Baidu holds hands with Luo Yonghao and wants to have another e-commerce dream.

Wen | New Product Finance, Author | Wu Wenwu

Baidu is holding hands with Luo Yonghao, storming the live broadcast with goods, and wants to do big e-commerce business. Obviously, Baidu wants to have another e-commerce dream. Can it be done this time?

China’s Internet and e-commerce industries are never short of topics and players. No one expected that Baidu, which is doing its best to All in AI, would join hands with Luo Yonghao, the popular anchor of live broadcast with goods.

The cooperation between Baidu and Luo Yonghao has long been fully announced. On the evening of May 19th, Luo Yonghao announced at its Weibo that it would start strategic cooperation with Baidu, the e-commerce platform of Baidu. At that time, it was also reported by the media that Luo Yonghao had appeared in Baidu’s photo, which was full of topic.

Luo Yonghao also announced that the first live broadcast will be held in Baidu on May 23rd. In this way, the news that Luo Yonghao will be stationed in Baidu for live broadcast with goods was reported by the media one after another, which triggered market concern and heated discussion.

Soon on May 23rd, Luo Yonghao’s first live broadcast on Baidu arrived as scheduled. This live broadcast included not only free gold and iPhone, but also low-priced flying Maotai on the whole network. The products sold and the live broadcast style still had a strong Romanian style.

Of course, Luo Yonghao’s data on the first live broadcast of Baidu’s choice was very bright. According to media reports, the GMV of this four-hour live broadcast exceeded 50 million yuan, and the number of viewers exceeded 10 million.

Although Luo Yonghao has reduced the number of live broadcasts with goods compared with before, from the data performance of Luo Yonghao’s first live broadcast with goods in Baidu, Luo Yonghao is still one of the big anchors of live broadcast with goods, and still has a strong ability to attract gold.

Luo Yonghao, a serial entrepreneur who was heavily in debt because of the failure to create a hammer mobile phone, made a high-profile entrance to the live broadcast track in 2020 in order to pay off his debts, and is still performing the "True Return".

Luo Yonghao and his friends didn’t put their eggs in one basket. First, they did live broadcast with goods in Tik Tok, and then they settled in Taobao. After that, Luo Yonghao settled in JD.COM to do live broadcast with goods, constantly expanding the business map.

It’s not surprising which home appliance platform and short video platform Luo Yonghao has settled in for live broadcast, but to the surprise of the outside world, no one expected that the fourth home appliance platform that Luo Yonghao has settled in was actually Baidu’s preferred one.

Therefore, compared with Luo Yonghao going to Baidu for live delivery, the market pays more attention to Baidu and Baidu’s preference. Why do you hand in hand with Luo Yonghao for live delivery at this time? What is the intention?

In the view of New Product Finance, the cooperation between Luo Yonghao and Baidu is a cooperation of taking what they need. Luo Yonghao and making friends need a new e-commerce platform for live broadcast, while Baidu needs a super-head live broadcast anchor like Luo Yonghao to do a good job in e-commerce and live broadcast, bringing topics, hot search and real transaction volume.

This year’s 618 e-commerce is in full swing. At this time, Baidu cooperates with Luo Yonghao, and both sides want to harvest a fruitful 618 sales record.

Baidu and Luo Yonghao hand in hand, live broadcast with goods, has indeed rapidly improved the popularity and exposure of Baidu e-commerce in a short time. Judging from the comprehensive achievements created by Luo Yonghao in the first live broadcast with goods selected by Baidu, both Baidu Youxuan and Luo Yonghao have achieved a good start.

As we all know, Baidu is an established Internet technology company, which has gone through different industry cycles along with the development of Internet technology industry in China.

Baidu started as a search engine. It first competed with international Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo in search business, and became the largest Chinese search engine in the world. Although there are friends such as sogou search and 360 Search in China, Baidu has been firmly in the first place in Chinese search engines.

Baidu has been doing a lot of diversified business exploration. Every time it encounters an industry outlet, Baidu doesn’t want to miss it, but many businesses have long stopped.

For example, when the take-away market rose, Baidu made Baidu take-out, but it ended in failure. A few years ago, the wave of new energy vehicles hit, and Baidu and Geely set up the ultra-car, but they didn’t expect to crash directly at the end of December last year.

However, if many people don’t pay attention to Baidu, in fact, Baidu has always had an e-commerce dream, and it has been defeated repeatedly, and it has never stopped. Interestingly, Baidu e-commerce has also been chasing the wind.

In the Internet PC era, as early as 2003, when I saw that Taobao had just defeated ebay and became the first brother of C2C industry in China’s e-commerce industry, Baidu couldn’t help it. In 2008, it launched "Baidu Yes" and directly targeted Taobao. It also vowed to surpass Taobao within three years. Unexpectedly, only three years later, Baidu chose to declare "failure" in disguise by adjusting its business. In the C2C e-commerce era,

Later, Baidu saw the strong rise of JD.COM’s B2C business, and Baidu saw the opportunity of e-commerce business, and successively launched Baidu Lotte and Aloha, but they all closed down. It is estimated that many people have long forgotten these two e-commerce platforms that Baidu once launched.

A few years later, the Internet technology industry set off a wave of smart hardware consumption. Of course, Baidu saw this business opportunity again. In March 2015, it launched Baidu Future Store, which mainly sold and promoted various smart hardware products, such as smart water cups, smart coasters, physique analyzers, etc., which were more like vertical e-commerce, but only announced its closure after only one year of operation.

In order to be the next "Vipshop", Baidu launched Baidu MALL in November 2015, positioning itself as a mid-to-high-quality e-commerce, inviting 1,000 domestic and foreign mid-to-high-end well-known brands to settle in, and directly cooperating with brand officials to ensure 100% genuine licensed products. However, after just one year of operation in May, Baidu MALL quietly closed.

In fact, in recent years, Baidu first watched the rise of Pinduoduo, and then saw the wave of live broadcast delivery. E-commerce platforms such as Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker made live broadcast delivery popular, and Baidu never gave up its e-commerce business.

Baidu has already entered the live broadcast with goods, and invited stars and anchors such as Angel, Zhang Xiaohui and Yi Nengjing to live broadcast with goods in Baidu, and the results are not bad. Compared with mainstream e-commerce platforms, Baidu’s e-commerce business volume is much smaller.

In May, 2023, Baidu launched Baidu Youxuan, focusing on high technology and shouting to be an AI e-commerce. At that time, the focus was on the merchant side. On the supply side, it cooperated with large e-commerce platforms and launched tools such as intelligent shopping guide, AI digital anchor optimization and price comparison of the whole network to guide JD.COM, Taobao, Pinduoduo and so on. Comparatively speaking, Baidu Youxuan focused more on providing AI tools for merchants to help them get more long-tail orders, and did not focus too much on the C side.

Now, Baidu has chosen to join hands with Luo Yonghao. Obviously, Baidu wants to make an effort in the e-commerce business, especially to storm the live broadcast with goods again. To put it bluntly, Baidu has never given up its e-commerce dream and wants to take another shot.

At present, Baidu is All in AI. In the past two years, Baidu has relied on the concept of AI and the model of Wen Xin, as well as the global layout of driverless taxi business in Radish Run. No one expected that Baidu would suddenly launch its e-commerce business here at this time, and invited Luo Yonghao to Baidu to do live broadcast with goods.

As mentioned above, every time faced with different e-commerce outlets, Baidu has made explorations and attempts, but it just failed to achieve the expected goal. Baidu has never given up its e-commerce business, but in terms of scale and strength, it can’t sit at the same table with established e-commerce giants such as Ali and JD.COM, and with e-commerce upstarts such as Pinduoduo, Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker.

In the view of "New Product Finance", Baidu has seen the great value of live delivery and big data traffic behind it in recent years, and wants to play a different concept from other e-commerce platforms. What Baidu really wants to grasp is the emerging AI concept and AI e-commerce concept.

In the last year or two, the concept of AI has deeply influenced the e-commerce industry, and the arrival of the AI e-commerce era has become the consensus of major Internet e-commerce giants.

Recently, Alibaba not only reached a cooperation with Meitu, but also plans to invest 250 million US dollars in Meitu. The two sides will carry out in-depth cooperation in the field of AI and e-commerce, which is the latest heavy event for e-commerce giants to launch AI e-commerce.

The impact of AI on e-commerce is multifaceted, and it is having an increasing impact from efficiency, vision, scene application, shopping experience and other aspects. For example, the live broadcast of AI digital people with goods is a representative case of the application of AI in e-commerce industry.

It is undeniable that on the one hand, Baidu is in the leading position in the field of AI technology and has obvious advantages. At the same time, on the other hand, Baidu itself is a huge traffic pool. For example, Baidu APP’s own monthly traffic pool of over 700 million is still attractive to corporate brands and small and medium-sized businesses.

Baidu Youxuan has been very mature in serving the B-side business before, but in order to be a big e-commerce business and make the live delivery business bigger and stronger, Baidu needs to be a C-side consumer.

At least at this stage, in the e-commerce track, Baidu once again saw business opportunities, especially in the era of AI e-commerce, Baidu naturally did not want to miss it.

Inviting Luo Yonghao to settle in Baidu and choosing live broadcast to bring goods can play a strong leading role, especially to attract more corporate brands, especially to attract small and medium-sized enterprises to settle in, and Baidu’s preferred business base can be expanded rapidly.

Baidu once again picked up the dream of e-commerce and stormed the live broadcast with goods. If Baidu’s e-commerce business really started this time, Baidu not only told a new story to the outside world again, but also expanded the basic disk of e-commerce business, making the financial report data more eye-catching. Why not?

However, it is also worth noting that while Baidu faces both advantages and opportunities of AI e-commerce, challenges naturally exist.

All major e-commerce platforms are doing AI e-commerce, and AI technology will be widely and deeply used in the e-commerce industry. For example, JD.COM has also taken action in AI e-commerce, and Liu Qiangdong Digital Man has made live broadcast with goods, so Baidu needs to keep ahead in the application of AI e-commerce and make features.

The e-commerce industry has been developing at a high speed and iterating rapidly. Now, the whirlwind of live broadcast with goods and the exhibition of golden hair have passed, and Baidu Youxuan has invited Luo Yonghao to settle in now, which is too late. The future depends on the binding depth and duration of cooperation between the two parties. For example, Luo Yonghao has also settled in JD.COM to carry goods live. Judging from the frequency of carrying goods, Luo Yonghao has neglected JD.COM for a long time.

Similarly, if Baidu wants to be bigger and stronger in the future, it needs to continuously invest more resources. A Luo Yonghao is far from enough, and it needs to invite more big anchors to settle in.

In the past, Baidu’s optimization mainly focused on serving the B-side. Now, if it wants to exert its strength on the C-side, especially to attract more small and medium-sized enterprises to settle in, Baidu obviously has a lot of homework to make up.

In a word, Baidu had better invite Luo Yonghao to live and bring goods. Baidu wants to have another e-commerce dream. As for whether Baidu’s e-commerce dream will succeed in the future, only time will tell.

So, are you optimistic about Baidu’s optimization? Would you like to go shopping in Baidu’s preferred live broadcast room?