the double buff of partnership and money power to compete with rivals.

After all, for internet companies, those who capture traffic capture the world. It's not too late to lay out now. But it remains to be seen whether Tencent, which has repeatedly obtained tickets, will be as lucky this time as it was before.