Investigation｜Live streaming "bubble": 16 yuan to buy 10,000 viewers, sales with goods can be faked
Searching in QQ with the keyword "live popularity", there are multiple groups that can increase the number of viewers in Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou live broadcast rooms, and can comment, like, and display groups that are buying.
I watched the live streaming room constantly showing that someone was shopping, but the strange thing was that the bottom left of the live streaming page kept prompting "is going to buy", but until the anchor was down, the goods in the "little yellow car" were never sold out.
On the eve of "Double Eleven", The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) found after several days of investigation that there is a "black production" chain hidden behind the live streaming market: you can spend money to change the sales volume, increase the number of viewers, interactive comments, Like and follow, involving multiple platforms such as Douyin, Taobao, and Kuaishou.
The paper's actual measurement found that spending 16 yuan can increase the number of viewers in the Taobao live broadcast room by 10,000, and 2 yuan to increase 10,000 likes; 100 yuan can increase 1,000 viewers in the Douyin live broadcast room, and spending 30 yuan can show "continuous The illusion of "Go to buy"; 20 yuan can increase 100 viewers in the Kuaishou live broadcast room, 0.5 yuan can send a custom barrage.
Some "companies" that use traffic on behalf of others also claim that, in addition to generally increasing sales by "swiping orders", they can also modify the sales with goods by setting "full discount coupons" and linking sub-accounts with the main account.
Some "technical companies" that sell "group control" systems claim that they can use software to control 10 to tens of thousands of mobile phones to "raise accounts", and after "nutrition", they can interactively attract traffic in the live broadcast room of the anchor in batches.
Statistics from The Paper found that in the aforementioned QQ groups joined by reporters, there are at least more than 40 merchants offering to increase the popularity of Kuaishou, Douyin, and Taobao live broadcasts, and customers continue to inquire and place orders.
Spend 16 yuan to instantly increase the number of viewers
"Undertake all the services in the live broadcast room, popular, broadcast, like, comment, and interact; 1760 popularity only costs 4.5 yuan; live interaction in the live broadcast room, with rhythm to increase popularity." On QQ, use the keywords "Tik Tok, Kuaishou, Taobao Live" Search by "popularity" will pop up multiple "business" groups of this kind, with group members ranging from a hundred to a thousand.
"Ginny" is a studio worker who provides the aforementioned "popular service".
The quotation he provided to reporters showed that 100 people "on the list" on Douyin live broadcast 35 yuan, "little yellow car" (showing that they are going to buy) 3 hours 30 yuan, ordinary viewing (only the number of viewers, no avatars) 100 15 yuan per person, 100 yuan for 1,000 people, 2 yuan for 10,000 likes on live broadcast.
After some communication, the reporter spent 100 yuan to purchase a service to increase the live audience by 1,000 people, and randomly sent a live broadcast link to "Ginny" from a merchant on Douyin who was broadcasting live.
Within 27 minutes, the audience in the live broadcast room increased rapidly from 79 to 1,098, sometimes a sudden increase of thirty or forty people in one second.
"Ginny" said that as long as it continues to broadcast, these 1,000 viewers will be online for about 4 hours in the live broadcast room.
The Paper News reporter checked and found that among the 1,098 people who watched, 1,054 people showed "not logged in", and the list only showed 44 audience heads. "Ginny" explained that more users can be on the list, but 100 people on the list cost 35 yuan. .
The reporter randomly selected a live broadcast room and spent 30 yuan to purchase the service of the "little yellow car".
Soon, at the bottom left of the live broadcast screen, the prompt "*** (account) and other 40 people are going to buy; *** (account) and other 7 people are going to buy..." There are only 19 people.
Throughout the live broadcast period, the "going to buy" prompt always appears in the lower left corner of the screen.
"Ginny" said that the service generally lasts about 3 hours and is controlled in batches.
I clicked to shop with my account, but did not actually place an order. The system judged "I am going shopping", giving the real audience in the live broadcast room the illusion of "sales hot".
Regarding risk issues, "Ginny" bluntly said that there is no need to worry about the account being blocked.
"We have specially raised a group of'real fans', not'machine brushing powder'." He introduced that the studio has a "part-time team" of hundreds of people, and each of them has several mobile phones in their hands. After receiving the order, they will " The task" is arranged.
In addition to live streaming on Douyin, The Paper's survey also found that on Taobao live streaming platform, data can also be "watered".
The "Tao Boost" software promoted by "Xiaoyi" to increase the popularity of Taobao live broadcast is used for 450 yuan a month, but the drawback is that it can only be bound to increase the popularity of a store.
At the merchant "Little One" that provides the "Taobao Popularity Assistance" service, the most basic service is to increase the number of "ordinary viewers" and "advanced viewers" in Taobao live broadcast rooms.
The former only shows how many viewers have been added, 16 yuan for every 10,000 people; the latter is 14 yuan for every 1,000 people, with a "floating screen", showing that you are buying, you can set the stay time, and bring 3% of real online viewers .
"Little One" said that in order to invigorate the atmosphere in the live broadcast room, they also provide a "real person interaction" service, which costs 8 yuan per person per hour. Many anchors who are often cold will shop for this service.
The reporter randomly selected a Taobao store that was live broadcast. At 11:13 on November 3, the number of real-time viewers of the store was displayed as 60 people. After paying 16 yuan to purchase and adding 10,000 people to watch, the number of viewers of the store within 2 seconds It suddenly increased to 189, and then quickly jumped from 189 to 10634.
In order to verify the "advanced viewing" function, the reporter paid another 14 yuan to purchase the service.
After placing an order, the number of live viewers increased by a thousand within half an hour. At the same time, "**** (user name) is coming, *** (user name) is going to buy" constantly appeared at the bottom left of the live screen Prompt, that is, "Piaoping" in "Little One".
Seeing reporters placing orders many times, "Little One" provided a free "like" service. The original price of the service was RMB 20,000 and 10,000.
After the service was "arranged", the number of likes for the live broadcast at the bottom right of the live broadcast screen increased rapidly from single digits to tens of thousands.
"Xiaoyi" said that the inflated audience can be kept until the anchor downloads it, but it is not recommended to "increase the number of viewers and likes in seconds, which is easy to be monitored by the platform."
Customers can generally set to gradually increase the audience and likes during the entire live broadcast period according to the expected live broadcast time.
Similarly, in Kuaishou's live broadcast room, after paying the fee, it can increase the audience, likes, comments, display of shopping, and human interaction.
After paying 20 yuan, The Paper randomly selected a shop that was live broadcast by Kuaishou. The audience increased from 50 people at 11:10 on November 6th to more than 140 people in 2 minutes. The bottom of the page kept showing "*** (account)" Enter the live broadcast room".
The "technical staff" who provided the service said that 20 yuan can increase 100 viewers, 35 yuan to increase 200 viewers, and the live broadcast barrage is 0.5 yuan each, and the content can be customized.
The Paper Statistics found that among the aforementioned QQ groups that reporters joined, there are at least more than 40 merchants offering to increase the popularity of Kuaishou, Douyin, and Taobao live broadcasts.
These "technology companies" selling "group control" systems all claim that the system is intelligent, with one person controlling hundreds or even tens of thousands of mobile phones and customizing interactions in the live broadcast room.
"Hold Account" and "Group Control" System
"Xiaoyi" said that their "businessmen" who provide services to increase the popularity of live broadcasts are all controlled by software. The "Tao Boost" software he promoted to The Paper to increase the popularity of Taobao live broadcasts uses 450 yuan a month. But the disadvantage is that it can only be bound to increase popularity for a shop.
After the reporter purchases and installs the software and binds to one of the Taobao live broadcast stores, the reporter found in the background that he can like, shop, follow, "come" and watch in batches, set the required total number and interval time, and start the service page The number of added service items will be displayed in small red fonts.
However, for the aforementioned services for increasing popularity of the merchants, some "tech companies" from the same industry think that they are all "machine fans", but the superficial data is good-looking, but the live broadcast platform will not recommend more potential users to the live broadcast room based on the inflated popularity , The best way is to first use the "group control" system to "raise account", and then use the "nutrition" account to interact in batches in the live broadcast room to increase popularity.
The so-called "support account" in their mouths refers to the use of "group control" software to control 10 to 1,000 or even tens of thousands of accounts in batches. After a simulated real account has been active on the platform for a period of time, the platform is gradually allowed to officially mark the account in a certain vertical. Field "active" label.
After that, use these "raising" accounts to interact with anchors in the same vertical field in the live broadcast room, and the live broadcast platform will determine that the live broadcast is effective, attracting "active" accounts in the same field, and then recommend potential live broadcast users to enter the live broadcast In time, the process of "breaking the ice" of the recommended flow is realized.
The Paper Journalists searched Baidu for more than a dozen "technology companies" selling "popularity increase in live broadcast rooms, increased merchandise sales in the live broadcast rooms, and intelligent "raising account"" system.
These companies all claim that the system is intelligent, one person controls hundreds or even tens of thousands of mobile phones, and customizes interaction in the live broadcast room.
The interactive content includes gifts, speeches, light signs, likes, "little yellow cars", etc. The stay time and speech interval can be set.
"Detai Zhikong" is one of the companies that provides the above-mentioned services. The staff of this company, surnamed Xiao, introduced to reporters that their system can batch 40 services such as "keep account" and "band rhythm" of Kuaishou and Douyin, and control The price of 10 mobile phones is 4800 yuan, the price of 100 mobile phones is 29800 yuan, and the price of controlling 1,000 mobile phones is higher.
To buy back the system, you also need to buy a smart phone and retrieve some accounts from a special "number dealer".
A self-proclaimed "number dealer" introduced to reporters that he provided personal old numbers, digital ID numbers, thousands of fans, "white accounts" and so on.
The prices for "White Account", Baifen and Qianfen accounts are 55 yuan, 65 yuan and 143 yuan respectively.
The backend of the "group control" system developed by "Qifei Technology" can "scroll the screen crazy", "check the store", and "crazy point screen" in the live broadcast room.
In order to verify the authenticity of the system, the reporter randomly selected a fast live broadcast room. After the staff named Xiao used the “group control” system to associate the device (mobile phone) on the shelf, they entered the “Like” command in the background of the system. Rows of mobile phones quickly opened the Douyin live broadcast room and kept tapping the screen to like the host.
The staff of another company named "Qifei Technology" that also has the aforementioned functions said that the customers who purchase the system are basically "live-streaming unions", private organizations, and live-streaming studios in various regions.
Earlier, a "live broadcast union" in Zhengzhou purchased a "15,600 control" system, which can control 15,600 accounts, and after "raising accounts" in batches, the system will be sold for the host. The transaction price of the system is 200,000 yuan.
The quotation provided by "Qifei Technology" shows that the 10 control system is 4680 yuan, the 100 control is 15600 yuan, the 500 control is 39,000 yuan, the 30 control is 78,000 yuan, and the 15600 control is 200,000 yuan.
The quotation shows that the 10-control system is 4680 yuan, the 100-control system is 15,600 yuan, the 500-control system is 39,000 yuan, the 30-control system is 78,000 yuan, and the 15600-control system is 200,000 yuan.
Demonstrated to the direction surging news reporter, taking "Crazy Point Screen" as an example, 10 mobile phones are connected in the background of the system. After sending instructions, the action of "light up the little red heart" appears under the live screen displayed by the 10 mobile phones on the shelf; select " "Real-time interaction" function, after entering "333", swipe the "333" sent by different accounts at the bottom of the live room.
After selecting the "View Store" function, 10 controlled mobile phones click on the "little yellow car" at the bottom of the live screen at the same time to view the goods in them. At this time, the system determines that the account is "going shopping" and it appears at the bottom left of the live screen. "***(Username) and other 10 people are going to buy" prompt, but no order is actually placed.
When the reporter asked about the customer lists of the two “tech companies”, the other party refused to disclose them on the grounds of privacy.
"These are all secrets. No one wants fans to know that they are doing this kind of watering." said the staff member surnamed Xiao of Detai Zhikong.
Claim to change "sales"
In addition to "pouring water" on "popularity", The Paper's survey also found that some companies that do "scratch orders" claim that the sales of live broadcasts can also be modified.
In a company called "Qiankun Network", the staff introduced a method that can avoid the official monitoring of Douyin and easily modify the sales data of Douyin's live broadcast: In the "fan exclusive coupon" column of the account backstage, set the difference as The full discount coupon of 1 yuan or even 0 yuan (for example, 500 minus 499) will be effective and released, and each person is limited to one. After the release, the store staff will continue to place orders.
The staff member suggested that a one-time order should not exceed 200 pieces, such as a product with a unit price of 400 yuan. If a few staff place 5 orders, the sales volume has exceeded 1,000 pieces, and the sales exceeded 400,000 yuan.
"This method can only be used on November 15th. According to the'internal notice', Douyin will begin to crack down on it."
The quotation provided by another "studio" to reporters showed that it would charge 350 yuan for an increase in Taobao sales within 3,000 yuan and 450 yuan for an increase within 5,000 yuan.
However, changing sales requires more complicated steps, "most of which use supplementary orders to increase sales," the other party said.
"Replenishment orders" is also a method of "swiping orders" to increase sales and "favorable ratings".
After the two indicators are up, in addition to allowing "unknown" audiences to place orders, the live broadcast platform will officially recommend more potential users.
The "Qiankun Network" company has built a recharge service website for this purpose. After recharging the amount on the platform, you can swipe the order.
The price list he showed was divided into Douyin and Taobao.
In the Douyin shop, the value of the product is within 100 yuan, 100 to 500 yuan, 500 to 1,000 yuan, and the commission for each order with evaluation is 10 yuan, 18 yuan, and 23 yuan, and for each order without evaluation The commissions are 8 yuan, 15 yuan and 18 yuan respectively.
The evaluation of the single package on Taobao is divided into two types: advance payment and no advance payment of the original price of the product. The former has a product value of less than 100 yuan, 100 to 500 yuan, and 500 to 1,000 yuan. The commissions are 17 yuan, 25 yuan, and 38 yuan, respectively. Like Douyin, you need to pay a principal and commission for the goods first. The commission prices are 15 yuan, 18 yuan, 25 yuan, and 32 yuan.
"You need to actually ship the goods according to the address of the order, send something casually, and we sign for it." The other party specifically reminded.
A cybersecurity expert, who did not want to be named, told reporters that the “water injection” phenomenon of live data is very technically distinguishable.
In order to increase the popularity of the platform, when the live broadcast market has not been finalized, it can be understood as a "special marketing method". If all are attacked, the cost of identifying the problematic IPs one by one will be very high, and the loss of the platform will also be Big.
The Paper reporter noted that the regulatory authorities have been cracking down on the issue of "moisture" in live broadcast data. Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao have publicly notified a number of cases and blocked a number of anchor accounts.
In October this year, the Zhejiang Jinhua market supervision department announced a case of live data fraud.
The special traffic checking software produced by Chen Mou provides services such as inflating the number of onlookers, comments, and likes for Taobao, JD, and Pinduoduo live broadcast platform merchants. According to statistics, from June 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020 On the day, Chen had an illegal business turnover of 2.726 million yuan.
Why does the "bubble" live broadcast continue after repeated bans?
According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, in the first half of this year, there were over 10 million live e-commerce live broadcasts across the country, over 400,000 active anchors, over 50 billion viewers, and over 20 million products on the shelves.
This means that on average, there are more than 50,000 e-commerce live broadcasts per day, with more than 260 million viewers per day.
On November 6, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued guidance on strengthening the supervision of online live broadcast marketing activities, requiring the investigation and punishment of unfair competition violations in accordance with the law.
Regarding unfair competition issues such as fictitious transactions or evaluations in webcast marketing, webcasters deceiving and misleading consumers, etc., in accordance with the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, focus on investigating and punishing false or misleading commercial propaganda and helping other operators to carry out False or misleading commercial propaganda, counterfeiting and confusion, commercial slander, and illegal rewarded sales and other illegal activities.
An industry insider told reporters that some anchors did not hesitate to inject water into live broadcast data at the risk of banned accounts and loss of IP trust. Behind this is the market's dilemma.
Compared with Rijin Doujin’s head influencers, the waist and tail influencers are struggling with the "Matthew effect": few hits, unstable income, constantly emerging competitors, etc., the industry is under pressure to survive huge.
When bringing goods to brand vendors, the three models of "pure live broadcast listing fee" (called "pit fee" in the industry), "pure commission" or "commission plus pit fee" have become the main methods for anchors to earn money.
"Commission" means that the anchor is divided according to the sales of the live broadcast room. The higher the sales, the more the share; the "pit fee" is the fixed fee for the introduction and promotion of the products by the anchor.
The key point to measure these two costs is the "popularity" of the anchor, and the performance of the goods is an important aspect of reflecting the popularity.
The Paper Journalists added a well-known online celebrity business cooperation WeChat with 2.87 million Douyin fans on the grounds of business cooperation. The quotation provided by the other party shows that there are two types of live broadcast cooperation. One is a special fee of 200,000 yuan and a commission of 15%. , Live broadcast for 4 hours, the video is authorized for 1 month on the whole network; the other is a single product link fee of 20,000 yuan, a commission of 15%, the live room explanation for 5-10 minutes, and the video authorization for 1 month.
When asked whether there is a guarantee for the sales of the goods, the other party said that they could check the performance of the previous live broadcast special events, but did not clearly indicate the guaranteed sales.
The publication price provided by the MCN organization named "Tao Xiu Guangying" shows that the live broadcast price of 4.19 million fans for the anchor special live broadcast is 18,000 yuan/hour, and the commission is charged 15% to 30%; the anchor special sales for 1.12 million fans The live broadcast price is 10,000 yuan/hour, and the commission is also charged 15% to 30%.
Without the goods, the brand live broadcast prices of the two anchors are 30,000 yuan and 11,000 yuan respectively.
The example price of the live broadcast anchor publication provided by another MCN organization with Douyin and Kuaishou multiple "admirals" named "Taoxiu Guangying" shows that the live broadcast price of the live broadcast of the anchor with 4.19 million Douyin fans is 18,000 yuan / hour , The commission is charged 15% to 30%; the price of the live broadcast of the anchor with 1.12 million fans is 10,000 yuan / hour, and the commission is also charged 15% to 30%.
If it is a live broadcast of the brand without the goods, the prices are 30,000 yuan and 11,000 yuan respectively.
Similarly, the agency did not expressly promise to guarantee minimum sales.
That is to say, if the anchor or the operating organization behind it finds someone to "make up the order" and refund the order after the live broadcast, the merchant will pay a high commission for this, but the actual sales will not be achieved.
"At present, we have found that a few areas invite big celebrities, and finally settled the accounts. The cost of celebrities for live broadcasts is not proportional to the effect of live broadcasts." On August 28 this year, the State Council Information Office held an announcement on consumer poverty alleviation activities. At the press conference, Hong Tianyun, deputy director of the Office of the Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development of the State Council, criticized the phenomenon that some poor areas invited celebrities to live broadcast the goods.
Lei Xiwen, the co-founder of the online celebrity digital marketing service provider "Wufeng Technology", told The Paper that live streaming is a "outreach", but after a period of madness, there is gradually a lot of "cold thinking".
The existence of "water injection" phenomena such as sales volume, number of viewers, comments, and likes must be an unsustainable development model. From the perspective of platforms, anchors, and consumers, after this "sequelae" is resolved, the live streaming can only reach a goal. Go on the track of steady development.
"The more formal companies and platforms will consider the risks behind them." Lei Xiwen said that for live streaming to become a sustainable development model, all parties must benefit from it, not just the anchor or the organization behind it. To the money.
The Paper Journalist Zhao Siwei