Tencent brings paid subscription to WeChat Channels in race against short video giants ByteDance, Kuaishou
Tencent Holdings is planning to launch a paid subscription service for videos on its flagship app WeChat, allowing content creators to charge users for watching certain videos, as the Chinese social media giant steps up its challenge to short video apps Douyin and Kuaishou.
As part of Tencent's bid to attract more influencers to join its platform, WeChat will let content creators set up a pay-to-watch video section on Video Accounts, the WeChat video section marketed as Channels, the company announced on Tuesday at Weixin Open Class, its annual event promoting WeChat's new functions and strategies.
Content creators can also choose to accept advertisements in the comment section of their Channels account in exchange for a cut of the ad revenue, according to the company, allowing account holders to earn more income in addition to tips from viewers.
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Tencent already started experimenting with paid live streams on Channels last year, with the National Basketball Association being the first to test out the function.
The latest move comes as Tencent, which reported better-than-expected earnings in the fourth quarter after months of rigorous cost-cutting, seeks to boost the amount of quality content on WeChat, banking on the rapid growth of Channels to compete against ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and Kuaishou.
User time spent in Channels exceeded that on WeChat's social media page Moments in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Tencent's earnings report published last week. Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng called short videos the company's new hope in an internal speech late last year.
While the firm has not disclosed its current number of short video users, monthly active users on Channels were estimated to have reached 813 million last June, ahead of the 680 million on Douyin and the 390 million on Kuaishou during the same month, according to data analytics firm QuestMobile.
Pedestrians walk past an adverstisement for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in Guangzhou, China. Photo: Imaginechina via AFP alt=Pedestrians walk past an adverstisement for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in Guangzhou, China. Photo: Imaginechina via AFP>
Since its beta launch in January 2020, Channels has introduced various monetisation schemes, including live-streaming e-commerce, from which Tencent extracts commission.
Gross merchandise value, a measure of the total value of goods sold on the platform, grew 800 per cent last year, according to the company.
Channels has also become one of the main revenue drivers for Tencent's advertising business, with the video section's in-feed ads raking in 1 billion yuan (US$145 million) in sales during the December quarter last year.
Tencent is not the first to introduce paid subscriptions for short videos. Douyin allows viewers of online dramas to pay around 4 yuan to unlock a new episode, or more to watch the entire show, while Kuaishou has also tested a similar model.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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