China Tech Express: Bilibili Releases 2020 Influencer Report

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Welcome to the latest edition of China Tech Express! Today we’re going to take a look at the 2020 Bilibili Influencer Report. We’ll also talk about some of the massive Lunar New Year promotions launched by China’s tech giants, and we’ll look at which of China’s Android stores now has an exclusive deal with Genshin Impact. Ready? Let’s go!

1. Bilibili releases 2020 Influencer Report, shines new light on its Gen Z user base

Bilibili, commonly referred to as “China’s YouTube”, has recently released its 2020 Influencer Report to give us a look at how influencers helped the platform grow in the past year. According to the report, Bilibili increased the number of influencers on its platforms to 1.7 million (up 51% year-on-year). The number of user-generated videos uploaded to Bilibili also increased significantly to over 5.6 million (up 51% year-on-year), underlining an active community with strong growth.

Another interesting thing to mention: Bilibili is known for its ability to segment content based on user interests, and its users have created over 7,000 interest segments (online communities, basically) so far. On average, users watch videos across over 20 interest segments each month.

Bilibili has a similar business model to YouTube, with an emphasis on user-generated content but with a better ad experience. And if you remember, Bilibili partnered with the BBC to co-produce and broadcast documentaries on the platforms. Read more about the Bilibili 2020 Influencer Report on WeChat (Chinese).

We’re big fans of Bilibili, and we released a free ebook about Bilibili where you can learn more about this incredibly powerful platform. We’re also big fans of influencer marketing in general – we had some great success stories working with influencers (or KOLs) in China, and we even released an ebook about this called “The Power of Influencer Marketing in China“.

Bonus: since we’re talking about Gen Z, here are some interesting stats we got from QuestMobile:

Gen Z user distribution across popular mobile video apps. From left to right: iQIYI, Douyin, Tencent Video, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Mango TV, Youku, Douyin Lite, Kuaishou Lite, Douyu

Left graph: average monthly time spent on the top mobile video platforms: other users (42.4h), Gen Z users (48.9h)

Right graph: top 5 mobile video app categories that Gen Z users spend most time on (monthly average in hours.minutes): short-form video, online video, gaming live streaming, other live streaming, video hubs.

2. China’s tech giants running massive giveaways for Lunar New Year

What did China’s tech giants have in common this Lunar New Year? Prizes, lots and lots of prizes. With the 2021 Lunar New Year happening mostly online due to the COVID-19 risks, many of the biggest online platforms in China ran various promotions and competitions aimed at getting a slice of that sweet New Year user activity.

Here are some examples of prizes that were given away around this time of the year:

From left to right, we have:

• Douyin: 2 billion yuan
• Kuaishou: 2.1 billion yuan (trying to 1-up Douyin?)
• Baidu: 2.2 billion yuan
• Pinduoduo: 2.8 billion yuan

That’s 9.1 billion yuan (over $1.4 billion!) across just these 4 platforms. As we discussed in our recent article, “What the 2021 Chinese New Year Means for Advertisers“, China’s top platforms know the power of “revenge shopping” and how to leverage elements like social media & gamification in order to reach their audiences. At the same time, these activities proved to be useful in increasing user stickiness, driving UA efforts towards new products (like Douyin promoting its Douyin Pay platform), or driving traffic to advertising partners (like what Alipay or Pinduoduo did).

3. Genshin Impact available on the Xiaomi App Store

You’ve probably heard of Genshin Impact, and how it was basically one of the biggest international releases of any Chinese game ever, generating about $60 million on the App Store and Google Play in its first week according to Sensor Tower. What you might not know is that Genshin Impact is not available in the Chinese app stores – well, until recently at least.

miHoYo, the game’s developer, just launched Genshin Impact on the Xiaomi App Store, making this the first app store in China to offer the game. Even more interesting is that miHoYo got a special deal from Xiaomi, with miHoYo getting a 70% revenue share – in general, the revenue split between Xiaomi and the publishers and developers on its platform is 50-50.

So why is Genshin Impact on the Xiaomi App Store and not on any other big Android app stores in China like the ones belonging to Tencent, Huawei, OPPO, VIVO, and so on? Good question, we have a few theories. First, Xiaomi has over 1,000 physical stores nationwide, which it filled with Genshin Impact promotional materials to push this launch. Secondly, miHoYo and Xiaomi are looking to work together in the cloud gaming space in the near future, as they’ve both invested in a leading cloud technology platform called Pyou which is going for its second IPO soon.

Read more about Genshin Impact’s launch on the Xiaomi App Store on Gamelook (Chinese).

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