Video streamer Bilibili doubles advertising revenue with new forms of content, but user growth could strain its relationship with anime, comics and games fans
- Video streaming platform Bilibili has spent years trying to grow beyond its young user base to diversify revenue streams, and it paid off in the fourth quarter
- The company grew advertising revenue by 149 per cent, aided by new content like lifestyle videos, in a big departure from its niche beginnings
Years of aggressive moves by Bilibili to transform into a more mainstream video-streaming platform with diversified revenue streams are paying off, with advertising revenues more than doubling in the fourth quarter of 2020, which could be welcome news for investors ahead of the company’s second public offering in Hong Kong in the coming weeks.
The Shanghai-based company saw revenues rise 91 per cent to 3.8 billion yuan (US$588.3 million) in the fourth quarter, as advertising revenues saw the second-largest gain, jumping 149 per cent to 722 million yuan, the company reported on Tuesday. “E-commerce and others”, a section that includes content licensing, grew the most, rising 168 per cent to 740.8 million yuan.
Value-added services – which include premium subscriptions, live streaming and a comic book platform – grew 118 per cent to surpass mobile games as Bilibili’s biggest revenue generator, pulling in 1.2 billion yuan, 32 per cent of the total. Mobile games, which made up 44 per cent of revenue a year earlier, were down to 29.4 per cent of revenue in the fourth quarter. Overall mobile game revenue grew 30 per cent to 1.1 billion yuan.
Bilibili, or “B Station” as it is affectionately known to fans, has been pushing to expand beyond its original appeal to the niche anime, comics and games (ACG) subculture since it went public on the Nasdaq in 2018. While younger people from China’s Generation Z have traditionally made up the bulk of the platform’s users, efforts to move into new content areas and become something more akin to Google’s YouTube are proving fruitful.
“When the platform has expanded with new content [in areas] such as beauty and lifestyle, it smoothed things out for its advertising business, as a broader range of brands will need a platform like Bilibili with a solid user base among the younger generation,” said Shawn Yang, the Shenzhen-based managing director of Blue Lotus Capital Advisors.