Marketing Observation | Bilibili Ads Leave the Novice Village, and the Next Step is to Improve Infrastructure and Enhance Efficiency.

Text | Wang Yuchan

Editor | Qiao Qian

What is the focus of Bilibili's advertising business in the new year? To answer this question, one often only needs to look at what is discussed at the annual "AD TALK Marketing Partner Conference".

The "styles" of the AD TALK conferences over the years have often been very different. In 2020, Bilibili invited many top UP masters to the stage to showcase the content production strength of the creators in turn; in 2021, the conference focused on showcasing the official self-produced variety shows, TV series, and animation lists of Bilibili, telling advertisers which OGV content can be implanted; in 2022, the focus was on Story-Mode vertical screen videos and "enlarging the open loop", and making a good connection with e-commerce platforms; in the past two years, the conference has been more inclined to introduce the delivery methodology of different industries.

By recalling what Bilibili executives said at the conference, we can realize the changes in Bilibili's advertising business in recent years. In a nutshell, Bilibili has passed the period of "convincing advertisers that it has commercial value" and has reached the period of thinking about how to lower the delivery threshold and improve the delivery efficiency.

This year's conference focuses on introducing Bilibili's progress in commercial infrastructure - Bilibili has made back-end iterations in dimensions such as delivery scenarios, traffic, content materials, and measurement.

Solve the problem of too many delivery ends and promote the "Bilibili Mini Program"

At the end of last year, a person in charge of Bilibili's marketing business at a mainstream e-commerce platform told 36Kr that she prefers to produce content by her own company and then "find a third-party agent to place Bilibili advertisements" because "it feels that the direct customers of Bilibili are not doing well enough, and the system is more complicated."

Bilibili is also aware of this problem. At the AD TALK conference, Zhang Yi, General Manager of Bilibili's Business Product and Operation Strategy Center, said: "Everyone has been complaining that Bilibili has too many delivery ends and doesn't know which one to use. This problem has been solved."

Specifically, from the platform's perspective, Bilibili provides a unified PC delivery end - "Three Consecutive" for professional customers, and at the same time, it has also launched a managed delivery end - "Must Be Popular" for self-service customers.

Also, regarding the problem that many advertisers complain about the inaccuracy of user portraits, Bilibili has launched the MATES Crowd Asset Model, released 15 characteristic crowds, and announced the Z Index platform to help advertisers understand the content trend and crowd situation of Bilibili.

Image Source: Bilibili MATES Crowd Asset Management White Paper

Also, like other Internet platforms, Bilibili is also facing the problem of stagnant growth. Zhang Yi said that Bilibili's solutions to ensure new customers for advertisers include: providing more ends and providing more capabilities.

First, regarding "providing more ends", it means that in addition to the mobile end, the traffic spaces of the PC end, PAD end, OTT end, and vehicle-mounted end should also be opened to advertisers. Currently, Bilibili also has a DAU of tens of millions at the PC end and PAD end.

Secondly, regarding "providing more capabilities", it refers to a new product, the "Bilibili Mini Program". The "Bilibili Mini Program" looks similar to the WeChat Mini Program and is also a product that can support third-party developers to provide services within the station. Its current stage also looks very similar to the early stage of the WeChat Mini Program - that is, game service providers took the lead in using this function.

B Small Games Have Been Launched

Zhang Yi introduced that the "B Small Games" have been tested for less than two months, and currently there are already "hundreds of active B Small Games" every day, with a very fast growth. "From the perspective of traffic and inventory, even before we fully release it, we have already provided a lot of new inventory and a completely new incremental traffic, making up for the ability of the incentive scene position that Bilibili has always lacked." Zhang Yi said.

Screenshot of the Bilibili Mini Program Interface Display

"The paid conversion value that users who play B Small Games provide to advertisers is also very high. Even for some test customers, the users we provide have achieved the highest ARPU value in the entire network and all media." Zhang Yi said.

The contribution of the game industry to Bilibili's revenue is very important - both for the game business itself and for the advertising business. In the third quarter of this year, advertising and game businesses contributed 29% and 25% of Bilibili's revenue respectively. Moreover, the game industry was also the "biggest benefactor" that contributed the most to Bilibili's advertising business in this quarter. It can be said that without the benefactors in the game industry, there would be no growth in Bilibili's advertising and game business revenue.

Zhang Yi promised that in the future, in addition to small games, the Bilibili Mini Program will also provide other capabilities, such as short dramas, novels, etc. "We are already building a series of other Bilibili Mini Program capabilities and will gradually open them to everyone in the future."

The platform and UP masters jointly create Huahuo business order integrated marketing, and promote "automatic advertising"

From a certain perspective, there is a bit of a conflict of interest between UP masters making money and the platform making money.

For a long time, the "Huahuo" platform of Bilibili, which helps UP masters connect with business orders, only takes a 5% commission, which can be said to be one of the "most conscientious" platforms in the industry. However, it is obviously not enough for Bilibili's advertising revenue to rely only on this 5%. Then, the emergence of the platform's delivery system "Take Off" can be said to be a solution to this problem without a direct conflict of interest with UP masters.

A Bilibili advertising agent told 36Kr that the more conventional method in the industry at present is the "combination of Huahuo and Take Off", that is, first find UP masters to produce content, and then find Bilibili to invest in traffic to heat it up. The advertiser's budget is divided into three and seven. 70% is spent on UP masters on "Huahuo", and 30% is invested on Bilibili on "Take Off".

Judging from the content announced at the new year's AD TALK conference, Bilibili is obviously not satisfied with only earning the money from delivery traffic + fixed advertising spaces of OGV - the platform hopes to jointly create "Huahuo business order integrated marketing" with UP masters.

At present, there are two combination methods: First, combine the UGC ecological solicitation with the OGV and PUGV content topics to mobilize all UP masters in the entire ecosystem to contribute and submit manuscripts; Second, combine with a variety of advertising resource positions of the platform, such as splash screens, hot searches, and popular ones, to further expand the mental reach and influence of high-quality content.

Without adding any praise or criticism, it cannot be said that the platform is "competing with UP masters for food" by doing this. It can only be said that it provides advertisers with sufficient budgets with more choices. But objectively speaking, it is indeed beneficial to create more advertising revenue for the platform.

In addition, Bilibili is promoting "automatic advertising". Simply put, it is to lower the delivery threshold for advertisers and complete long-term marketing demands within Bilibili in a simpler way - this is what all advertising delivery platforms will do in the mature stage.

For example, in the bidding system, help advertisers know the bids of other participants and whether users are worth offering a high price; in the marketing system, know whether users like the current title and cover, know whether users are on a PC, on a mobile phone, or in a car, etc... Bilibili hopes to achieve millisecond-level bid adjustment ability to provide dynamic real-time adjustments to advertisers in order to reduce marketing costs.

In general, we can see that Bilibili's advertising business is entering a mature stage. From the financial data, Bilibili has achieved a single-quarter profit in the third quarter, and this is inseparable from the continuous growth of Bilibili's advertising revenue for seven consecutive quarters in the past two years. Next, the early low-base advantage of the advertising business will inevitably gradually decline, and it is time to test the infrastructure and the back-end's ability to improve advertising efficiency.

The data released by Bilibili shows that in 2024, the number of Bilibili partners increased by more than 30%, the overall GMV during the Double Eleven promotion period increased by more than 150% year-on-year, and the number of orders above 1,000 yuan increased by more than 2 times year-on-year.