The Chinese video-sharing mobile app's over business maintained rapid growth throughout the year.
China's second-largest content community and social platform announced its unaudited 4Q 2020 and audited FY 2020 results on March 23 2021.
Kuaishou had 265 million daily users spending an average of 87 minutes a day on the app last year. Its revenue in 2020 grew 50% to CNY 58.8 from a year earlier while its gross profit margin has improved.
It is worth noting that among the three major businesses, the growth of commercialization (i.e. online marketing) was the most eye-catching, with annual revenue of CNY 21.9 billion yuan, an increase of 194.6% compared with that in 2019.
The firm's 4Q income was CNY 8.5 billion, surpassing the full year of 2019, an increase of 170% year-on-year, setting a single quarterly income record.
Short videos accounted for 13.5% of internet advertising spending in China in 2020, a rise from 8.2% in 2019, according to QuestMobile. Kuaishou's advertising revenue accounted for almost half of the total revenue which last quarter more than doubled compared to the year earlier. In 2019, around 80% of Kuaishou's revenue came from virtual tipping for its live-streaming business, which is losing in popularity to short videos. But TikTok locally known as Duoyin so far has been better at making money from advertising to its big user base.
At present, short video has become the best track for China's Internet to grab users' attention. With the shift of users' attention, the marketing budget of the brand is also moving to short videos's and live broadcasts. According to the 2020 China digital marketing trend report, short video is the most popular media form for advertisers, and nearly 70% of advertisers beilieve that short video will be the key platform in the future.
"While we want to expand our advertising revenue, we definitely have to maintain and also make sure we can deliver very excellent user experience," Kuaishou Chief Executive Officer Su Hua told Yahoo. "So, in other words, we will not just blindly go for a sharp increase in advertising revenue in compromise of user experience."
The social media giant is counting on new ventures such as retail to help sustain its pace of growth over the longer term, despite competition from world's highest valued unicorn, ByteDance and others exploring social commerce. Founded by former Google employees Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao as an app built around sharing animated GIF images, Kuaishou leaned to short video in 2013 and added livestreaming in 2016, which became two of the hottest social media formats.