On 17 January, Chinese video platform BiliBili hosted its 2025 AD Talk marketing partner conference. It was the first conference BiliBili has held after posting a profitable quarter in November, the first time since going public 6 years ago.
At the event, the platform’s Vice President and COO Li Ni said that BiliBili’s advantage lies in the unique value of its community and the deep influence its ads have on its viewers. With more than 340 million users, the platform found its way with ads through the “deep influence” its content has on its viewers, especially tutorials and know-how type of content. With a model called “MATES” (meet, appeal, trust, endorse and sales), the brand converts the trustworthy content and brand into income.
Indeed, despite consumer enthusiasm ebbing in the past few years, BiliBili’s income from advertisement grew rapidly for 7 quarters in a row. The first 3 quarters of 2024 saw it grow 31%, 30% and 28%, respectively. On the e-commerce front, BiliBili’s gross merchandise value (GMV) grew over 150% during Double 11 last year.
This conference was effectively the beginning of the “what now” after the first profitable chapter of BiliBili. BiliBili will keep focusing on the “deep conversion” of its views to help establish brands in the minds of users. It will also expand into in-car and smart TV platforms, as well as launch its own mini programs. AIGC and automatic advertising algorithms will be the focus this year, as well as updating the MATES model.
In other news, BiliBili successfully won the right to stream the CMG New Year’s Gala, usually referred to as the CNY gala, in real-time on its platform. Not only does it mean that for the first time, viewers can post “bullet chat” onscreen comments during the gala, but also that BiliBili is officially a mainstream platform like Douyin and Xiaohongshu (RED, or REDnote). With the tagline “watch CNY gala with 300 million young people”, BiliBili prides itself on being the new youthful platform.
