On April 15th, a source familiar with the matter informed a journalist from The Paper that Liu Qiangdong, the founder and chairman of the board of directors of JD.com, is about to start live streaming on the JD.com app. The source revealed that it is expected to officially commence broadcasting very soon (within this week), but in a new format.
It is understood that Liu Qiangdong’s participation in this live streaming event is to further promote JD.com’s content ecosystem and short video creation. Previously, on April 10th, JD.com announced an investment of 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion yuan in traffic as rewards to attract more original authors and high-quality content institutions to join, providing users with better consumption experiences through quality content, and helping brand merchants find new growth points.
Liu Qiangdong’s upcoming live streaming appearance? Just announced by JD.com: It’s “Brother Dong”!
Is Liu Qiangdong also going to do live streaming? The answer is revealed.
This afternoon, news came that Liu Qiangdong is about to start live streaming on the JD.com app, but in a new format. In response, a reporter from Securities Times learned from insiders at JD.com that a digital persona of Liu Qiangdong created by JD’s Yanxi will go live at 6:18 p.m. on April 16th. This will be the debut live stream of the “Sales Brother Dong” digital persona, and it will also appear in JD’s electronics and home furnishings, as well as JD Supermarket’s sales live streaming rooms.
In July last year, JD.com launched the Yanxi large-scale pre-trained language model, targeting multimodal applications, delving into retail, logistics, industrial, and other industry scenarios.
Xu Ran, CEO of JD.com, previously stated that large-scale models have already achieved clear practical results within JD.com. “A large number of our internal business scenarios are actively exploring the integration of large models into our own business processes, such as using large models to improve intelligent customer service, code writing, and enhance recommendations for related products. We are continuously deepening the integration with more business aspects.”
With “Brother Dong” personally going live, one can’t help but marvel at the boundless potential of the short video live streaming ecosystem, which is also fiercely competitive. The latest “China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report (2024)” shows that 71.2% of surveyed users shop online because of watching short videos and live streams. Over 40% of Internet users consider short videos and live streams as their primary consumption channels, making content consumption a key battleground for major platforms to compete in.
On April 10th, JD.com officially announced an investment of 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion yuan in traffic as rewards to attract more original authors and high-quality content institutions to join, providing users with even better consumption experiences through quality content, and helping brand merchants find new growth points.
Last year, JD.com’s sales live streaming, which emphasizes “genuine affordability and no tricks,” quickly became an industry dark horse, demonstrating JD.com’s capabilities in the content field.
A person in charge of JD’s content ecosystem stated that excellent video creators are vital forces driving the prosperity of the content ecosystem. To recruit more outstanding influencers and institutions, JD.com has allocated 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion yuan in traffic as rewards to stimulate their creative enthusiasm and produce more professional and interesting content.
According to insiders at Securities Times who spoke to JD’s internal personnel, JD.com will provide subsidies in cash to influencers covering over 20 creative fields, including digital 3C, home appliances, maternal and child products, pets, fashion, sports, beauty, personal care, health, and automotive products. Specifically, qualified creators can receive up to 30,000 yuan in cash subsidies per account per cycle. In addition, creators also enjoy video playback subsidies and commission for product sales.
On the other hand, JD.com will provide more exposure opportunities for high-quality, original videos, not only through weighted algorithms and subsidies for fixed traffic coupons but also through special display methods such as evaluations and outfit tabs in the “Browsing” channel, as well as adding evaluation and outfit sections in product detail pages to bring more traffic to high-quality content.
JD.com stated that with the development of the live streaming industry, many MCN organizations have become gathering places for high-quality influencers. This time, in addition to providing basic incentives for organization recruitment, JD.com has set up a special incentive list for organizations with rewards of up to 5 million yuan. As long as the number of people successfully introduced by the organization reaches a certain scale, they will have the opportunity to receive substantial one-time cash subsidies every month. After organizations join, managers from various categories at JD.com will provide one-on-one guidance and services to enhance the organization’s operational capabilities on JD.com’s videos.
Currently, JD.com is actively preparing for the incubation of top influencers and plans to select the top 100 influencers by the end of the year. It has already invested hundreds of millions of yuan in the reserve influencer stage and will provide more rewards in the future to help high-quality influencers create better content and deliver more professional and valuable information to users.
The battle for e-commerce has entered a white-hot stage. In the post-live streaming e-commerce era, Douyin’s e-commerce has posed a huge challenge to Taobao and JD.com’s retail. Recently, Douyin quietly launched an app called “Douyin Mall Version,” which is the first time Douyin has launched an e-commerce shopping platform outside of its main app, targeting JD.com’s foundation—shelf e-commerce.
Previously, Douyin e-commerce released a summary of 2023. In 2023, Douyin’s shelf scene business grew rapidly, with the mall’s GMV (gross merchandise volume) increasing by 277% year-on-year. A total of 8.84 million authors earned income through live streaming, short videos, showcases, graphic texts, and other forms, with over 600,000 authors accumulating GMV exceeding 100,000 yuan.
Therefore, JD.com has to keep up with the trend and intensify the construction of its content ecosystem, as consumer habits have gradually shifted towards shopping online through short videos and live streams.