Credit: Visual China

BEIJING, June 27 (TMTPost) – Bilibili CEO Chen Rui announced that the platform will adopt a new popularity measure – the total viewing time, to replace the current one of the number of plays.

His announcement was made during the video-sharing platform’s (NASDAQ：BILI/ 09626.HK) 14th-anniversary event on Monday evening.

The transition will be completed in the coming weeks, representing a major shift.  

According to Chen, the number of plays alone cannot fully reflect users’ real consumption of video content. Some users may only watch a few seconds before exiting, while others may spend 40 minutes watching a single video, but both are currently counted as one play.

The concept of “play minutes” refers to the total time that all users spend watching a particular video. It serves as a measure of user engagement and is expected to be larger than the number of plays. As an example, Chen mentioned a 10-minute video from a popular channel on Bilibili, which garnered 10.99 million plays but had a total of 53.07 million play minutes, illustrating the difference between the two metrics.

Chen believed that the switch to displaying the number of play minutes offers a more intuitive representation of user appreciation for the content. This metric is expected to highlight the value of good quality and niche content while eliminating the influence of low-quality videos that employ deceptive tactics such as exaggerated titles and fraudulent thumbnails to inflate play counts.

A similar adjustment was witnessed in China’s internet industry around 2019 to comply with regulatory requirements aimed at combating viewership and click fraud. As a result, major platforms like iQIYI, Youku, and Tencent Video removed the display of play counts.

PUGV (Professional User Generated Video) forms the foundation of Bilibili’s content ecosystem, accounting for over 90% of the platform’s video playback volume. In the first quarter, the platform experienced a 42% year-on-year increase in average daily active uploaders, with an average monthly submission count of 22.5 million, marking a 79% year-on-year increase. More than 1.5 million uploaders earned income on the platform, indicating a 50% year-on-year increase.

According to an institutional customer who placed promotional content on Bilibili, the pricing for purchasing ad space on the platform is based on real play volume data and is typically charged at a rate of 0.1 yuan per play. Advertisers not only consider the number of video plays by uploaders but also value the size of their fanbase in specific vertical fields.

Amidst a challenging economic environment and industry competition, the ongoing commercialization efforts of Bilibili since mid-2021 have encountered obstacles. A promotional agent responsible for platforms like Xiaohongshu, TikTok, and Bilibili said that the number of orders placed on Bilibili has decreased by almost half since the beginning of the year.

Bilibili is now focusing on increasing the supply of commercial traffic. During the first-quarter earnings conference, the platform’s COO Li Ni shared the company’s traffic strategy, stating that they would incorporate user business behavior as an indicator.