On May 16th and 17th, Weibo and WeChat released their financial reports for Q1 2017 respectively, revealing the platforms’ latest statistics.
By the end of March this year, the number of monthly active users (MAU) on Weibo reached 340 million, which has surpassed Twitter whose number of monthly active users was approximately 328 million for this period. Moreover, their total revenue reached 1.37 billion RMB, with year-on-year growth of 76%, which exceeded the expectations of Wall Street analysts.
Below let’s have a look at the latest Weibo statistics in more detail:
1. Core statistics
- Monthly active users: 340 million (with year-on-year growth of 30%)
- Financial revenue: 37 billion RMB (with year-on-year growth of 76%)
2. The increase in the number of active users on Weibo is the highest on record
i. Monthly active users (MAU): 340 million
- Quarterly net increase: 27 million
- The proportion of those who access Weibo via mobile devices: 91%
- The number of monthly active users has been increasing steadily, from 261 million in Q1 2016 to 340 million in Q1 2017.
ii. Daily active users (DAU): 154 million
- Quarterly net increase: 15.6 million
3. The growth in revenue is also the highest in two years.
- Revenue: 1.37 billion RMB (with year-on-year growth of 76%)
- Advertising revenue: 1.17 billion RMB (with year-on-year growth of 80%)
- The proportion of revenue from mobile app advertising: 70%
- Its revenue has witnessed a dramatic increase, from 601 million RMB in Q1 2015 to 1.37 billion RMB in Q1 2017.
4. Short videos have become key content on Weibo.
i. Cooperation with famous cultural brands and institutions for IP rights to broadcast short videos IP合作
- #CCTV New Year’s Gala (春晚)# : It’s the first time that Weibo was authorized to record and upload short videos of the New Year’s Gala, which accumulated 4.8 billion views.
- #Top events (顶级赛事)# : Weibo has established deep cooperative relationships with many well-known event organizers, including the NBA, NFL and La Liga enabling them to present short videos from their premier events.
- Short videos from Super Bowl LI accumulated over 80 million views in 24 hours.
ii. Top users 头部用户
Top content producers have average post views exceeding 100,000.
Weibo is encouraging content producers to make more short videos. The number of short videos uploaded by these top users saw an annual increase of 176%.
iii. Ordinary users 普通用户
There’s a 40% increase in the number of short videos uploaded by ordinary users, compared to Q3 2016.
In Q1 2017, Weibo released “Slideshow (光影秀)” and “Weibo Story (微博故事)”, providing more options to encourage users to produce more interesting and visually appealing short video stories.
With “Slideshow”, users can create a dynamic photo album. “Weibo Story” is a new function similar to Instagram Story and Facebook Story where users can upload images or short videos with stickers and other special effects.
5. Greater marketing and advertising efficiency
i. Brand advertisements 品牌广告
There was annual growth of 89% in revenue from this type of advertising.
The amount that the top 20 clients invested in this type of advertising had an annual increase of over 200%.
Diaopai, a traditional Chinese detergent brand, achieved a rise of 23% in user preference, by adopting a “Videos + Social media” marketing mode.
ii. Small and medium-sized businesses and self-service advertisements 中小及自助广告
There was annual growth of 97% in revenue from this type of advertising.
App advertising (应用家) and embedded advertisements were the preferred ad types. .
BLOVES, a Chinese diamond and jewellery retailer, has successfully increased its monthly average sales by over 1,000,000 RMB, by advertising on Weibo to its target customers – young people and white collar workers.
iii. Video advertisements 视频广告
The number of clients has risen by 50% compared to Q4 2016.
Weibo is now developing new advertising products in the form of videos and is trying to work with video bloggers to create a business ecosystem.
These statistics mean that advertisers and marketers are gradually acknowledging the influence of Weibo, as one of the most popular social media platforms in China. The advertising market share on Chinese social media is expected to continue to grow.
WeChat updated its monthly active user stats and summarized its recent updates in its Q1 2017 financial report. The report also reveals Tencent’s financial performance.
Tencent’s revenue growth in Q1 2017 was driven by smartphone games, payment-related services, digital content subscriptions, PC games and social ads, said Ma Huateng, (aka Pony Ma), the founder and CEO of Tencent Inc.
Let’s have a look at the latest WeChat statistics in more detail:
- Monthly active users (MAU) in total for Weixin (mainland version) plus WeChat (overseas version): 938 million
- The number of monthly active users witnessed year-on-year growth of 23%.
- In Q1 2017, WeChat released a number of new features and functions for their mini programs, including distinctive mini program QR codes, mini program cards that can be inserted in WeChat articles and the “Nearby Mini Programs” location-based function, all of which extend the applications and scope of mini programs.
- WeChat also released the “WeChat Index”, which shows users the popularity of specific keywords within WeChat.
- By Q1 2017, Tencent’s advertising revenue from social media and other channels, including WeChat Moments, official WeChat accounts, Tencent’s App Store, QQ Browser and Social Ads, has risen by 67% to 4.379 billion RMB. WeChat is the major contributor to this annual growth.
- WeChat has also upgraded its location-based local promotion function for Moments Advertising, allowing WeChat advertisers to locate customers nearby more accurately.
- Driven by payment-related services like WeChat Pay and cloud services, Tencent’s revenue from other services saw an annual increase of 224%.
What do you think of Weibo and WeChat’s recent performance? Does this give you any insights on marketing and advertising on WeChat and Weibo?
Leave a comment below. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.
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