Is Kuaishou the Future of Live Streaming in China?

Recently Kuaishou published its 2022 Biannual Content Report covering the first six months of 2022. The number of daily active users on the platform has reached 346 million, making the platform one of the most promising marketing channels. In order to help marketers get the latest insights about Kuaishou, the team at ChoZan has translated the report. The Chinese version can be accessed from here.

1. Demographics

There were around 379 million content creators on Kuaishou with 44.2% female and 55.8% male. 76% were under the age of 35. In the first quarter of 2022, Kuaishou reported 346 DAU and 598 million monthly active users and 21.1 billion yuan in revenue, beating market expectations. Online marketing services, live streaming and other services (including e-commerce) accounted for 53.9%, 37.2% and 8.9% of revenue, respectively.

In contrast to Douyin, Kuaishou is more popular among users in lower tier cities. The distribution of users by city tier is as follows: 

City Hierarchy of number of Kuaishou users.

1st Tier – 9.2%   New 1st Tier – 17%    2nd Tier – 18.7%   3rd Tier – 22.2%  4th Tier – 18.5%

2. Interests and Preferences

Lifestyle topics such as work and life, love and marriage, family and education are still the most popular topics in 2022.

Kuaishou users in different cities, genders and ages in China have different search preferences. Kuaishou male users are most interested in cars, while women are most interested in beauty. Kuaishou users in first – and second-tier cities are most interested in finance and economics. Users born after 2000 are most interested in sports, while those born after 1980 are most interested in education.

The specific preference distribution is as follows.

Kuaishou users in different regions of China also have different content preferences in terms of both publishing terminals and viewing segments. It is worth noting that the most economically developed province, Guangdong, prefers to provide beauty cosmetics material, while Zhejiang Province prefers to release apparel and matching content. The specific preference distribution is as follows.

3. Live streaming

Some of the most-popular live streaming categories on Kuaishou are product sales and recommendations, chat videos and entertainment. Female live streamers favour talking about their daily life and performances showcasing a talent. Male hosts prefer live streaming about science, education and gaming. 

Live streaming hosts are mostly from Hebei, Guangdong, Liaoning, Zhejiang, and Henan while audiences are mostly from Guangdong, Hebei, Shandong, Liaoning, and Jiangsu.

It’s also interesting to see how different generations of hosts receive different kinds of feedback from their audiences. Post-90s hosts received the most likes and comments. Post-80s hosts got the most gifts, Post-70s the most comments and Post-60s received the most daily likes.

4. Viral content on Kuaishou

 @旭✔️某?

Pronounced similar to “Hi Hi Hi”, the most popular Kuaishou catchphrase in 2022 is used to express a very excited mood or a warm greeting. “Hi Hurt Hi” went viral on Kuaishou, with the most popular video of it garnering 1.213 million likes, and the teacher who greeted students on the first day of school with “Hi Hurt Hi” was a hit with students.

@阳朔teacherliu

The catchphrase “Chuan Q”, pronounced “Thank you” in English with Guangxi accent, has gone viral on the Internet. It comes from an English “boating song” by Teacherliu, a farmer in Guilin who taught himself English. He has 910,000 followers on Kuaishou and his most popular videos have been liked 1.797 million times. He hopes to introduce the beautiful scenery of his hometown through English songs, and has been invited by China High-Speed Railway to co-write a “high-speed railway song”.

@杨天真

As the founder of One Heart Entertainment, Yang has worked as a manager to bring celebrity Chinese stars such as Fan Bingbing and Lu Han to fame. Yang’s content on workplace skills shared on Kuaishou has amassed 1.353 million followers. The high-EQ questions and answers, such as three steps to making mistakes at work, provide valuable lessons for many new employees.

5. Kuaishou’s event coverage

In Kuaishou New top sports events, “live streaming + short video” is a new mode of second creation

“Live streaming + short video” is the second processing of live streaming content by Kuaishou content creators, such as commentary, off-field tidbits, post-match interviews and other content to record the wonderful moments of the competition.

In 2021 and 2022, the fast player acquired a large number of live sports rights, such as the America’s Cup, CBA, snooker and other international events. The number of people who watched the 2021 season of CBAthrough Kuaishou reached 810 million, the number of re-created short video content played reached 8.83 billion, and the number of live interaction reached 360 million.

Create knowledge live – Kuaishou New knowledge broadcast activity

Kuaishou has created a new mode of knowledge and science live streaming, allowing users to change the stereotype that short video platforms are only for entertainment. Users can learn professional knowledge of all walks of life to improve themselves in Kuaishou. More than 10,000 live broadcasts of professional knowledge related to Internet knowledge, photography knowledge, children’s safety education knowledge and other useful content. According to a report released by the School of Labor and Human Resources at Renmin University of China, the platform has created 34.63 million jobs.

Kuaishou live streamed “Make a Wish 2022” Spring Festival event

The new interactive form of Vowing live has attracted 320 million users to participate in the activity. Kuaishou has created an immersive Spring Festival praying experience scene, which meets the emotional needs of users to send blessings to each other.

6. A live streaming E-commerce showcase on Kuaishou

Gree Electric Appliances chairwoman Dong Mingzhu, also known as the “home appliances queen” drove impressive sales with 16 million views on her debut 3-hour live stream.

  • 100 million RMB in sales in the first 30 minutes
  • 200 million RMB in sales in 100 minutes

A total of 310 million RMB in sales during the 3-hour event.

It also featured other influencers such as @李鑫 (with 7.78 million followers), and @二驴的 (with 43.5 million followers).

The campaign marked the first collaborative sales event between Kuaishou and a large home appliance brand. It was also the first time Kuaishou gave out subsidies of up to 10 million RMB for products to be sold during live streaming. 

7. Post-Covid19 era:Leisure and entertainment

The most popular pet videos featured dogs (40%) and cats (14%). 

In the post-pandemic era, compared with 2020, the most desirable words of users are titled the pandemic has passed. In 2022, the hot keywords of “yearning” related short videos will become stable, beautiful and today. Skills, routines, pets and humour are the most popular topics.

It is worth noting that the form of Kuaishou content in the post-pandemic era is more diverse, and a large number of well-produced high-quality content with both knowledge and creativity have emerged. The Top 10 growing views of videos longer than 60 seconds are law, science, finance and economics, information, history, film and television, reading, real estate, home, and military.

8. IPs and comics

Kuaishou organised the two-dimensional incentive program to develop two-dimensional community culture and vertical content to support high-quality creators. 22,000 titles have been released in the quadratic incentive program, reaching a staggering 1 billion views. As a two-dimensional content master @开心锤锤 focuses on original funny animation creation, attracting 28.687,000 fans.

Kuaishou and Pop Mart have collaborated on new blind boxes for an exclusive livestream for Pop Mart’s new character Classmate Zhou. From April to May 2021, Kuaishou supported omnichannel e-commerce promotions and 41 brands sold on Kuaishou were exposed to more than 1.64 million fans.

9. Cooking

In 2022, there were 3.8 billion searches for “cooking” in Kuaishou, and the top five most-searched dishes were: braised pork in brown sauce, chicken wings with Cola, egg tart, fried rice with egg, and fish with pickled cabbage.

Post-80s: 41% (the major driving force) 

Post-90s + 00s: 44% 

Post-60s + 70s: 15% 

Chinese provinces have different preferences for food content in 2022, with Hubei Province preferring crayfish, Guangxi province preferring milk tea, Jilin province preferring barbecue and Henan province preferring beer. The # Kuaishou Celebrity Chef campaign brought together top chefs from all over the country, releasing 24,000 related works and getting 4.3 billion views.

10. Education on Kuaishou

There were over 55,000 Kuaishou education ecosystem teachers on the platform and over 16.09 million students covered. Over 3.39 million hours of paid lessons were offered. Among companies that joined Kuaishou were VIPKID, TAL Education Group and New Oriental.

On July 2, 2022, Dou Xin, the chairman of Doushen Education, led a group of core teachers to deliver ancient poetry culture on the Kuaishou account of “Doushen Life”. The GMV of a single show broke ten million, the exposure of the live broadcast room reached 85.46 million, and the cumulative viewing number was 8.34 million.

11. Fitness on Kuaishou

There was big growth in fitness short videos. 

By sports (in descending order):

1) hula hooping

2) skipping

3) badminton

4) hacky sack (Chinese style, it’s played with a feathered disc called a jianzi)

5) basketball

By fitness equipment:

1) pilates ring

2) elliptical machine

3) rowing machine

4) yoga ball

5) dumbbells 

12. Preparation for the Gaokao – University Entrance Exams

As the gaokao approaches, searches for the term “gaokao” have increased 20-fold.

Posting college admission letters on Kuaishou became a hot topic in June 2022. The most popular schools in Kuaishou are: Tsinghua University, Peking University, Nankai University, China University of Political Science and Law, Fudan University, Renmin University of China, Chongqing University, China University of Mining and Technology, China University of Petroleum, Shanghai University.

The top 10 most popular majors are: Preschool education, English, automation, painting, chemistry, sculpture, marketing, law, fine arts, pharmacy

Kuaishou also hosted an exclusive panoramic multi-link VR live broadcast of Tsinghua University’s 110th anniversary. By “transporting” China’s most popular universities online, users will be able to view the activities from all sides in Kuaishou.

13. Live streaming infrastructure

The top industries entering the platform from January to June were 

1) Apparel

2) Local services 

3) Home products 

4) Automobile 

5) Beauty products 

6) Mobile/digital products 

7) Education 

8) Others 

China has a huge online live streaming market, and Kuaishou Live Streaming is no exception. In the first quarter of 2022, Kuaishou live streaming revenue was 7.8 billion yuan. Meanwhile, Kuaishou also has an optimistic live streaming market outlook, with 56.5 million users willing to pay monthly fees, up 7.8% from the same period last year. In the first quarter, Kuaishou also launched new live streaming content including “Kuaishou Recruitment ”, indicating the further expansion of Kuaishou’s demand for live streaming talents.

14. E-commerce on Kuaishou

Kuaishou E-commerce City: From tradition e-commerce to live streaming

Linyi is a famous gathering place for Kuaishou anchors in the country. Most of them are transformed from traditional wholesale market merchants. With 8.53 million users, Kuaishou App Linyi is the largest short video live streaming e-commerce base in North China. There are 136 professional e-commerce markets and more than 80,000 live-streaming businesses, generating more than 300,000 jobs. For example, Huafeng Wholesale Market has become the mother of live streaming e-commerce and the birthplace of e-commerce anchors.

15. 616 Shopping Festival

The top food brands are Kweichow Moutai, Be & Cheery and Zihaiguo. 

The top apparel brands are Nike, 361 and Balabala.

The top jewelry brands are China Gold, Kin Liu Fook and Zocai. 

The top tech brands are Apple, Huawei and Supor.

The top beauty brands are Kans, OSM and Perfect Diary. 

On May 27th, Kuaishou and JD announced a partnership to promote the 616 Shopping Festival. It was called the “20 billion Yuan Giveaway Shopping Extravaganza”.

On June 16th, Kuaishou and JD.com co-launched the online sales campaign and supported sellers with 1.42 billion RMB in relief payments to enable them to offer big discounts.

In the first 10 minutes, orders topped 100 million RMB.

The total duration of e-commerce live streaming was 480 million hours.

16. Music live-streaming on Kuaishou

As of June 18, 2021, the music chat theme live broadcast had more than 100 million online viewers, and the number of user interactions in the music live broadcast room reached more than 150 million interactions. As one of the most popular male singers in mainland China, the user of Kuaishou Head music content, @周同学, has 3.069 million fans. Watching Jay Chou live release his new album on Kuaishou and singing classic songs have become hot topics on Kuaishou.

In order to further promote the healthy development of music copyright ecology, excellent music content creators are encouraged. Kuaishou officially launched a new music copyright settlement standard on March 22. For the first time, Kuaishou has clarified the music copyright settlement standards for live-broadcast scenes, and added separate settlement channels for lyrics and songs copyright and independent musicians on the basis of the original settlement.

The industrial belt of Kuaishou

Shijiazhuang of Hebei province, Sihui city of Guangdong Province, Foshan City of Guangdong Province are all in the fast hand owner of the market attention of the industrial belt. Kuaishou “Idealist” Creator Conference will be held at Kuaishou Foshan Innovation and Development Center in March 2021. In June of the same year, Kuaishou held the “2021 Magnetic Engine City Moment” marketing summit in Shijiazhuang, and hundreds of local enterprises in Hebei jointly explored the trust new channel of online marketing. As a result of Kuaishou’s jade ware broadcast, Guangdong Sihui is now the largest jade processing and distribution base in China.

Conclusion

Kuaishou has a strong user base across different city tiers and has actively expanded across multiple verticals that cover a wide range of lifestyle topics. Together with its massive monthly active users and impressive e-commerce performance, it’s natural to expect Kuaishou would acquire more users and in turn better data and more interest from advertisers and brands.

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