Wen/Zhou Xinyue
Station B helmsman Chen Rui, turn the bow of the ship.
On March 7th, Bilibili announced that its revenue for 2023 was 22.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3%, and it still suffered a loss of 4.8 billion yuan.
As of the close on March 8th, the market value of Bilibili's Hong Kong stock closed at HKD 34.5 billion, with a higher point drop of over HKD 420 billion. CEO Chen Ruizheng urgently needs financial balance.
In the past two years, he has shifted more energy to "selling goods" and has taken frequent actions: adjusting organizational structure and strengthening the company's trading infrastructure; Release "Supernova Plan" and other initiatives to assist UP hosts in testing live streaming sales
E-commerce related advertising has become a new increment in commercialization, with an annual revenue of 6.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27%.
"This growth rate can be considered impressive in the entire industry," Chen Rui said, aiming to turn profits positive in the third quarter.
With half a year left, he and Bilibili are hoping for the new edge of e-commerce.
Selling with great effort
Chen Rui's urgent task is to accelerate monetization.
"In the stage of improving overall environment and rapid user growth, we can also tell stories of users breaking through the circle and rely on DAU (daily active users) to increase valuations, but now the logic has changed," he said.
The original pillar business has been in constant condition.
Last year, the revenue of mobile gaming business was 4.02 billion yuan, a decrease of 1 billion yuan, accounting for less than 20% of the revenue. The official explanation is that the license plate has hindered the revenue growth rate of the game.
The anime derivatives could not be sold, and the related business revenue was 2.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 30%.
Besides value-added services, what Chen Rui can rely on is advertising.
The investment of e-commerce platforms has become one of the largest increments. Taking the Q3 e-commerce off-season as an example, Bilibili's e-commerce advertising revenue still saw a year-on-year growth of over 90%.
Chen Rui revealed that among the top five advertisers in the industry, e-commerce ranks third.
He also rushed to prepare for Double 11 and officially announced the "UP Main Sales Super Nova Plan" in September, providing product selection guidance, quality product pool, traffic support, after-sales service, etc., hoping to cultivate his own Li Jiaqi.
The reporter noticed that the platform provides 10 million resources to support the sales of UP owners, with the slogan "By completing three tasks, you can break one million in sales in a single game".
Last year, over 3 million UP owners earned income on Bilibili, and one of the highlights was promoting products.
Chen Rui's slogan is to do "open loop e-commerce".
Bilibili connects to mainstream e-commerce platforms, connects product libraries such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, allowing users to plant grass on Bilibili and convert to e-commerce platforms. Bilibili honestly earns advertising commissions.
At the beginning of March, Mr., the home furnishing UP host, was stunned by everyone's live streaming. A reporter from "21CBR" found the live streaming interface through the "Live Streaming Life Lifestyle" path on the homepage, clicked on the shopping cart product, and then redirected to the Taobao page to receive exclusive coupons.
At the performance meeting, COO Li Ni used the example of being stunned to verify the natural advantage of Bilibili's sales - videos focus on long content and evaluation, suitable for durable consumer goods such as furniture and digital products.
The potential is evident in the latecomers entering the game.
During the Double Eleven period, the number of live streaming sales venues on Bilibili doubled, and the GMV of sales increased by over 250%.
Bi-directional travel
Chen Rui's game of chess is aimed at a win-win situation.
Bilibili saves investment in e-commerce infrastructure, stays away from internal competition, and avoids direct competition with e-commerce platforms; For e-commerce players, Bilibili is one of the platforms with the highest density of young people and a large number of incremental users.
Last April, Dai Shan, then the CEO of Taotian, led a team to visit Chen Rui's team and decided to increase advertising on Bilibili, resulting in a more than 5-fold increase.
Double 11, the "Member Purchase" entrance at the bottom of the Bilibili mobile app has been temporarily renamed "Double 11", with the addition of a "Tmall Double 11" section to display products and support direct redirection.
The Chen Rui team collaborated with Tmall to launch "Surprise Life, 11UP". After users enter Bilibili, there are "Double 11" elements from the homepage to the playback page.
Bilibili also connects with Alibaba Mama Taobao Alliance data, and brand owners can track the conversion of Bilibili's grass planting videos on the Alibaba platform, better controlling advertising costs.
It is reported that on last year's Double 11, Bilibili's advertising revenue from top e-commerce platforms increased by over 80%.
All the people who came were friends, and Chen Rui also collaborated with JD.com on the "Jinghuo Plan" and improved the advertising docking program with Pinduoduo.
For example, after clicking on a video card with a "creative promotion" logo, it will directly jump to the Pinduoduo app to receive a coupon.
"The daily average of over 26 million users who watch content related to e-commerce has increased by over 200% compared to the same period last year, with users directly clicking to jump to the comment section or playback page.".
Undoubtedly, working together has its convenience, and Chen Rui also has troubles.
UP focuses on promoting products, and users encounter more advertising information when browsing on Bilibili, which affects the experience. This is also a common challenge for the commercialization of content platforms.
On Bilibili, advertising headlines such as "Nadu can still lose weight? Who believes this can lose 10 pounds" and "Real evaluation, can you lose weight just by eating and not exercising while lying flat? Losing 11 pounds in 30 days!" have spread widely; In the comment section, there are also a large number of repetitive and template comments left by the navy, which has damaged the community atmosphere.
While receiving a large amount of income, these are all signs that Chen Rui needs to be wary of.
Learn while doing
Chen Rui has been walking unsteadily on the sales path of Bilibili.
In 2018, Bilibili launched a shopping feature.
The "Commodity" column appears on the home page of the UP owner, similar to the "window" of Tiktok Kwai. The user clicks the commodity link and jumps to the off-site transaction. The UP owner gets a commission.
At that time, Chen Rui's e-commerce strategy focused on providing advertising like product external links; The platform does not participate in procurement, operation, transportation and other processes, nor does it charge any dividends.
Later, he launched a "bounty plan", where UP owners can set product links inside and outside the player, in dynamic, column, showcase, and other locations. After users click on the link, they will be redirected to complete the order.
Under this mechanism, Bilibili and individual UP owners are split in half; If we are collaborating with MCN, Bilibili can split it further.
Afterwards, Chen Rui tried live streaming e-commerce again.
At that time, the infrastructure was not perfect enough and the shopping atmosphere had not yet formed. It was necessary to enter the "shopping" section from the path of "homepage, live streaming, and all tags".
"E-commerce is a very important business, and Bilibili is not good at doing hard work." An insider bluntly stated that Bilibili has been avoiding "difficult but right" things in the past.
In mid-2023, Chen Rui finally made significant adjustments to the structure, integrated multiple teams, established a new first level department called the "Trading Ecological Center", and strengthened the infrastructure construction in the trading sector.
At this moment, Bilibili e-commerce is still in its early stages.
There are no merchants who have settled in, and transactions are redirected outside the station. The threshold for selling goods has been lowered, and ultimately, it is only about outputting traffic and making wedding clothes for others. Additionally, the consumer decision-making chain has increased. If other e-commerce platforms do not provide good service, it may also backfire on the UP owners who attract traffic.
Zhuang Shuai, the founder of Bailian Consulting, believes that the fundamental solution to the problem is to build a supply chain and e-commerce operation system like a "closed-loop e-commerce".
The threshold is not as high as usual.
"The open-loop model can be sustained in the long term with a large user base, while closed-loop e-commerce requires daily activity and cash support."
Zhuang Shuai analyzed to 21CBR reporters that, based on the current situation, having 100 million daily active users and holding 10 billion yuan in funds is the only way to have the confidence to try a closed-loop e-commerce model.
The road to e-commerce is difficult, but fortunately, Chen Rui has taken steps.