Right from the start, people are asking how much they can sell. This isn't fair to virtual influencers.

Xuchang, a county-level city under the administration of Henan Province, is also known as the "Home Appliance Capital of China." In 2023, the production value of small home appliances in Xuchang exceeded 10 billion yuan. When it comes to live e-commerce entering industrial belts, Xuchang might be a sample worth researching.

Xuchang residents started their journey with production and manufacturing, expanding their businesses across various regions, bringing in household appliance components OEM and processing businesses from major cities and large enterprises. After years of accumulation, they finally achieved significant scale. Now, the "first-generation" entrepreneurs from the 1950s and 1960s have aged, and the "second-generation" is gradually taking over the family businesses, adopting different management strategies compared to their predecessors.

Liu Maoyuan is a merchant in Xuchang's small home appliance industry belt, attempting to introduce virtual influencers to address the local business owners' talent needs. In Xuchang, many business owners want to establish branded accounts but lack experience and struggle to speak on camera. If they delegate this to their employees, they worry about instability due to potential staff turnover.

In June of this year, Liu Maoyuan organized around twenty to thirty Xuchang business owners interested in virtual influencers for a visit to Hangzhou. Most of them were encountering virtual influencers for the first time and had many questions on the spot. For instance, after purchase, how much can virtual influencers actually contribute? Will the platform impose viewer limits?

Quantum Planet is a virtual influencer service provider serving businesses in industrial belts like Nankang. Chen Dan mentioned that many clients immediately inquire about how much in sales virtual influencers can generate. This isn't fair to virtual influencers. He believes that within the entire live e-commerce process, digital humans are just a tool, at best a service, and they demand high team operational capabilities, including scriptwriting, audience engagement, and supply chain management.

Xiao Kedou is a massive creative trainer, currently conducting digital human operation live-streaming training at the Douyin South China live streaming base. He believes there's no absolute fit or unfit; most things require testing. Digital humans struggle to attract organic traffic and mainly rely on short video paid promotions to direct users to their live streams, especially on Douyin.

Among major e-commerce platforms, Taobao and JD.com host the most virtual influencer live streams, but the loading rate of these live streams into the public domain is generally less than 5‰, even lower than that of live streams without hosts and looping promotional videos. Regarding product sales, the majority are standard products, especially branded products.

For example, on Taobao Live, aside from live streams by merchants like Colorkey and Xuan Ma, most belong to Taobao's official accounts, such as the official accounts of various Taobao factories (selling cost-effective products for industrial belts) and Miaosuda (Alibaba's self-operated electrical appliance retail store).

Similarly, on JD.com, after 12 a.m., virtual influencer live streams are recommended to the public domain (clearly labeled as virtual influencers), primarily featuring brands like Wyeth, Braun, Ulike, and Adopt-a-Cow. It is reported that even during the nighttime, the traffic in virtual influencer live streams is generally lower than that in human-hosted live streams. For instance, in the JD.com self-operated flagship store for L'Oréal, human-hosted live streams garner 20-40 times the likes and viewers compared to virtual influencers.

Businesses often ask whether virtual influencers can walk around sample rooms. Chen Dan believes that virtual influencers lack a sense of experience, which is an objective pain point. Quantum Planet's approach to promoting virtual influencers leans toward substituting for hosts with insufficient capabilities, allowing virtual influencers and human hosts to complement each other. The prime time from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. is reserved for human-hosted live streams, while virtual influencers handle "24/7" live streams during other hours.

For most low-cost products, people make decisions more quickly, and virtual influencers can guide them to make purchases. However, for products involving experience, virtual influencers' effectiveness falls short of real hosts. For instance, with mattresses, where the comfort level needs to be felt, virtual influencers can only express this through text, while real hosts can physically test and demonstrate. In such cases, virtual influencers can assist in the presentation.

A business owner in Jiaozuo, Henan, sells automotive plastic renovators through Taobao Live. Virtual influencers explain the product's features, while real hosts answer questions in the live stream. The single-product price is 12.7 yuan, and they sell over 100 units per month. Similar combination live-streaming models are prevalent on Taobao, but sales revenue is generally low.

Virtual Influencers Rush into Meituan, Kuaishou, and Taobao Live
Mastering scripts and repeatedly discussing products is enough

Overall, e-commerce platforms are cautious about virtual influencers. Compared to e-commerce, local life is undoubtedly a market more willing to accept virtual influencers. Especially on Kuaishou and Meituan, numerous virtual influencer live streams have emerged, primarily concentrated in second-tier, third-tier, and fourth-tier cities.

Uniee revealed that, to counter Douyin's advances, Meituan views live streaming as a strategic focus this year. Meituan has not only opened more than 20 official live streaming rooms but also mobilized regional agents to participate in live streaming. They cover various categories, such as travel, beauty, mall discounts, group buying, medicine purchasing, grocery shopping, and car services. These live streams even extend to county-level cities, like Yunxiao in Fujian, Jianli in Hubei, Rongchang in Chongqing, Yidu in Hubei, Jiangshan in Zhejiang, Panshi in Jilin, and Zhongshan in Guangdong.

During this process, virtual influencers have played a crucial role. Currently, aside from several travel and lodging official accounts, many businesses and agents in Yidu, Hubei, have been using virtual influencers for live streaming since June 27.

Compared to Meituan, Kuaishou has even more virtual influencer live streams in the local life sector. On the morning of August 14, uniee compiled a list of the top 50 group-buying hosts in Baoding, Hebei. Among the five live streams that started, two featured virtual influencers. In the top 50 group-buying hosts in Chongqing, four live streams were active, and three featured virtual influencers.

Hangzhou is the most developed city for live e-commerce, with many brands even placing their live streaming teams there. On the evening of August 14, uniee simultaneously checked the top 50 group-buying hosts on Kuaishou and Douyin. On Douyin, 16 live streams were active, all hosted by real people, while on Kuaishou, 23 live streams were active, with more than half being virtual influencers. After analyzing the category rankings for local life on Douyin, including food, entertainment, accommodation, leisure, and beauty, no virtual influencer live streams were found.

Currently, most virtual influencer live streams on Kuaishou in the local life category belong to chain brands, including the "Four Kings of the Downmarket," which are Meixue Bingcheng (Milk Tea Ice Cream City), Huali Shi (Hua Lai Shi), Zhengxin Jipai (Zheng Xin Fried Chicken), and Juewei Yabo (Juewei Duck Neck). If you observe carefully, even in densely populated cities like Hangzhou, virtual influencers' live streaming and sales data are not astounding compared to real hosts, but they represent a disturbing reality, considering their minimal overall investment.

Reading Notes is a virtual influencer live stream from Xi'an with 8,403 followers, ranking ninth in Kuaishou's Xi'an group-buying live streams. The number of concurrent viewers has remained around 50-60 people recently, mainly selling Xi'an travel and lodging products, as well as local dining discount vouchers. Since starting in July this year, it has generated sales of over 80,000 yuan.

Another example is Huang Shang Huang Jiangya (Huang's Roasted Duck), with 6,664 followers, ranking 28th in Kuaishou's national group-buying live streams. This account started live streaming at the end of May this year and began using virtual influencers on June 21. So far, it has sold over 8,463 units, with sales exceeding 550,000 yuan. Compared to real host live streams, it's hard to label these virtual influencer live streams as successful. However, considering their minimal overall investment, their return on investment is quite substantial.

If you look closely, you'll notice that these virtual influencer live streams often focus on single-product live streaming for a limited time or have a very restricted product range. The problem with virtual influencer live streams is their lack of flexibility. When users inquire about product-related information, they often respond rigidly with phrases like "We've received your question; I'll answer it after explaining."

But for users, this doesn't seem to be a significant issue. "In the live stream, virtual influencers are just hosts or customer service representatives. They don't do anything else; they just keep repeating information about the product, and that's enough," says Linzi.

Platform Policies: The Sword of Damocles
Virtual Influencers Haven't Lowered the Bar for Live Streaming

As virtual influencers transition from concept to live streaming, controversies and risks follow closely. The Sword of Damocles hanging over virtual influencer live streams is the platform they inhabit.

Based on the analysis above, it's evident that Kuaishou and Meituan's local life business are the most accommodating toward virtual influencers, followed by traditional e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com, while platforms like Douyin and Video Number have stricter limitations. Particularly in terms of public domain traffic support, local life significantly outperforms e-commerce, and e-commerce with shelf space outperforms interest-based e-commerce.

On May 9, Douyin introduced platform regulations and industry initiatives for AI-generated content (AIGC), sparking discussions within the AIGC community. According to usage, virtual influencers fall into two categories: "entertainment-type" virtual hosts and functional virtual influencers for live e-commerce. After the new regulations were enacted, Douyin expressed support for the development of virtual influencers, but they must undergo certification, and completely unattended AI live streams are prohibited.

While Video Number hasn't directly specified regulations, in recent guidelines on live e-commerce (low-quality details - no face reveal live streams), it mentioned that if influencers and merchants fail to show their faces for an extended period while promoting products, it constitutes a violation. Tencent may take various measures, including limiting traffic, restricting live streams, banning from storefronts, and limiting transactions.

Linzi believes that the core of virtual influencer live streams lies not in the technology but in the control of operational methods. "Douyin is upgrading every day. Is our current aesthetic in line with Douyin's aesthetic? Right now, it might be, but will it still be in the future?" Linzi says. Currently, operating virtual influencer live streams also requires scarce talent, with many business owners secretly adding Linzi's employees on WeChat to recruit them for operating their virtual influencer live streams.

"Virtual influencers have only lowered the bar for hosts, not for live streaming itself," Linzi says. The smallest unit of a real host live stream team consists of one host, one central controller, and one operator. In contrast, a virtual influencer live stream team only requires one operator, and the live stream's effectiveness depends on the operator's capabilities.

Haiyue Furniture is a local furniture company in Nankang, which started its live e-commerce efforts in 2017. Its live streaming team has grown to around 70-80 people, including 28 hosts. Now, some of the former hosts have transitioned to assist virtual influencer live streams, complementing the virtual influencers' script performances. Some hosts couldn't cooperate effectively with virtual influencers and had to resign.

To prevent live streams from being banned, Haiyue Furniture generally opts for real host-assisted virtual influencer live streams, essentially making them real host live streams with virtual influencers in the background. For example, when they have to do a 24-hour live stream every day, they typically pause the stream for a while before restarting it to comply with the platform's policies.

Virtual influencers entering live streams primarily optimize real hosts' resource allocation, with humans still needed behind the scenes. After adopting virtual influencers, Haiyue Furniture's e-commerce team changed its approach. For most non-core products, they use AI to generate text descriptions without investing too much effort, as long as it drives some traffic. But for products they want to emphasize, with high conversion rate requirements, they have real hosts edit the descriptions and focus on explaining the product's design concepts.

Currently, many live streaming rooms on major platforms feature industrial belt merchants and local life businesses from third-tier to fifth-tier cities, with most live streams targeting specific business scenarios. Combining virtual influencers' explanations and live demonstrations with real hosts' assistance can enhance the live streaming experience without violating platform traffic rules.