Hello, everyone. The National Day holiday is coming. I have been waiting for a long time. I believe everyone is eager to return home. However, the more on the eve of the long holiday, the more can not relax the momentum of doing research (gossip), can not live up to this strange theft group "Muse Hongli habitat rebirth," the heroic name.

Earlier, we talked about the ecology of Wechat, live data and gossip, as well as some things about Taobao and Toutiao. Some readers are keenly aware that in these studies, there are no (or very few) data on flow income, most of which are DAU, MAU, GMV, retention, penetration, which are also very important, but they are not as important as flow income-people set up websites and do App to make money.

However, the running water of any App (game or not) is very difficult to grab. If someone tells you that "you can grab running water through reptiles", let him die. Third-party consulting companies such as App Annie and SensorTower often estimate top APP pipelining, but the accuracy is very low. Occasionally listed companies will disclose the flow of some of their own products, but not very systematic.

Let's put it bluntly: the only way to get an top APP pipeline data is by asking and by common sense. For example, you know a lot of people in the game industry, there are R & D, distribution, and channels, and these people often sit down and gossip after overtime, and you can hear some interesting data. For example, you know a lot of people in the advertising industry, there are advertisers, advertising companies, advertising platforms, there will always be nothing to drink wine, drink tea, if you drink enough alcohol, or diligently pour tea for people, you can ask a lot of things.

When asked, it is only the first step, but also use common sense to judge: is this thing you asked is reasonable? Can you confirm it on the side? Is it in line with the internal relationship? For example, in May 2018, a friend in the industry who was not familiar with me took the initiative to tell me that the running water of "Arena of Valor" was much lower than I had known before. I confirmed it from the side and found that the source was App Annie. Nima, fortunately, I met the head of this strange pirate regiment, so it was not easy to deceive. If I met other boys and girls who were not deeply involved in the world, wouldn't it be a mistake?

In addition, if you want to track the flow of the game, you'd better play the game; if you want to track the live stream, you'd better watch it; if you want to track the flow of advertising, you'd better try the advertising platform. Everyone comes out to make money, not to mention who is nobler than the other. If you are addicted to moral cleanliness and insist that games, Douyin, Kuaishou Technology and Bilibili Inc. are all poisons that harm Chinese young people, and Jinri Toutiao, Weibo Corp, Tieba, and Qzone are all shackles for capitalists to control the minds of young people, then I advise you not to invest in the Internet industry. There are tens of thousands of industries and tens of thousands of cattle stocks in the world. Buying Maotai and real estate can also become billionaires, so there is no need to make yourself unhappy. Cut the gossip and the book goes back to the original.

The game is running.

In the third quarter of 2019, the father of the whole mobile game market is "Arena of Valor"-yes, the "Arena of Valor" who has been said to be cold many times. In the past two years, countless people have cursed it to death and hung it, and it is still alive today, so it can be seen that cursing it is useless. When someone asked me how long "Arena of Valor" could live, I replied: probably longer than many people present here. For an e-sports game with constantly updated products, powerful operation and huge flow base, it is not uncommon to live for decades, so why do you curse the family to death? Because you didn't buy Tencent's stock?

The highest monthly flow record in the history of "Arena of Valor" is about 7.2 billion yuan in February 2019, while the confirmed monthly record is about 3.8 billion yuan in February 2017. I do know that the highest daily flow record is New Year's Eve in 2019, about 1.3 billion yuan. Yes, you read it correctly. The running water is 1.3 billion yuan a day, which is equivalent to the running water of "Dream Journey to the West" for 1-2 months or "FGO" for 6-12 months. Let's not talk about whether it is fair or not. There are too many unfair things in the world, and I think I am talented enough to invent the time machine.

This summer, "Arena of Valor" became a biological father again, and DAU reached a new high. I don't know how high it is. It must be far more than 100 million, and far more than "Game for Peace." At this DAU level, the monthly flow can definitely break 3 billion, and it is also likely to break 4 billion. As for how high it is, I didn't ask. But I do know: in the off-season (non-long holidays, non-weekends), "Arena of Valor" no less than 200 million in any day; any S-grade skin online, the first day sales of at least 200 million. "Arena of Valor" new hero, new skin launch are public, might as well from the official website statistics, I believe you know.

"Game for Peace" is another picture: at the beginning of its launch from May to June this year, the average monthly flow has not exceeded 1 billion, which is mainly determined by Tencent's conservative operation, and the frequency of content updates is not high. At the beginning of the summer, the DAU/MAU of "Game for Peace" has risen sharply compared with that of "Arena of Valor" (although it is still not as high as that of "Arena of Valor"), and the monthly flow has also exceeded 1 billion, but I can't ask for more detailed figures, let's call it 1.5 billion. In fact, as long as it is open to do, 2 billion a month is not impossible. To be exact, if you do activities at full power, it will not be a problem for "Game for Peace" to stabilize his monthly average flow at 15-1.8 billion yuan (not during the summer vacation). However, from the point of view of Tencent, why do you bother to do it so high? once it is done, you should be afraid that there will be no growth next year.

For non-Tencent games, the biggest surprise this year is "Ark of tomorrow", which broke 500 million in the first month and then fell very slowly, with 370 million in July, which can be called the best work of domestic two-dimensional in recent years. The most powerful thing about "Ark of tomorrow" is that without IP or early fans, it runs its own distribution and app store (except Apple Inc), and only opens two main channels, Bilibili Inc. and the official website, which are both popular and popular. This fully shows that, at least in the two-dimensional subdivision of the track, the app store is a paper tiger, how can you ask for a 50% share? Bah! Of course, mainstream categories such as e-sports and MMO should not be imitated blindly.

"FGO", once a hard-core QR mobile game, has fallen to less than 100 million yuan a month this summer. Of course, there are reasons for slow product updates and little activity, but there are also other product diversion factors. In contrast, the national service launched earlier, IP less well-known "broken 3", there are 150-200 million magnitude of running water. Many people always think that the two-dimensional game is to watch IP. The problem is that IP is man-made. Why is it that the story you make up is IP, and the beautiful girl I draw is not IP? For example, the "Girl Front" now has only 15 million yuan left in a single month, but the "Ark of tomorrow" created by the "Girl Front" still has 300 million yuan. Who are you going to talk to about this? It's all because of IP?

Douyin and Kuaishou Technology

Douyin and Kuaishou Technology, two major short video applications, have larger B-end pipelining and C-terminal pipelining-B-end pipelining is mainly advertising, e-commerce service fee, and C-terminal pipelining is mainly live broadcast reward and self-run e-commerce. Which of these two is more valuable? It is the same for the platform, and the same for investors, but some people have to be very tangled, saying that 2C income is the real income and 2B business represents the future of the Internet. Let's gossip about 2C revenue here, and we'll talk about advertising revenue below.

Kuaishou's monthly 2C income (mainly live rewards) is 2.5-3.0 times that of Douyin. Yes, that's right. Kuaishou Technology, who you think is very Low, is far ahead of Douyin in the realization of 2C. Take the 2019 summer vacation as an example, Kuaishou's monthly live reward income is not less than 2.5 billion yuan, with a peak likely to be close to 3 billion yuan; Douyin's similar income is only 10-1.2 billion yuan, which is less than 1.5 billion yuan in the most optimistic estimate. If you include proprietary e-commerce revenue, Kuaishou's monthly 2C income must have exceeded 3 billion yuan, while Douyin still did not break through 1.5 billion yuan.

Why is that? Because most of Douyin's revenue comes from advertising, its "single-page information flow" advertising viewing rate and conversion rate are very high. Douyin certainly wants to develop live rewards, but not at the expense of preventing people from watching short video ads. Advertising cash efficiency is so high, to explore other ways of cash will not be too active. In addition, Douyin user portraits are naturally not suitable for live reward cash-women are in the majority, young people and white-collar workers in big cities are in the majority, and these people may watch the live broadcast, but forget the reward. Kuaishou Technology, on the other hand, is made in heaven with the live broadcast of the show.

Advertising Business: take Toutiao system as an example

There are many high-grade Internet advertising platforms in China, including Baidu, Inc., BABA's mother, Tencent and Tencent Ad solutions, but what has attracted the most attention recently is the byte beat, that is, the "headline department". Because the byte jump has not been listed yet, a lot of information needs to be kept secret, even if asked, it is not easy to talk about it in too much detail. However, something qualitative and in a general direction can be talked about. I believe this is also an open secret in the advertising industry.

The overall average daily advertising consumption of Toutiao has exceeded 300 million, most of which is on Douyin, followed by Jinri Toutiao and Jinri Toutiao Express Edition, followed by volcanoes, watermelons and understanding car Emperor. There is no doubt that Douyin is a byte-bouncing revenue burden and by far the fastest-growing App in advertising revenue. If this momentum is maintained, it will be easy to achieve 100 billion yuan in advertising revenue this year (with or without rebates), of which Douyin is expected to contribute 60 billion. The above is just a linear extrapolation based on the status quo. After all, the economic situation and advertisers' budget for the next quarter are still unknown.

From the industry distribution of advertisers, the largest category is games, followed by e-commerce (including vertical e-commerce and platform e-commerce), which together account for half of the country. Except Tencent, all the big game companies will buy in Toutiao Department; BABA, JD.com, Pinduoduo, SUNING, you can think of mainstream e-commerce App will be put in Toutiao Department. Once again, there are Internet finance, online reading and so on, the proportion is relatively small. So, in the final analysis, the Internet industry depends on games and e-commerce to survive. If these two sub-industries sneeze, the whole Internet industry will catch a cold. Once upon a time, Internet finance was also very hot, and once became a big advertiser with the former two, but now it is dying.

Why do the headline ads do so well? The outside world is generally attributed to technology (powerful algorithms, data access), which is only one aspect. There is also a fundamental reason: Toutiao is really for the sake of customers and settles accounts in the way that is best for advertisers. Take game purchases as an example, many other platforms are billed by CPM/CPC or download, but Toutiao can be settled by active users or even paid users-I make money when you make money, and the results are very transparent. In addition, the advertising sales team of the Toutiao Department is very large and effective, not under Baidu, Inc., who is good at sales. The technical factor is important, of course, but don't think that technology is the decisive factor-in a word that offends people, technology is not the decisive factor in almost any industry.