High net-worth social users are leaving, and Weibo has become an ad

Weibo released its unaudited financial report for the fourth quarter and the year ended December 31, 2014.

2014 Q4 net revenue of 105.2 million U.S. dollars, up 47% from a year earlier, exceeding the company's expectations, advertising and marketing revenue of 88 million U.S. dollars, the growth of 57%, micro-blog value-added services (micro-VAS) revenue of 17.2 million U.S. dollars, the chain reduction of 8.5%, annual growth rate of 12%, three quarter of 93% The net profit of the ordinary shareholders of Weibo was 4.6 million dollars, down 79% per cent year-on-year. As of December 2014, micro-BO monthly live users up to 175 million, an increase of 36%, daily live users 80.6 million people, an increase of 31%.

The revenue growth of value-added services, which requires users to pay in four quarters, is significantly less than the advertising revenue that requires advertisers to pay.

High net worth of users in the loss, Wang Gaofei in the conference call admitted that the micro-bo first-tier city's active degree is declining, overseas user activity is also declining. 2015 Weibo's main user growth comes from users outside the first tier of the city. The Spring Festival "let the Red envelope fly" activity as well as some games let the user that binds the micro-blog to reach 35 million, but Wang Gaofei revealed that the number of active users used to pay is unchanged before the Spring Festival.

But throughout the year, benefiting from the growth of previous quarters, microblogging value-added services (micro-VAS) revenue of 69.4 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 74%, advertising and marketing revenue of 264.8 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 78%; the gap between the two growth rates is not obvious.

It's not that there's no good news. For nearly a year, microblog advertising revenue accounted for 83.7% of the four quarter from the initial 78.8% per cent IPO. At the same time, 35 million micro-bo payment binding user's consumption conversion potential in front of advertisers have enough appeal. Micro Bo 2015-year strategy is simply to sell advertising, advertising management strategy is to explore small and medium-sized customers and individual customers, exerting force information flow advertising, expand the scope of large customers.

Weibo opened the self-service advertising system in the second half of 2014, launching "fan-tong" and "fan headline" Two information flow advertising products. In the earnings conference call, Chao revealed that there are currently 14,000 SME clients on the platform. Active users of self-service advertising systems over 300,000 in four quarters quarter-on-quarter growth of 94%; four-quarter micro-blog mobile advertising revenue ratio of 54%, information flow advertising revenue for the first time over banner ad; In the area of real estate and finance, Weibo will launch a number of independent marketing solutions, Increase the size of their advertising.

When asked if they would receive micro-letters, Wang Gaofei, the main problem for Twitter is the lack of customers, micro-credit and other social media to make social ads, which can help educate users about the business, and will be beneficial to the development of microblogging services, he said. He also believes that Weibo has not yet felt the pressure from the advertising of the MO, because the main customers of the MO is Alibaba's local merchants, Micro Bo on the main Alibaba's customers, from the local business of almost no. But it also exposes Weibo's short board in lbs.

The premise of selling advertising is the user, there is the premise of the user has content. Therefore, micro-BO ban the micro-credit promotion, launched last August with the "reward" function of the micro-blog from the media, 4 months there are nearly million people have played rewards, medical, financial, science and technology industries and other areas of flourishing, since the media into more than 10 million income. At the same time, Wang Gaofei said, Weibo will increase investment in the field of picture and video content, they are on-line "micro-bo Camera" and "second shot" and other products.

Others worry that advertising accounts for too much of the revenue from Weibo. But looking back on Twitter's 2014-year earnings, it found that advertising revenue accounted for 90.2%, reaching $432 million trillion and growing by 97% a year.