According to reports in Chinese online media, conference attendees predicted that the number of orders made through WeChat's video feature, which is marketed as a channel, will increase in 2023, although the platform's exact GMV has not been made public. It was reported that the number increased by more than 244% compared to the previous year. Outlet Thepaper.cn.
Many attendees at the conference, held Friday as a private event for industry partners only, confirmed the reported growth rates. Tencent did not respond to a request for comment.
Although e-commerce sales on the WeChat channel are small compared to those of Kuaishou and TikTok's sibling Douyin in China, Tencent has a huge number of WeChat users in the country, estimated at 1.34 billion. The company is betting on quickly building an online retail business on the back of its users.
According to a report by LatePost, Tencent also plans to expand its live streaming e-commerce workforce and expand its product categories as its WeChat Pay team builds out critical transaction infrastructure to facilitate online payments.
The WeChat channel is already a key driver of Tencent's advertising business, which grew 20% year-on-year in the third quarter, marking the fastest growth achieved by all of the company's business segments over the same period. did. In the second quarter, the WeChat channel earned him 3 billion yuan (US$421 million) in advertising revenue.
Launched in 2020, Channels has grown rapidly and has approximately 813 million active users as of June 2022. That number is higher than Douyin's 680 million users and Kuaishou's 390 million users, according to estimates by Chinese data analytics firm QuestMobile.
