| Written by Pai Finance
| Luo Li
"Liu Qiangdong" also went live to bring goods.
"Hello, old and new friends of JD.com, I am Liu Qiangdong. Do I look a little different today?" On April 15, JD.com announced on its official WeChat official account that Liu Qiangdong will be live streaming the goods. It is said that at 6:18 pm on April 16th, the digital human "Maishing Dongge" will start his "live broadcast debut". The AI digital human "Maishing Dongge" is the same as the real person in terms of sound and image, providing him with the bottom layer. The technical support is JD.com’s self-developed large model JD.com Yanxi.
At 6:18 pm on April 16, Liu Qiangdong, the founder and chairman of JD.com, appeared in the live broadcast room of JD.com Home Appliances and JD.com Supermarket Purchasing and Sales in the image of "Purchasing and Sales Dongge", an AI digital person, as scheduled, and conducted a long The live broadcast lasts about 40 minutes.
A few days ago, JD.com just announced that it would invest 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion traffic as rewards to attract more original authors and high-quality content institutions to create a rich and colorful content ecosystem. It can be seen that this live broadcast debut is part of JD.com’s efforts to further warm up its content ecology and short video creation.
1. "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge" lacks a little "soul"
Pai Finance opened the JD.com app at around 4 pm on April 16 and observed the site's comments about "Dong Ge AI digital people are going to live broadcast!" "Tonight 6 : 18, Dong Ge’s AI digital live broadcast!” Wait for the news to appear.
Today's "Purchasing and Sales Dongge" live broadcast is divided into two live broadcast rooms, namely "JD Supermarket Purchasing and Sales Live Room" and "JD Home Appliances and Home Furnishings Purchasing and Sales Live Room".
Pai Finance clicked into the two live broadcast rooms respectively, and the anchors had already started preheating. As time goes by, the number of people in the live broadcast room has also increased. As of the launch of "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge", there are nearly 2 million people online. In the live broadcast room of JD.com’s purchasing and marketing, some users jokingly asked, “Is it the numbers that go with eating and drinking?”
Pai Finance focused on observing the “JD Supermarket Purchasing and Marketing Live Room”. Before the broadcast of “Purchasing and Marketing Dongge” started, the live broadcast A tab page has been specially prepared for the "Purchasing and Selling Dong Ge's First Show" in the shopping cart window. You can see some of the products that Dong Ge's digital people brought in the evening, including Jingxian raw and edible fresh eggs, Deluxe milk, Agricultural products including rice fields and corn in October.
At 6:18 p.m., "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge" appeared in the live broadcast room as scheduled. The number of viewers in the live broadcast room reached 2.22 million. "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge" appeared a little hastily. When the camera turned to the "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge" screen At that time, the anchor had already started greeting the users in the live broadcast room in advance.
Jingpai Finance observed that the image of "Purchasing and Marketing Dongge" during the normal live broadcast process is relatively smart and close to real people, but it is slightly inferior in timbre, intonation and explanation. A relatively intuitive bug in
is the sudden change in the voice of "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge". Jingpai Finance observed that after "Brother Dong from Purchasing and Sales" finished explaining a product, he suddenly stopped and looked at the mobile phone next to him. His voice suddenly changed and he said in a low voice, "Some brothers have left me a message." This voice was closer to Liu Qiangdong's. Speech tone when speaking in public. After swiping the phone, "Purchasing and Marketing Dongge" immediately replied "Okay, I have already replied." After talking to himself, he turned to the camera again and started explaining the product.
Another observation is that when switching between multiple categories, the screen of "Purchasing and Marketing Dongge" sometimes freezes, and occasionally speaks first. Throughout the whole scene, the emotional expression was relatively gentle, more like an AI robot narrating the manually edited video script copy.
In the first half of the live broadcast of "Purchasing and Marketing Dongge", for about 20 minutes, the rhythm of explaining the categories was a little hasty. Often the previous product had just been introduced and the next product was seamlessly connected immediately. During the break in the introduction, "Purchasing and Marketing Dongge" also conducted activities such as giving out red envelopes and drawing draws. However, Jingpai Finance observed these two links and found that there was little tacit understanding between the "Purchasing and Sales Brother" and the back-end operations staff. For example, during the lottery, the guidelines were not clear, and the lottery had already ended for a while before "Brother Dong, the salesman" mentioned that the lottery had been drawn.
In the last 20 minutes, "Cai Ma Dong Ge" gave a return explanation of the best-selling products. He once again gave a detailed explanation of a popular raw-cut grass-fed ribeye steak. It took 10 minutes to introduce the origin to frying the steak. Techniques, etc., but there was no display throughout the whole process, only a small screen in the upper left corner scrolling showing a plate of steak, which was a bit embarrassing.
In contrast, in the JD Home Appliances and Home Furnishing Live Broadcast Room, when explaining the 3C digital appliance category of JD’s old line, “Purchasing and Sales Dong Ge” performed slightly more skillfully, and the rhythm was relatively reasonable. The sales of these two live broadcasts of
are not yet known, but the average number of viewers exceeded 10 million. From the perspective of traffic, the emergence of "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge" has indeed created a wave of momentum for JD.com's live broadcast room. However, the traffic effect of "ai Liu Qiangdong" is far less than that of real Liu Qiangdong.
In fact, this is not Liu Qiangdong’s live broadcast debut on JD.com. Eight years ago, JD.com just launched its live streaming business. During JD.com’s Double 11 promotion that year, Liu Qiangdong appeared on JD.com’s live broadcast channel, showing off his cooking skills and cooking Western delicacies such as chicken and lobster from Boston. After the entire live broadcast, the number of viewers was pushed to the highest peak during the live broadcast, with a total of 5 million likes, crowning JD.com's 4-hour live show popularity king. As of 12 o'clock that day, the live broadcast room had a total of 21 million online viewers.
Liu Qiangdong has always attached great importance to the layout of live broadcasts and short videos. Last year, after he announced his return to JD.com, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of live streaming and short video trends to the e-commerce industry. He emphasized that these trends cannot be ignored, and at the same time, one cannot always chase after them, but must strengthen one's own direction. That is supply chain construction. He believes that growth can be driven by innovative stores and the combination of online and offline stores.
Liu Qiangdong’s attitude toward JD.com’s live streaming of goods is that he actively participates in it, pays attention to content ecological construction, has the courage to innovate and try new forms, and is determined to make long-term investments in the future development of the live streaming industry. After returning to JD.com, Liu Qiangdong made a series of adjustments and optimizations to JD.com’s live broadcast strategy. Using AI technology to improve live broadcast efficiency is part of it.
According to Pai Finance, this live broadcast debut of the digital person "Purchasing and Marketing Dong Ge" is, on the one hand, a "little show of muscle" for JD.com in terms of AI technology, showing its innovation and experimental results in live broadcast technology. On the other hand, it is hoped that the word "low price" will penetrate into the minds of consumers through live broadcast. Previously, Liu Qiangdong emphasized the importance of "low prices" in an internal meeting, believing that low prices are the most important weapon for JD.com's success and the only basic weapon in the future. While ensuring the advantage of low prices, Liu Qiangdong’s requirements for JD Live are not low. He requested that the normal user experience should not be affected by "wool party" during the live broadcast, and emphasized that a good user experience and service level must be maintained even in low-price competition.
Some netizens expressed doubts about whether it is too late for JD.com to enter the field of live broadcasting, and whether Liu Qiangdong is suitable for long-term live broadcasting. Despite this, Liu Qiangdong himself is still very popular. Even in the form of an AI digital human, it may bring a lot of traffic to JD.com.
2. Is JD.com’s live broadcast destined to be a “flash in the pan”?
JD.com has long been in the short video track. As early as 2017, JD.com began to test the short video business. At the beginning of 2018, JD.com launched the "Hundreds, Thousands, Thousands" plan, a key project in the content ecological strategic layout, that is, to cultivate 100 content partners with an annual income of more than 10 million yuan on the JD platform, and to support 1,000 content partners with an annual income of more than 100 million yuan. Ten thousand dollar content partner.
In 2021, JD.com will upgrade the "Discover" channel to the video recommendation channel "Wang" and place it at the first-level entrance of the JD app navigation bar. After the user places an order through the video, the merchant linked to the corresponding product can receive the corresponding commission.
At the beginning of this year, JD.com Retail set three must-win battles for 2024, and for the first time proposed a "content ecology", which includes live broadcasts, short videos, graphics and text, and other sections within the JD.com site. Judging from the 1 billion subsidy policy recently released by JD.com, the short video business has become one of JD.com’s current core strategies.
Since last year, JD.com has begun to lay out the content ecology.In terms of video content, tens of thousands of experts on JD.com created tens of millions of videos around "personal trial + evaluation" last year. JD.com data shows that indicators such as orders, user scale, and duration all increased by 300% year-on-year. In the first quarter of this year, they grew at a year-on-year rate of 100%.
It is worth mentioning that in the past few years when live broadcast e-commerce has been developing in full swing, all e-commerce platforms have been crazy about short videos and live broadcasts, but JD.com has put more energy into the lower market and community group buying and other businesses. As a result, JD Live is gradually falling behind. In the report of Guosheng Securities, data on "2020-2021 MCN Institutional Live Broadcasting Platform Selection" shows that only 4% of MCN institutions choose JD.com in 2021, which is far lower than Douyin, which accounts for 96%, and Douyin, which accounts for 35%. Taobao Live.
Today, JD.com’s logic for live streaming is also different from short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. From JD.com’s perspective, live streaming is not retail, but an auxiliary marketing tool centered around merchants. In June 2020, Xu Lei, who just took over as the legal representative of JD.com, said in an interview: "The supply chain retail of live broadcast is not a normal supply chain, so live broadcast is not retail, but more of a marketing behavior. The purpose is to attract new customers, clear inventory, and promote products." New products and live-streaming products c2m. "
However, in the past two years, as the market for live-streaming e-commerce has grown larger and larger, JD.com has begun to realize that live-streaming has become the mainstream form of e-commerce and has to deploy it.
2023 will be a year of major adjustment for JD.com, with frequent actions such as implementing low-price strategies, trying live broadcast business, and adjusting business structure. Everything points to JD.com’s anxiety points and growth slowdown.
's financial report shows that JD.com's revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 reached 306.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%, and its full-year revenue in 2023 was 1.0847 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%. In the fourth quarter of 2022, JD.com’s net revenue increased by 7.1% year-on-year. Net income for the whole year of 2022 will increase by 9.9% year-on-year. In comparison, the revenue growth rate in 2023 has slowed down significantly, and the development of content ecology is regarded as a new growth point for JD.com.
As a traditional shelf e-commerce company, JD.com has natural shortcomings in terms of content ecology. Therefore, JD.com tried a conventional approach and invited super anchors to join in to increase their voice. On June 18, 2023, JD.com invited Luo Yonghao, one of the first generation of "Four Livestreaming Kings", to the platform and invited "Make a Friend" mcn to settle in JD.com.
At the key promotion node of 618 last year, Luo Yonghao appeared in the Make Friends JD live broadcast room. As a "gimmick", Luo Yonghao sold a house in the JD live broadcast room. Luo Yonghao's live broadcast handed over a report card with total sales exceeding 150 million yuan and cumulative visits exceeding 17 million. Although the data of
seems to be acceptable, before this, Luo Yonghao had faded out of the live streaming industry, and his traffic was no longer at its peak. Comparing the popularity of Luo Yonghao's live broadcast debut on the other two e-commerce platforms, it has shown an obvious downward trend. The number of viewers of Luo Yonghao's Douyin debut in 2020 exceeded 48 million, and the number of viewers of Luo Yonghao's Taobao debut in 2022 exceeded 26 million.
Obviously, Luo Yonghao’s platform did not bring a life-changing surprise to JD.com. What is more realistic is that in the "Make a Friend" JD.com live broadcast room where Luo Yonghao was absent, the data was returned to its original form. On the second day of the debut, without Luo Yonghao, the number of views in JD.com’s live broadcast room without Luo Yonghao, “Make a Friend” dropped below 700,000.
A more cruel reality is that the “ The traffic of "Make a Friend" has been divided, and it is difficult to achieve the explosion of a single platform. As of now, the number of fans in the JD.com live broadcast room of "Make a Friend" is 3.117 million, and the new live broadcast playback time is still on December 30, 2023 On the same day, the number of viewers was 1.939 million.
Pai Finance believes that JD.com’s purpose of inviting Luo Yonghao is mainly because of its highly overlapping fan base with JD.com, and to “make friends” with JD.com during the live broadcast. In the early years when live broadcasting e-commerce became popular, JD.com failed to find its own "big anchor", and JD.com Live Broadcasting has always been tepid in the industry. .
What really made "JD Live" break out of the circle was the emergence of the "JD Procurement and Sales Live Room" during Double Eleven last year.
JD.com’s purchasing and selling live broadcast room is anchored by JD.com purchasing and marketing employees in the vertical professional field. It focuses on “no expert commissions, no routines, and no pit fees.” Since there are no middlemen to earn the price difference, JD.com purchasing and marketing can set the price of lower. During last year's Double Eleven, JD.com's purchasing and selling live broadcast room was torn apart by Taobao's top brother Li Jiaqi because of an oven. Driven by the public opinion of the "battle for the lowest price on the entire network", it successfully broke through the circle. During Double 11, the total number of viewers of JD.com’s purchasing and selling live broadcast exceeded 380 million, and the number of products sold exceeded 3 million.
During the Hunan Satellite TV Mango TV New Year’s Eve Party, JD.com’s purchasing and marketing live broadcast room took advantage of the New Year’s Eve Party’s traffic and once again achieved over 100 million views in five hours and nearly 400,000 orders. However, without the promotion of big promotions and hot spots, JD.com’s purchasing and selling live broadcast room has seen a sharp drop in traffic on weekdays.
But JD.com’s desire for big anchors has not stopped. After Dong Yuhui’s “leaving” of Dongfang Selection was publicized last year, JD.com immediately issued a hero recruitment post and hung a banner in the procurement and sales live broadcast room to invite Dong Yuhui to join JD Live Broadcast. Subsequently, JD.com’s purchasing and sales live broadcast room has been on the hot search list many times with hot words such as “Meet Dong Yuhui with Liu Qiangdong’s autograph” and “Speak to prevent Dong Yuhui from being wronged”.
Immediately afterwards, JD.com released the news of urgently formulating an anchor recruitment plan, saying that it would not assess GMV, gross profit and other requirements for recruiting anchors.
Jingdong, which cannot support big anchors, has adopted the banner of "Liu Qiangdong" this time and invited digital man "Brother Dong from Purchasing and Sales" to lead the goods. It is a chess piece that takes the wrong direction.
3. The normalization of AI digital human live broadcast will hardly be the antidote for JD.com
Some analysts said that Liu Qiangdong’s AI live broadcast to bring goods is JD.com testing the possibility of digital human live broadcast. JD.com has a large number of self-operated products, and the cost of hiring a large number of anchors to explain is high. If it is replaced by digital human live broadcast, the cost can be greatly reduced.
In an ideal world, the introduction of digital live streaming can effectively help enterprises "reduce costs and increase efficiency." Compared with real anchors, digital people do not need to rest and can achieve 24-hour uninterrupted live broadcast. For merchants, it means higher exposure and potential sales opportunities. In addition, digital people can copy and promote very quickly and can quickly expand the influence of a brand.
It is understood that the cost of JD.com’s AI digital live broadcast is less than 1/10 of that of a real person, and it can achieve efficient start-up within 2 hours, with daily operation energy investment as low as less than 30 minutes. Previously, the "Sun Never Sets" live broadcast room jointly created by JD.com's Yunyanxi digital people and real-life anchors generated over 1 billion yuan in GMV.
ai Digital people's live broadcast of goods may become the next stage of development direction of live broadcast e-commerce. Leading e-commerce platforms including JD.com have already entered the market.
In May last year, Douyin released the "Douyin Platform Specifications and Industry Initiatives for Artificial Intelligence Generated Content", which clearly opened up images, videos, and derived virtual human live broadcasts generated by artificial intelligence. Currently, the AI digital anchor "Ren Wen" on Douyin has 1.276 million fans. The shopping cart link below the video provides fans with purchasing methods. The total number of products on the homepage has reached 151, and the number of purchased and sold items has exceeded 100,000. It has achieved a certain user base and sales results.
In July last year, Taobao’s head anchor Lieer Baby appeared in a live broadcast with 6 digital figures in the live broadcast room to deliver goods. Although the digital figures had different makeup styles, they were all based on Lieer Baby. During last year's "618" promotion, the number of merchants who launched Taobao's digital live broadcast room increased nearly four times compared to "Double 11", and it developed rapidly.
It is foreseeable that in the future, with the continuous advancement of technology and the reduction of costs, digital live broadcasts are expected to become popular and become a new species of e-commerce live broadcasts. However, the current digital human live broadcast also faces certain challenges and technical difficulties, and it still takes time to continuously adjust and verify.
It is also worth noting that although digital human anchors are "safe" enough not to overturn, they also lack some "human touch" and trust. This is the "killer trump card" for converting and retaining users in the live broadcast room. In general, it is not obvious yet whether JD.com’s strategy of normalizing digital live streaming can continue to be effective and drive JD.com’s live streaming out of the industry.
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