Text | New Berry daybreak Xia Wenxin
When I heard that Aauto Quicker also promoted homemade variety shows, my first reaction was a little surprised. Knowing the co-producers behind it, I realized that variety shows are just appearances, and the mystery behind them is Aauto Quicker’s real appeal.
On February 24th, Aauto Quicker launched the star variety "Sleep at 11 o’clock". The program was initiated by Z.TAO, and each issue invited four celebrities to challenge whether they could successfully fall asleep before 11 o’clock. At present, this program has aired seven issues.
In essence, this is a program co-created by Aauto Quicker and a bedding company called "Xilinmen". In the planning stage, the content is embedded for brand marketing, planting grass and bringing goods.
It can be understood that this is a kind of advanced customized advertisement launched by Aauto Quicker for brand owners.
However, the excitement of "Sleep at 11 o’clock" seems to be confined to Aauto Quicker, and most users simply don’t know the existence of this program. Because only four netizens gave comments, Sleep at 11 o’clock has not been divided in Douban.
Aauto Quicker has been increasing its investment in content resources, and self-made variety shows are only one of them. Vertical fields such as short play, sports, film and television, and knowledge are the tracks that are focused on. The most direct feeling of users is that "the short video has become longer".
Why did Aauto Quicker embark on the old road of "loving Youteng"?
01, from short to long
"Sleep at 11 o’clock" is not Aauto Quicker’s first attempt in the field of variety. The connection between Aauto Quicker and variety shows can be traced back to 2017. At the end of the first season of Tucao Conference, Li Dan introduced the APP Aauto Quicker to the audience in a teasing way.
Brand implantation is a combination of Aauto Quicker and variety in the early days, which also made Aauto Quicker realize the powerful drainage ability of variety. As a result, Aauto Quicker increased investment and seized the beachhead, while accumulating resources and gaining momentum. Being a sponsor of the variety track can no longer bear Aauto Quicker’s ambition.
Aauto Quicker, who has a natural comedy gene, fired the first shot of self-made variety show with "8: 30 hilarious" in April 2020. Subsequently, talk show "Super Nice Conference", food social file "Yue is luckier with hard work", impromptu comedy "Time Shop" and other self-made variety shows were launched one after another, and Aauto Quicker launched a new layout of self-made variety shows in an all-round way.
In the broadcast form, Aauto Quicker has made a compound live broadcast, and the card segment adds some broadcast and playback. "Time and Space Shop" is to cut it into a very short video, fast-paced, and there is no empty shot. "Sleep at 11 o’clock" is broadcast live.
But variety shows are not Aauto Quicker’s ultimate goal, but brand marketing is.
This is similar to bilibili’s self-made variety show. Both companies have community genes, and UGC is rich in content, but it is not conducive to realizing it. Only through self-made content, it not only takes care of the C-end user experience, but also has marketing demands.
Another trend of "lengthening" in Aauto Quicker is to accelerate the layout of sports copyright and ecological construction, which is also inseparable from the keyword "marketing".
Aauto Quicker’s determination to enter sports can be reflected by Mao Haifeng, head of the commercialization of Aauto Quicker Magnetic Engine content, who said, "Sports marketing is spiritual marketing, which occupies a higher position above entertainment marketing".
The most widely known thing is that Aauto Quicker won the right to broadcast the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. In fact, Aauto Quicker is also the official live broadcast platform of CBA China professional basketball match and UCL European Champions League, and has become the first content innovation partner of NBA China.
In addition to nodal large-scale events, Aauto Quicker also tries to expand its capacity in the vertical field of sports. At present, Aauto Quicker has built a sports content ecology covering more than 40 categories such as billiards, surfing, fishing and fighting.
Aauto Quicker’s investment in content continues, and he has no intention of stopping.
On the track of film and animation, Aauto Quicker is even bolder. Previously, Aauto Quicker had acquired ACFUN (Station A) in a bold way, trying to stabilize the ecological foundation of the second element, but with little effect.
Then, Aauto Quicker accessed small programs such as PP movies, popular videos and Mango TV in the station, and directly purchased the copyrights of some movies and TV works, and integrated all the above resources and put them on the first-level entrance of the home page in the form of "Aauto Quicker screening hall".
These actions seem to be the routine operation means of "Youaiteng".
02. The cost of content is rising.
Aauto Quicker of UGC platform gene wants to lay out the content ecology, so it is impossible to go into battle with his bare hands, but to throw down real money.
In the annual report of Aauto Quicker in 2021, the cost of sales increased by 34.6% from RMB 35 billion in 2020 to RMB 47.1 billion in 2021. One of the main reasons is that "enriching the content category and content ecology will increase the content cost in other sales costs." 」
High copyright fees and content costs have always been a headache for long video websites. The fierce battle between the giants has raised the price of content copyright, so that the three long video websites are facing the dilemma of making ends meet all the year round. Take iQiyi as an example. According to the financial report, its revenue in the fourth quarter was 7.4 billion yuan, but the content cost was 4.9 billion yuan.
Now Aauto Quicker has also joined the ranks of long video content investment. This is somewhat incredible. Earlier, there were online rumors that Aauto Quicker spent 2.5 billion yuan on the copyright of the two Olympic Games, and the copyright fee of NBA has always been famous for its sky-high price.
Compared with the huge cost, the results and benefits are not so ideal.
The self-made variety show did not go out of Aauto Quicker, and the audience had obvious feelings. In the seventh issue of "Sleep at 11 o’clock", perhaps because of the lack of stars in the town, the audience who participated in the interaction was not as enthusiastic as before.
According to the cat’s eye data, Tencent’s self-made video variety "Half-cooked Lovers" broadcast in the same period ranked first in the hot list of the whole network, with a cumulative broadcast volume of 1.205 billion. Unlike "Half-baked Lovers", which topped the Japanese crown for 18 times, Aauto Quicker’s self-made variety shows never entered the list.
Aauto Quicker wants to increase private traffic and build social trust, which, to a certain extent, promotes the popularity of homemade variety shows on the two platforms of Cat’s Eye and Douban. But it’s not enough for Aauto Quicker users to get out of the circle.
In terms of sports events, Aauto Quicker’s performance is also unsatisfactory: as the only short video platform that won the copyright of the Winter Olympics, its advantages have not been fully demonstrated.
According to the Aauto Quicker Battle Report, from January 1 to February 23, the total broadcast volume of winter Olympics-related works and topic videos inside and outside Aauto Quicker reached 154.48 billion, and the total number of athletes related to winter Olympics increased by more than 38 million.
However, Tik Tok, who didn’t get the rights and interests related to the competition, was ahead of his competitors in data performance. From February 1st to 20th, the total broadcast volume of Tik Tok ice and snow sports related videos reached 164.5 billion, and the total number of accounts of ice and snow athletes increased by over 40.75 million.
03. What is Aauto Quicker fighting for?
Aauto Quicker’s latest financial report for 2021 shows that the adjusted net loss is 18.852 billion yuan. As a one-year-old listed company, Aauto Quicker is constantly experiencing the "soul question" of the market, which is related to market value, K-line and expectation.
Aauto Quicker has been trying to gain market recognition in the past.
Aauto Quicker tried to "get faster". In 2019, faced with the pressure of Tik Tok’s rapid rise, Aauto Quicker launched a sprint to 300 million DAU, code-named "K3 Campaign" in Aauto Quicker. Although the final goal was achieved, the main growth came from the Extreme Edition. Two years later, the DAU in Aauto Quicker was basically stable at around 300 million, and there was no significant increase.
As users grow, they must also solve the problem of liquidation. Live reward has been receiving constant regulatory attention. Before the crisis of this income model, which once accounted for 70% to 80% of Aauto Quicker, Aauto Quicker turned to "lengthening" and sought to realize advertising.
In the first step, Aauto Quicker needs to actively optimize the content ecology.
Like the rich content carried by the long video, Aauto Quicker began to use the form of short video to incite more rich and multidimensional content. As a result, Aauto Quicker began to cover more vertical categories, such as variety, sports, film and television, education, health and so on.
There are more and more contents and longer videos. On the one hand, it is to gain more user growth, on the other hand, it is to give existing users a wider range of choices.
In the 2021 financial report, Aauto Quicker’s online marketing service revenue was 42.7 billion yuan, up 95.2% year-on-year, which was the largest revenue source. Among them, the growth rate of brand advertising revenue is fierce, achieving a year-on-year growth of over 150%.
Two important factors attract advertisers, one is the duration of users, and the other is the tonality of content. Judging from Aauto Quicker’s investment in the content side in the past, they are all completed around these two goals.
Aauto Quicker’s official argument is that by combining information, real-time event content and user interaction, it has opened up a new path for the operation of sports content, providing more interaction and duration beyond the consumption of sports events. The data shows that in the third quarter of 2021, the total time spent by users on sports content increased by more than 1.5 times compared with the same period of last year.
These are the reasons for the increase of brand advertising revenue in Aauto Quicker in 2021. The variety of content has also enriched the ways of realizing advertising in Aauto Quicker.
In addition to the happiness in Sleeping at 11 o’clock mentioned at the beginning, the Aauto Quicker Small Theater "Today’s Menu Really Want to Be Together" also implanted a brand for Mengniu. It not only combines the names of the male and female protagonists skillfully, but also strengthens brand awareness everywhere in the scene and plot.
The Winter Olympics mobilization interview program "Snow Hero" provides self-made content and deep brand building for Link Auto. In addition to brand implantation, Aauto Quicker also helps to diversify brand cooperation through interactive games, customized expressions and online challenges.
Aauto Quicker’s "lengthening" means "widening", aiming at broadening the user groups and income structure. Aauto Quicker, which you are familiar with and deeply loved by users in the sinking market, is actively embracing the mainstream from the silent majority. The largest live broadcast company is turning into an advertising company.