Whether it’s Jay Chou’s new song, or the 618 shopping festival where all the people participate, the “creation” shopping festival is mentioned, and the Kuaishou platform is one of the practitioners. In order to promote the development of Kuaishou e-commerce, Kuaishou "invented" the "616" real shopping festival two days earlier than 618. It is also just coming to an end, and this is the third year of Kuaishou 616.
Regarding the achievements of the 616 E-commerce Promotion Festival, the official data disclosed by Kuaishou is that in the 66 Trust Day promotion marketing session, the cumulative GMV of the event was 88.39 million, and the cumulative audience was 108 million.
Let’s not talk about the good or bad of this record. From the perspective of marketing services, live broadcast and e-commerce, Kuaishou’s continuous losses, limited business, peak traffic and other problems are like invisible tentacles enveloping Kuaishou all the way forward.
Marketing service income increased, but it was difficult to alleviate losses
In Q1 of 2022, the performance report released by Kuaishou showed that its online marketing service revenue was 11.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.6%, accounting for 53.9% of Kuaishou’s revenue, more than half. It can be seen that even though Kuaishou has the title of short video and live broadcast platform, its core is still an "advertising company".
There is nothing wrong with being an "advertising company" favored by users. After all, when all kinds of bonuses are in short supply, traffic is still one of the most important criteria for investors.
However, in order to maintain its "famousness", Kuaishou has invested a huge amount in marketing expenses, not only did not make it light on the road of marketing services, but has been "moving forward with a heavy load".
This is more reflected in Kuaishou's losses.
Kuaishou’s previously released performance report for the first quarter of 2022 showed that in the first quarter of 2022, Kuaishou’s revenue was 21.067 billion yuan, and its adjusted net loss was 3.72 billion yuan, compared with the net loss of 3.569 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2021. , the loss is higher.
Referring to the loss of 7.87 billion yuan in 2020 and the loss of 18.85 billion yuan in 2021, it may be speculated that in the second quarter of 2022, Kuaishou may still find it difficult to get rid of the loss situation.
In addition, relevant data pointed out that from 2019 to 2021, the expenditures on the Kuaishou market and sales expenses were 9.8 billion yuan, 22.6 billion yuan, and 44.1 billion yuan respectively, and the sales expense ratio accounted for a large part. It's just a huge investment, which not only made Kuaishou fall into a huge loss, but also did not boost Kuaishou's performance to achieve rapid growth, but the growth rate became slower and slower.
Looking at the reasons for the losses of major Internet platforms, it is nothing more than the rising cost of marketing and promotion, and investment in new businesses, etc. Kuaishou is no exception. Just like in 2020, in order to develop the e-commerce sector, Kuaishou has increased its investment in this field, and the expenditure on sales expenses has therefore increased.
From the perspective of Kuaishou, the revenue obtained from marketing services can account for the majority of its revenue, which can be said to be the blessing of the platform's superior resources to the outside world. In fact, how much marketing expenses it has invested in this, presumably only itself knows the answer.
The live broadcast is in a dilemma, what cards can Kuaishou play?
Over the years, Kuaishou, who started out with short videos, has come all the way to today with the support of "old irons". The live broadcast business that he entered later has also cultivated many well-known top anchors. The benefits of live broadcasts have brought considerable benefits to Kuaishou. Cash flow income has become one of Kuaishou's most profitable businesses.
It’s just that everyone knows the story later. Because of scandals such as “selling fake products” and the gradual tightening of regulatory policies, Kuaishou’s live broadcast business reputation and performance have fallen sharply. From 2019, the live broadcast reward income reached 300. At the glorious moment of more than 100 million yuan, it once fell to the negative growth stage in 2021.
Although Kuaishou later proposed some plans and measures to support novice anchors, the results were not obvious.
However, among the domestic live streaming delivery platforms, Kuaishou’s live broadcast performance is not the first, but it is still at the top. Moreover, with the vigorous exploration of entrants, the development of the live delivery delivery industry is becoming more and more mature. It may be easy to give up this big cake.
After all, judging from the phenomenon that "all kinds of gods" have entered the live broadcast to bring goods, everyone must have reached a truth: the end of the universe is live broadcast.
On the one hand, as the Internet traffic dividend has peaked, user growth has become stagnant. It has become a common problem. How to find growth from existing users and "sell goods" is a relatively sticky platform like Kuaishou. It is an extremely effective method; on the other hand, live streaming can easily win the hearts of consumers with its novel product presentation methods and price advantages.
However, combined with Kuaishou's e-commerce business, the reason why its live broadcast and e-commerce business failed to "defeat" marketing services and became the largest contributor to Kuaishou's revenue is that the underlying structure of its e-commerce business is not solid, and its supply chain, payment and other facilities Perhaps one of the most important reasons is that the equipment is not in place. Otherwise, with the two natural traffic sources of live streaming and short videos, why not sell Kuaishou?
In the long run, it is extremely critical and difficult for Kuaishou to build a complete e-commerce industry chain.
No, in order to find new growth, Kuaishou has also recently focused on cloud services. However, although the market has room for development, there are already strong competitors ahead, and the future is uncertain.
Faced with such a dilemma, what cards can Kuaishou play? The cloud service it is eyeing may be an answer. However, although the market prospect is broad, there are strong competitors in the front and limited technology in the back. I hope that Kuaishou can forge ahead on the road of cloud services instead of "retiring".
Gaining traffic is all for profit
As the competition in all walks of life is becoming increasingly fierce, platforms are lamenting the disappearance of the Internet demographic dividend, either "lost here" or "lost there". What the platforms should "hate" is not the disappearance of the demographic dividend, but the fact that in the Internet market where a hundred flowers are blooming, they can only suffer from their lack of confidence to win the long-term foothold of consumers.
Over the years, e-commerce platforms have come up with all kinds of methods to support merchants. Even if the "new highs" set during the shopping festival promotions are refreshed again and again, for the platforms, the key is still to Ensure the normal operation of the platform traffic, otherwise, even the big promotion day may be empty.
As a powerful booster for the success of platforms, traffic plays an extremely important role in the huge Internet. Just like the achievements of Kuaishou in the field of short videos, the promotion of traffic is indispensable. But at the fork in the road where the dividends are dissipating, even Kuaishou, who has "recharged money", didn't take a second look at the "tsundere" virtual object of traffic.
In the long run, Kuaishou's exploration on the road of "no loss" and achieving profitability is like a journey with no return.