The Middle East market has a broad demand base and extremely high revenue ceiling. However, as the old live broadcast products headed by Bigo gradually enter the growth bottleneck, the traditional financial model of the live broadcast platform cannot be maintained, and a large number of live broadcast projects begin to fall into high content costs, The "four highs" cycle of high channel costs, high traffic costs, and high bandwidth costs.

With high revenue and low profits, the platform sacrifices its own net profit margin and shines a light on local currency dealers, guilds and anchors.

After costs came under pressure, overseas companies learned from the experience and turned to voice platforms with low ceilings and low thresholds. With low trial and error costs and short return cycles, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, they can obtain it under the premise of small DAU and low revenue. Determine profit.

At the same time, platform-level products like TikTok have entered the live broadcast business and monopolized high-quality regional resources. Major platforms that originally had local advantages have instantly become TikTok’s training bases. The business system that has been worked hard for many years seems unbearable in the face of the platform’s magnitude. In one blow, no anchor can refuse a platform with more than 1 billion.

Against this background, poppo emerged, using an almost barbaric method to once again turn the live streaming business landscape in the Middle East upside down, redefining what it means to start a business cold, what it means to expand resources, and what it means to step on the accelerator.

Today we will use the third person to explore:

What did poppo do right?

Part1. Product Overview

Preliminary conclusion: poppo is mediocre in terms of products and is a standard full-scenario live broadcast product.

1. Home page layout

• Like traditional live broadcast products, poppo has three major scenes: "live broadcast", "party" and "square", corresponding to video, audio and graphics respectively.
• In addition to three scene-level entrances, the main tab at the bottom also contains IM and personal center. The broadcast button is suspended on the screen, so the appearance of the button can be designed to be more prominent and is not limited by the tab layout.
• The conventional aggregation "discovery page" has been broken up and restructured to the top of the page. Country lists, content categories, activity lists, rankings, etc. are displayed on the homepage while minimizing the screen area.

2. Core scene

• In the single-player live broadcast scenario, the function buttons at the bottom are converged, and IM messages are classified and aggregated, resulting in IM occupying a higher area and making the operation more complicated. This is a common layout for early domestic live broadcast products. There are multiple active floating portals loaded into the page, which results in a crowded display and poor layout.
• The party scene adopts the mainstream "nine-square grid" layout. Users can choose to turn on or off the camera, and it is equipped with complete permissions and order management functions. Gift-giving messages in multi-person scenes appear to be crowded because they involve user nicknames.
• The layout of the graphic community scene is relatively simple, highlighting pictures, simply displaying user information and post likes, re-comment data, and the entrance in the scene is split into dynamic pages and topic pages.

• In addition to the main scene, Poppo’s current live broadcast room main gameplay is the PK function, which is divided into two-person PK and four-person PK. It is the live broadcast form with the highest content on the platform, and the user interaction rate and delivery rate are relatively good.
• The four-person PK gameplay is a cross-room interaction model that has been fully verified in China. It can well solve the shortcomings of two-person PK that cannot form effective interaction and the content is too thin.

• The game section contains most of the mainstream gameplay. The recently updated fishing gameplay is being promoted in conjunction with platform anchors. The anchors can receive a 0.7% point reward for the in-game profits from new users. Due to space reasons, this article does not dismantle the specific gameplay.

Evaluation summary:

The "live broadcast + multi-person room" model is the current mainstream architecture of live broadcast platforms. Live broadcast itself is a very utilitarian business. The core resources in the platform must serve data conversion, so social users and non-paying users will be gradually compressed. The usage space and multi-person room scenario can effectively make up for the gap in meeting the needs of this part of users.

Poppo's products have been polished for more than two years. In terms of basic product experience, in addition to server loading speed, it can basically reach the average level of mature platforms in the same region. At the same time, it has also made mistakes that old platforms often make in advance (such as hanging without restraint). Activity entrance and frequent push), it is quite satisfactory, neither adding points nor deducting points.

Regarding the "moments" function, many Chinese companies have habitually added a graphic community function to their pan-entertainment products, but they do not have a good idea of ​​how to operate this function. Therefore, almost all the functions we see today For products that include square functions, the community sections are basically in a semi-abandoned state. Except for some uneven selfies and life insights, there are almost no valuable posts. They are "tasteless" and are imposed by the inertia of the product manager's thinking. scene

Part2. Content Ecology

Preliminary conclusion: poppo is rich enough in terms of content, and traces of content management can be seen

In terms of live broadcast content ecology, we mainly focus on several dimensions:Total amount of content,Anchor quality,content governance.

• In terms of the total amount of content: Poppo has actually measured during local popular periods that the popular page has more than 200 (35 screens) active live broadcast rooms, and has surpassed some old platforms in terms of content supply.
• In terms of anchor quality: Poppo’s anchors have obviously undergone basic training. Most professional anchors on popular pages have undergone live broadcast literacy training and can maintainWearing makeup,front shot,dress appropriately,Take the initiative to say hello to new usersHis professional attitude and comprehensive anchor professional quality level exceeds that of most middle-aged and old platforms with insufficient operational and execution granularity.
• In terms of content management: Poppo has introduced the ability of real-person face authentication. Except for some amateurs, most professional anchors have basic broadcast quality. At the same time, effective supervision of the cover image of the broadcast has also reduced the number of live broadcast covers and real-person "goods". "Not on the board", the random viewing experience on the homepage is good. For the Middle East, poppo has also added privacy settings on the anchor side, and some live broadcast rooms have the function of prohibiting screen recording.

Evaluation summary:

Poppo is a young live broadcast product. They have completed the entire process from content cooling to content management in a very short period of time. The total amount of content is sufficient, the content quality is up to standard, and the operation and execution granularity is fine enough, ensuring the basic content supply of the platform. , this is an execution gap that many old platforms are catching up with and even difficult to realize.

Because of the special cultural attributes of the Middle East, in terms of live broadcast room content, high-quality live broadcast content is still dominated by male anchors. They can provide smooth entertainment oral broadcast content, have mature control and interaction capabilities, and can quickly drive big celebrities to immerse themselves in the live broadcast. within the scene. In contrast, the overall live broadcast ability of female anchors is low, and they are still in the primitive stage of relying on "visual senses" to generate traffic, which is far from the quality of female anchors in Southeast Asia.

Regarding the topic of improving the comprehensive quality of anchors, there are still sharp information gaps and execution gaps. How to make anchors more professional? Domestic guilds and guilds in Southeast Asia have very mature management systems. From live broadcast literacy to live broadcast equipment construction to live broadcast content planning, they can standardize the production of professional anchors. However, these systems are still unable to be implemented on a large scale in the Middle East. On the one hand, the quality of the local anchor supply side in the Middle East is indeed not high and management is difficult. On the other hand, because the tolerance of Middle Eastern users is high enough, standard definition video streams + low You can also get rewards for live broadcasting on your mobile phone and having an earthy style. With the gradual maturity of the local live broadcast market and the demonstration role of leading platforms, there will definitely be a large demand gap for the professionalization of anchor content in the Middle East in the future, and a large number of professional teams will need to be introduced to undertake it.

Part3. Revenue system

Preliminary conclusion: Poppo’s payment system is mature and complete, it has its own understanding of the product, and its operation side is relatively radical.

1. Product side

• VIP system: Poppo's VIP system adopts the "subscription rebate" model first launched in China. This model was first released on a certain Y platform. Users pay a fixed subscription fee (usually monthly), and while obtaining VIP privileges, they can also Get gold coin rebates. After this model was introduced to overseas platforms, everyone basically set the rebate amount very high, turned the subscription model into a function of attracting payment and active retention, and basically did not design profits on this function. Take poppo's super VIP as an example. The monthly subscription fee is 450,000 gold coins, and you can receive 16,000 gold coins every day. A total of 480,000 gold coins can be received. At the same time, you can get many advanced privileges. Paying users need to bear a one-time payment of 450,000 gold coins. The subscription fee of gold coins and full attendance within the natural month.
• Wealth level: Upgrade based on the accumulated gold coins consumed. There is no additional definition of experience value conversion, which is more intuitive. In addition to the historical cumulative level, a "shining level" has been added, which corresponds to real-time consumption incentives for users. The product team has put a lot of thought into this and has not completely copied other competing products.
• Live broadcast level: It is more conventional and will be upgraded based on the accumulation of points converted from gifts. It is worth emphasizing that in terms of wealth level and live broadcast level, the product team has made targeted numerical extensions to avoid numerical penetration of the product in the middle and late stages. Taking poppo live broadcast level 35 as an example, the cumulative gift receipts need to reach 20 million US dollars. Basically covers most of the numerical upper limits during the platform's life cycle.

• Gift panel: The overall layout of poppo’s gift panel is concise and clear. There are no complicated and meaningless gift categories that “cannot fit on one screen”. The four core gifts are regular gifts, lucky gifts, special effects gifts and fan club gifts. Prices for regular gifts range from US$0.025 to US$500. The gift library is relatively complete, the special effects for large gifts are well-produced, and the functions of continuous and group delivery are supported.
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• Virtual privileges: poppo supports multiple types of virtual privileges, including personal decoration, room theme decoration, entrance effects, and pretty accounts. The overall production level is excellent and in line with local user preferences.
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2. Operation side

• The overall style of the operation side is relatively radical, and there are more than a dozen activities running at the same time, including routine revenue activities, node revenue activities, themed content activities, game promotion activities, etc. The activity format is basically based on the rank list, which is guessed to be limited by the backend activity template support capabilities.
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• For big R operations, poppo has also adopted a second VIP system, which uses monthly recharges to determine VIP levels, and has commercialized this function. Users can directly see their VIP levels and values ​​for that month on the page. In fact, the author does not recommend making this function a product. On the one hand, users will be more sensitive to visual consumption data. On the other hand, the page's ability to drive big R is limited. To promote monthly real-time consumption, it is best to Relying on manpower can deepen user retention and facilitate the comprehensive management of paid big R.
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• For special paying users, poppo also draws on mature platforms to provide customized privileges such as "open screen blessing" services to meet the multi-dimensional needs of different users.

Evaluation summary:

Poppo’s payment system is relatively complete, its product design is clear and concise, and its materials are well-made. It is also at the top level among local platforms. System capacity is taken into account in advance during numerical design to avoid later changes. When many product managers are doing system numerical planning, they inertly believe that “just add more” to numerical insights. However, if a fixed system can be added or subtracted at will, its value perception will be distorted, and the user’s value feedback will be diluted, which will be detrimental to the general public. R is a kind of hidden harm.

Poppo is relatively radical on the operation side, and the form of activities is relatively simple. The more platform activities, especially revenue activities, are not the better. When the number of activities exceeds a certain threshold, users’ focus will be dispersed, and the additional revenue capabilities of the activities will be weakened, or even It will bring negative effects and affect the user payment statement cycle. The parallelization of multiple activities will also put pressure on the operational side to coordinate activity ROI. How to coordinate the multi-end reward outlets and how to divide credit and responsibility for data results are all practical issues that the team needs to consider.

Platform management is a multi-dimensional matter. The product side is responsible for the quantifiable parts, and the operations side is responsible for the difficult-to-quantify parts, such as the management of users. Functions and services depend on the specific scenario and do not necessarily have to be productized. For example, the customization requirements of Big R. If this part is made into an online ordering system, the operation will lose a powerful operating tool and the user experience will be compromised. . At the same time, in terms of the design and pricing of basic value-added services, attention should be paid to the overall coordination of the value system to avoid duplication and value distortion.

Part.4 Financial System

Preliminary conclusion: poppo has the strongest payment system and the highest basic content cost on the market

• Currency system: poppo has three sets of currencies, gold coins, points, and diamonds, which correspond to consumption currency, withdrawal currency, and game currency respectively. According to Google price calculations, the standard gold coin price of Poppo is approximately equal to 1 US dollar = 10,000 gold coins.
• Recharge system: poppo covers the most mainstream payment channels in various countries in the Middle East. In addition to regular official channels and credit card channels, MADA and STC wallets, which are highly demanded by Saudi users, have completed all channels in the early versions of the product. Deployment has become one of the core competitiveness in attracting paying users. In addition to traditional financial channels, it also supports recharge through some "emerging" channels and recharge through developed third-party platforms (currency merchants + third-party recharge platforms).

• Withdrawal system: poppo has the most convenient withdrawal system on the market. For ordinary guilds and anchors, poppo supports one-click withdrawal to wallets and bank cards, and the funds can be deposited within 2 hours at the fastest. For those who do not have the ability to collect money online, poppo also supports agent delivery. On poppo’s internal agent platform, orders can be received and sent freely. The anchor only needs to pay a 3% handling fee to obtain the most local payment service. This kind of cash withdrawal experience is unique to poppo.
• Sharing system: Poppo does not adopt the conventional "basic sharing + policy sharing" model. The default gift sharing ratio for all anchors is 70%. This basic sharing ratio is already higher than the overall sharing ratio of many platforms, and event rewards are added. Task rewards, support, etc. In addition to the anchor's share, the guild can also receive an additional 5%-20% share reward, and the platform's comprehensive content share exceeds 90%.
• Income structure:
• In terms of the proportion of tipping income, the ratio between live broadcast rooms and multi-person rooms is about 55:45 (poppo has canceled the 1v1 module). The active multi-person room scene effectively shares the revenue pressure of the live broadcast scene, and also helps improve ensure the mid- to long-term retention of the product;
• In terms of user consumption scenarios, reward consumption accounts for about 60% and game consumption accounts for about 40%. Under such a high content cost model, the proportion of game revenue directly determines the net profit in the financial report;
• In terms of revenue sources, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates account for more than 70% of the total revenue, and Qatar and Kuwait account for about 8% each. The entire Middle East market is huge, but the revenue sources are very concentrated.

Evaluation summary:

Regarding the construction of payment channels: Poppo has connected all core payment channels from the day it was launched. Those local channels that the product manager said were “difficult to connect”, Poppo provided to Middle Eastern users at one time. How attractive is a convenient and cheap local payment method to big R? Poppo has taught friends throughout the Middle East a lesson.

Regarding the cash withdrawal system: When building the cash withdrawal system, most platforms follow the principle of "fear of trouble" and put the payment terminal on Paianying. Regardless of the inconvenience for the anchor and the guild, it is financially convenient anyway. Just deposit money into the account. As a result, a large-scale withdrawal model for guild leaders in the Middle East was gradually formed. It wasn't until the emergence of poppo that anchors and guild leaders discovered that you can freely choose the method of withdrawal, you can choose an agent to issue it on your behalf, and it can be deposited instantly. This alone is enough to attract mature anchors and guilds to settle in .

Game revenue is a double-edged sword, and the balance between it and the live broadcast business is difficult to control. When games reduce too much consumer demand, the platform’s content support scale will be compressed. At the same time, due to the limitations of the game itself, when the platform's numerical model is not rich enough, it is easy to overshadow the life cycle of paying users, causing a negative impact on the brand.

Some conclusions:

• Poppo’s success is multi-dimensional. On the one hand, they did not step into too many pitfalls in terms of products and operations. They fully compared the paths of competing products and did not waste execution and innovation energy on basic modules. On the other hand, their prediction of competitive advantages is very accurate, they cut into the key pain points of anchors, guilds, and users, and use the innovative and systematic advantage dimensionality reduction to attack those old platforms that are hard to return to.

• The success of poppo is difficult to replicate. With Poppo’s high content costs, the live broadcast business is basically losing money. Even if the payment costs, delivery costs, and CDN costs are pushed to the limit, it will be difficult to make a net profit. At the same time, the rich recharge channels and convenient withdrawal system are an almost stringent test for the platform's risk control. It is necessary to ensure that users can "recharge in" and that users can "get reasonable amounts", regardless of technology. Ability, in most middle-aged and elderly companies, even internal compliance approval is difficult to pass. The matter of "who is responsible" is deadlocked. Finally, Poppo was able to complete the content and business startup in such a short period of time, which is indispensable to efficient hunting. Competitors have worked hard to accumulate high-quality resources for many years. Poppo can access them at any time, which vividly embodies an old saying in the industry: "What are resources? Those who have money to support them are called resources."

• About new fission and efficiency management. Recruitment of anchors is done by almost all platforms and will be done for a long time. It is not difficult to design a new policy. A fixed reward plus a data reward can attract local BDs to actively participate. The difficulty lies in efficiency management - how to ensure the conversion of money spent into income and how to maintain BD's long-term activity. In terms of attracting new anchors, poppo not only provides fine-grained operational support, but also designs a complete survival task system for new anchors. On the one hand, it guides the growth of new anchors, and on the other hand, it also provides high task rewards in stages. Make sure to "spend your money wisely". On the other hand, for the poaching of guild agents, poppo has designed a rare "secondary offline" system. When the guild recruits new members, it can not only obtain the sub-agents' share rewards, but also further obtain the sub-sub-agents' share rewards. Effectively improve the new acquisition activity and survival rate. The system itself is not complicated, but for the system to really work, it requires a lot of overall management energy behind the scenes. This is a pragmatic and hard-working spirit that most teams do not possess. (For details on poppo’s policies, if you are interested, you can leave a message for consultation)

• Regarding execution granularity. Overseas companies have gone from "winning by quantity" in the early days to "winning by efficiency" now and then to "winning by service density" in the future. What is reflected behind this is the change in user satisfaction thresholds in the Middle East market and the continuous maturation of the industry. In the future market competition, the macroscopic and subjective execution unit definition of "Middle East" cannot sustain long-term growth. The essence of pan-entertainment business is still a business driven by strong operations, which requires in-depth, detailed, and long-term Execution accumulation, the concept of region is too big, and even the concept of country is too big. We need to continue to break it down into cities, ethnic groups, and dialect types, so that we can take the lead in the next stage of revenue competition. machine.