Bilibili has also launched a new advertising + AI tool, which will move from an "open-loop" to a "closed-loop" system in the future.
The AD TALK Marketing Partners Conference of Bilibili announced several interesting data points:
In 2025, the average daily usage time of Bilibili users increased to 112 minutes, a year-on-year increase of 6 minutes, which means that everyone spends about the time of watching a movie on Bilibili every day.
The number of content creators with over 100,000 followers increased by more than 20% year-on-year.
The average age of Bilibili users is 26 years old, and the average age of new users is 23 years old.
Last year, more than 220 million users watched consumer-related content on Bilibili.
The average income of content creators increased by 22% year-on-year.
The list of the top 100 content creators in 2025 will be announced soon. COO Li Ni revealed that one-third of the list this year are new faces compared to last year. New technologies (AIGC) and new content forms (video podcasts) have driven the emergence of new creators. In the third quarter of 2025, the playback time of AI-generated content increased by nearly 50%, and the number of video podcast users exceeded 65 million.
Now, Bilibili is a platform with 117 million daily active users and 376 million monthly active users, and the average age of users has reached 26 years old. This means that users have entered an age group with more consumption freedom. In other words, it's time for Bilibili to fulfill its promise to advertisers regarding the consumption potential of young people.
"We often say that Bilibili is the first stop for the consumption enlightenment of 300 million young people. Today, the average age of Bilibili users has reached 26 years old. Whether they are content creators or users, they have gone through different stages of life from being students (high school students, college students, postgraduate students) to graduating, getting married, renting an apartment, and buying a house in the past decade or so," said Lai Fu, the general manager of the Marketing Center. "When Bilibili users have the need to set up a new home, 83% of them will first open Bilibili to see what their future home will look like. Also, the number of people with the need to buy a car for the first time on Bilibili has increased by more than 150%."
Last year, more than 220 million users watched consumer-related content on Bilibili, which drove the continuous growth of Bilibili's advertising revenue. As of the third quarter of last year, Bilibili's advertising revenue had increased by more than 20% for eleven consecutive quarters, far higher than the market average. At the same time, regarding the most concerning issue of content creators' income, official data from Bilibili shows that the average income of content creators increased by 22% year-on-year.
The annual AD TALK Marketing Partners Conference can be regarded as a vane for Bilibili's advertising business in the new year.
The "style" of the AD TALK Conference has been quite different over the years. In 2020, Bilibili invited many top content creators to the stage to showcase their content creation capabilities one by one. In 2021, the conference focused on presenting Bilibili's self-produced variety shows, dramas, and animation lists to tell advertisers which OGV (Occupationally Generated Video) content they could embed their ads in. In 2022, the focus was on Story-Mode vertical videos and "expanding the open-loop ecosystem" to better connect with e-commerce platforms. In the following two years, the conference tended to introduce advertising placement methodologies for different industries. Last year, the emphasis was on introducing the progress of Bilibili's commercial infrastructure.
This year, Bilibili focuses more on demonstrating the upgrade of tools to advertisers, especially the improvement of advertising efficiency brought by the new variable "AI". Bilibili has released four marketing scenarios and five marketing tools. AI technology will be fully integrated into all aspects of marketing this year, and the one-stop AI marketing strategy center "BiliBid" will also open self-service applications for merchants.
New Situations Brought by AI
AI is a common topic for the advertising business departments of all Internet companies in 2025. Tencent has launched "Tencent Advertising AIM+", and Alibaba has launched "Full-site Promotion", all aiming to help advertisers automatically configure targeting, bidding, optimize advertising creativity, match consumers, and improve ROI with the help of AI.
Now, Bilibili has also submitted its answer. At the AD TALK Conference, Bilibili launched BiliBid - a one-stop AI marketing data strategy center. According to Zhang Yi (Er Shidi), the general manager of the Commercial Product and Operation Strategy Center, "BiliBid" can solve problems for brand owners such as insights into popular content, implicit industry needs, optimization of public opinion monitoring, deduction of audience assets, and AI budget allocation.
Specifically, it means "determine the target audience, find the right scenarios, and allocate the budget before advertising" + "dynamically track the ranking changes during the advertising process and find the content that users are more interested in" + "generate customized closing reports from the audience to business results after the advertising campaign".
Moreover, like the AI advertising placement tools of large companies, Bilibili has also realized entrusted advertising placement. "Customers can place an ad with just one click. They don't need to create a plan, select an ad unit, or choose a bid. They just need to click the button," said Zhang Yi.
The peak traffic on Bilibili is at 11 p.m. every night, which means that advertising optimizers and traffic operators have to work night shifts continuously. "So we have launched automatic advertising to let it operate autonomously. AI is like a gold medal advertiser who never rests and can respond globally in seconds," said Li Yongbao (Bao Bao), the general manager of the Business Process Center.
The work of advertising optimizers is being changed by AI. As Li Yongbao said, even the "cold start" problem, which has always been a headache for brand owners, can be handed over to AI in the future. Automatic advertising has a complete life-cycle management system, covering the startup period, growth period, and decline period. "The penetration rate of automatic advertising has now exceeded 65%. It has reduced manual operations by 85% and increased the advertising volume by 90%," said Li Yongbao.
Jiang Jie, the vice president of Tencent, once told 36Kr that he is sure that "optimizers will not be doing advertising placement in the future but will focus on creating advertising materials." Because intelligent advertising placement can completely replace optimizers in adjusting prices and bids. "Optimizers don't need to stare at the data anymore. Their future task is to solve creative problems."
However, the work of creativity is also being taken over by AI. Li Yongbao said that Bilibili's AIGC aims to be "the most understanding and Bilibili-style creative assistant for Bilibili users." In 2025, AIGC-generated titles increased the click-through rate by 15% on cover templates through hot trend tracking. At the same time, Bilibili has also launched text-to-image, image-to-image, short video remixing, and virtual human live streaming.
There are two other important adjustments: Bilibili will open more search traffic to advertisers, and will also try to place more ads on the playback page.
"We will open more search traffic this year. Search is a very high-quality scenario that can bring high-quality users. There is no doubt about that," said Zhang Yi. "The difference of Bilibili is that unlike other media that do mixed advertising and search in a black-box way, we will do it in a transparent way, giving advertisers more options."
As Zhang Yi said, Bilibili will support advertisers to freely select keywords, target audiences, prices, and create content in the search scenario.
The second key adjustment is about the ads on the playback page. "Bilibili users spend 120 minutes a day on the platform. Different from the 'swiping' experience on other media, the playback page is our biggest marketing scenario," said Zhang Yi. Bilibili will definitely explore the monetization model on the playback page, which is the largest marketing scenario this year.
Screenshot from 36Kr
Bilibili, which has always insisted on not having pre-roll ads, currently has a long-strip ad slot below the video on the non-full-screen playback page. In addition, the first video in the "Related Recommendations" section below the video description is occasionally a promoted video that has received "take-off" promotion. In the future, this "Related Recommendations" position will also be open to advertisers.
Compared with previous years, there is an interesting change: Bilibili, which has always emphasized the "open-loop" strategy, is now also talking about the "closed-loop" strategy.
"In the past, we were used to guiding users to jump to external links to download apps, which actually led to user loss. Therefore, we have built a complete in-house circulation ecosystem based on mini-programs to let merchants move their businesses to Bilibili and avoid transaction losses. Compared with the open-loop strategy, the cost achievement rate of the closed-loop strategy has increased by 10 basis points, and the efficiency has increased by 150% year-on-year," said Li Yongbao. "Don't worry about the trouble. We support one-click migration, and there is no need for re-development. We also provide a modular model to facilitate everyone's settlement."
As the only platform among Internet giants that has always adhered to the "open-loop" strategy, Bilibili has advertising cooperation with Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo at the platform level. The "large open-loop strategy" has enabled Bilibili to maintain a neutral position in the fierce e-commerce competition. However, in the future, if Bilibili promotes more transactions to be completed within the platform, it may shake this foundation.
The Fulfillment of the Promise of "Young People's Consumption Mindset"
The advertising revenue of mid - and long - form video platforms has always been suppressed by short - video platforms, which seems to be an industry dilemma. A few years ago, Bilibili also vigorously promoted Story - Mode vertical videos, but facts have proved that its differentiated advantage still lies in its "core competency" of mid - and long - form videos.
"In an era where people swipe their phones every 3 seconds on average, Bilibili, as a mid - and long - form video content platform, still adheres to creating high - quality content. Because only high - quality content can shape a better brand image for brands and establish a better mindset in consumers' minds. The establishment of mindset cannot be achieved by just short videos or a few pictures." said Lai Fu (Li Junfeng), the general manager of the Marketing Center.
Douyin, Kuaishou, and Video Account, which focus on short videos, and Xiaohongshu, which focuses on pictures, have either grown into giants in terms of advertising revenue or are making rapid progress. The "deep mindset" that Bilibili has emphasized for many years sounds like a more "reserved" concept.
COO Li Ni said at the AD TALK Conference: "The brands that people trust when they are young will accompany them throughout their lives. Establishing such brand influence will also bring better results and transaction outcomes. During the Double Eleven period in 2025, the average new customer rate in our industry reached 55%, and the GMV of products priced over 1,000 yuan increased by 63% year - on - year."
As mentioned above, Bilibili's users are entering society from campus, their consumption demand is increasing, and their resistance to advertising content is decreasing. In other words, it's time for brand owners to realize the value of the mindset they cultivated before.
Official statistics from Bilibili show that in 2025, 24% of the videos on the "Must - Watch Weekly" list on Bilibili were commercial collaborations between brands and content creators. This list is voted by users, which proves that Bilibili users have completed the commercial education.
Finally, in terms of content, Bilibili's mid - and long - form video ecosystem still needs professional content supply. Throughout 2026, Bilibili will have 7 galas, 40 domestic animations, 6 music projects, 3 brand projects, 113 documentaries, and multiple podcast programs, especially Bilibili's new IP, bilibili video podcasts.
Since Bilibili announced the video podcast plan in 2025, the number of video podcast users on Bilibili has exceeded 67 million. Many celebrities, media people, opinion leaders, and content creators have become content creators for video podcasts. Not long ago, Bilibili also launched the "Radio Host Support Plan" to invite radio hosts to create content for video podcasts, music radio, etc. This kind of semi - professional content produced by professionals usually has more space for advertising implantation.