The live streaming time of Li Jiaqi, the Chinese internet celebrity streamer and “Yi Ge” (pioneer) in promoting goods sales through live streaming on Taobao, was shortened between 6 and 7 hours to 3 and 4 hours, with the average number of products per live streaming being reduced from about 100 to 60 and 80 pieces and the number of viewers per live streaming between 15 million and 20 million, while the average number of viewers in the past was about 30 million.
Beijing time on April 19 (the following occurrence time in Beijing time), according to the live streaming data from Taobao China’s live streaming e-commerce consumer platform, compared to the time of the epidemic lockdown, the live streaming time of Li Jiaqi, the Chinese internet celebrity streamer and “Yi Ge” (pioneer) in promoting goods sales through live streaming on Taobao, was shortened between 6 and 7 hours to 3 and 4 hours, with the average number of products per live streaming being reduced from about 100 to 60 and 80 pieces.
Since April, Li Jiaqi has been fully participating in live streaming most time. The number of viewers per live streaming is between 15 million and 20 million, which is far from the traffic from 50 to 80 million during the March 8 promotion period and the traffic of about 30 million per live streaming in the past.
China’s e-commerce industry has developed rapidly and now live streaming has become a standard of e-commerce. However, the streamer will be banned because of the “ruin of their personage”, such as the top Chinese streamer Wei Ya who was previously banned for tax evasion. There are also streamers whose live streaming is up to about 10 hours a day and in 2020 Li Jiaqi stopped live streaming and went to the hospital because he was unwell, which topped the trending list of Weibo, a social platform in China.
Recent years have seen a continuous expansion of the GEN Z user groups and virtual streamers are loved by user groups born in the new era who are very willing to pay for these so-called “idols”. On the one hand, virtual streamers are different from real live streamers in live streaming because no negative public opinion pressure is carried by viewers, which can also bring the audience a real and perceptible interactive experience. On the other hand, virtual streamers conform to the trend of the development of the live streaming industry because they can also automatically allure followers under the state of unmanned live streaming with a 24-hour live streaming a day, reducing the cost of hiring streamers and increasing the live streaming time.
On April 15, China’s mainstream e-commerce platform Taobao announced the direction of live streaming marketing in 2022, in which virtual digital human and 3D scenes have become the new driving force of the platform. Taobao has created a market for live streaming increments through the new technology engine combining a 3D live-streaming room plus a virtual streamer, with a total of over 1,000 merchants having used a live 3D green screen.
On February 28, China’s mainstream e-commerce platform JD.com launched a virtual beauty streamer “Xiaomei”, which has opened its live streaming debut in more than 20 beauty brand live streaming rooms such as YSL, L’Oréal, OLAY, and KIEHL’S. “Xiaomei” can continue the live streaming online for 24 hours and answer questions for consumers in the live streaming room.
Although it sounds like a lot of benefits are correlated with virtual digital humans, there are many differences between virtual IP images and real streamers and there are still many problems in whether they can continue to develop.
On the evening of June 3, 2020, in the Tmall All-Star Live streaming Room, the vsinger (virtual singer) Luo Tianyi boarded the live streaming room and greeted everyone: “Hello everyone, I am Luo Tianyi, as the ambassador during “618 shopping festival” (on June 18) on Tmall…” However, in the much-anticipated national warmup video which is different than before, Luo Tianyi showed a hoarse and harsh voice and repeated the same line over and over.
In addition, Luo Tianyi also boarded Li Jiaqi’s live streaming room, when the two sides recommended goods together, Luo Tianyi said that she wanted to sing. However, technical problems made users in front of the screen fail to hear any sound but see Luo Tianyi’s movements. While on the other side, Li Jiaqi did not realize the problem of live streaming and constantly praised Luo Tianyi’s beautiful voice. After ending the interaction with Luo Tianyi, Li Jiaqi learned from the staff about the scene of the “fake singing overturning” just now.
It can be seen that virtual streamers still have certain technical difficulties when conducting live streaming in actual operation because strict requirements for hardware and software are a must. Its threshold is not low because virtual streamers cannot respond to changes like people and resolve the crisis in some random sudden situations.
In an interview, Li Jiaqi also said: “Streamers can make unique innovations based on their own personal experience. Although virtual streamers will imitate Li Jiaqi’s mantra and way of promoting goods sales, there is no way to copy Li Jiaqi himself.”
