According to the prospectus, at present, interesting headlines mainly earn income by providing advertising services. The income from 20 17 is RMB 5170,000 (US$ 78170,000), which is nearly nine times higher than the income from 20 16 of RMB 58 million (US$ 8.8 million). In the first six months to June 30th, 200018, the revenue of Fun Headline was RMB 7178 million (185 million USD), which was RMB 73 million (162 million USD) higher than that of the same period last year.
In addition, the number of monthly users of Fun Headlines is about 48.8 million, and the average number of daily users is about 1765438+ 10,000. Each user spends an average of 55.6 minutes on interesting headlines every day.
However, it is still in a state of loss, including a net loss of 94.8 million yuan (US$ 6.5438+0.43 million) in 2065.438+0.09 million yuan (US$ 6.5438+0.6 million) in 2006. In the six months before June 30th, 20 18, the net loss reached 514.4 million yuan (US$ 77.7 million), while in the same period of 20 17, the net loss was 28.7 million yuan (US$ 4.3 million), further expanding the loss.
The adjusted net loss in 20 17 is RMB 910.4 million (USD 65,438+USD 0.38 million) and RMB 2010.5 million (USD 65,438+USD 0.6 million); For the first six months ended June 30th, 200018, the adjusted net loss was RMB 329,654,380+million (USD 49.7 million), compared with RMB 28.3 million (USD 4.3 million) in the same period of 2065,438+07.
In the six months before June 30, 2065438+2008, the company's equity incentive expenditure was RMB 6.5438+58.6 million (US$ 24.8 million), involving some common shares actually owned by the co-founders. The above ordinary shares are subject to the share sales restriction contract signed in June 20 18 and 1 year, and included in the financial data of the first six months as of June 30, 201year.
The shareholding situation of senior executives and directors of Fun Headline Company is as follows: Tan Siliang, founder and chairman of Fun Headline, holds 2710.2 million ordinary shares, with a shareholding ratio of 39%; Li Lei, founder and CEO of Fun Headline, holds 765,438+025,000 ordinary shares, with a shareholding ratio of 65,438+00.2%. Executives and directors hold a total of 34.25 million ordinary shares, with a total shareholding ratio of 49.2%.
The main shareholder of other interesting headlines is Qu World Limited, holding 9.5 million ordinary shares, with a shareholding ratio of 65,438+03.7%; Tencent's Xiangqi Investment (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. holds 5.42 million ordinary shares, with a shareholding ratio of 7.8%.
It is still necessary to aim at the "information industry products" of the user groups in cities below the third line.
Interesting headline was founded on June 8, 20 16. According to the ranking of Cheetah Big Data 20 17 China APP, Fun Headlines ranked 4 1 in the whole APP, second only to Tencent and Today Headlines in information products. Especially in the TOP25 list of news information in June 20 17, the growth rate of interesting headlines exceeded 500%.
Founder Tan Siliang once told Tencent. com that 20 15 chose a bottom-up perspective when considering the direction of entrepreneurship. "People in cities below the third line are already very valuable, but they just caught up with the time node when the mobile Internet broke out." Judging from the current data, men and users over 4 1 year old are the main traffic of interesting headlines. Users with low, medium and low consumption levels accounted for 62.87%.
In view of the interesting headlines of users in cities below the third tier, the operating methodology of "online earning mode" was initially adopted, and cash incentives were integrated into a whole set of user growth processes such as innovation, activation, activity and retention to guide user behavior. Specific ways to earn money online include registering gold coins, signing in gold coins, watching news gold coins, inviting friends to register gold coins (for apprentices), sharing news links with friends and so on.
Apprenticeship is the most important way to get customers for interesting headlines: once a friend registers for interesting headlines through the QR code or invitation code you share, you can get a certain cash reward. Not only that, the master can get 20 gold coins as a tribute for every article that the apprentice reads in an interesting headline. At present, Master, who ranks first in the interesting headlines, has more than 40,000 apprentices and a total income of more than 80,000 yuan.
Compared with the mature e-commerce platform, it has already exceeded the customer acquisition cost of 140 yuan, and the customer acquisition cost that is considered as an interesting headline of "paying money" to users is only 3-4 yuan. According to the prospectus, by the end of 20 17, its registered users had exceeded 70 million, with a cumulative loss of 1590 USD, and the cost of each new registered user was less than 0.23 USD (about 1.6 yuan RMB).
After winning customers, interesting headlines also use social fission to spread and continue to use gold coins to reward and retain users.
Gold coins are self-created monetary units, similar to Q coins, which can be exchanged with RMB in different proportions. There is no withdrawal threshold on the platform. However, the exchange rate fluctuates every day. According to the official statement of Interesting Headlines, the exchange ratio between gold coins and RMB is linked to the advertising revenue of Interesting Headlines. The higher the advertising revenue, the more valuable the gold coins are.
From the beginning of 20 18, the gold coin exchange of interesting headlines was basically maintained at the level of 1000 gold coins of 50 cents. In other words, as long as users complete all novice tasks, they can get at least 3.5 yuan cash reward. According to the prospectus, this method of obtaining customers and retaining users is called "innovative user account system and gamification user loyalty programs" by the interesting headline, which thinks that they are the pioneers of the application of this loyalty programs in the mobile content industry.
In March of this year, led by Tencent, Fun Headline completed a series B financing of more than 200 million US dollars, and a large amount of external traffic also came from Tencent. The four main sharing channels are friends circle, WeChat friends, QQ friends and SMS, and three of them all point to Tencent.
In the prospectus, Fun Headline also stated that its strategic target is still the user groups in cities below the third tier in China. Because this underserved market contains huge opportunities, and the penetration rate of top platforms is not high, there are still many opportunities for Fun Headline.
The biggest obstacle to the sustainable growth of content or interesting titles
Official website, an interesting title, shows that the company focuses on "light reading" and entertainment. June 20 18, 5.9 million interesting treaties were added, including about 2.9 million videos. In the choice of information content, interesting headlines really meet the needs of third-and fourth-tier users: entertainment, humor, emotion, health care and other five or six categories account for the vast majority of traffic, but interesting headlines do not strictly control the content, and many low-quality articles are even doped with "health common sense."
Moreover, the advertisements of interesting headlines are mainly awarded to users who read information, which is different from the fact that most platforms will mainly award advertisements to content creators, and it is difficult to support more than 230,000 freelancers registered on the platform to produce high-quality content for interesting headlines. In the prospectus, the interesting headline also regards "whether content providers continue to contribute content to our platform" as one of its challenges.
Moreover, the gold coin incentive mechanism of interesting headlines has also triggered many "bonus hunter" behaviors: many users will find some short articles to read in order to quickly complete their daily "reading tasks". "Brush amount" will inevitably lead to data distortion, which is a big obstacle on the road of interesting headline transformation. And in Baidu Post Bar, someone shared how to make headlines by means of plug-ins. One of the more popular methods is to make scripts through night god simulator, key wizard and other software, and constantly click on the content to simulate reading, in order to earn the reward for disciples to read tributes.
When Fun Headline completed the $200 million Series B financing, Chairman Lei Jianping also admitted in an interview that Fun Headline was relatively thin in content and planned to mainly use financing for content construction.
At the same time, the profit model of interesting headlines is too single. In the prospectus, the interesting headline said that at present, it mainly obtains income by providing advertising services. As early as April 20 17, interesting headlines have been commercialized. According to the interface news report, the account opening price in March 20 18 was 5,600 yuan, including 5,000 yuan for advertising and 600 yuan for service. The customer categories with the best conversion rate are generally freckle, acne, cosmetics and weight loss. The basic click rate of customers is around 8%, and the click cost is 0.2 yuan.
In the prospectus, the interesting headlines are not only at a loss. As of June 30th, 20 18, the adjusted net loss was RMB 329 10/00000 (US$ 49.7 million), even ten times the loss in the same period last year.
In their prospectus, they also take "improving profitability" as one of the strategies: the interesting headline said that in addition to articles and short films, they also planned to further diversify the content, covering literature, casual games, live broadcasts, animation and other categories, to create a comprehensive light entertainment content ecosystem and explore more profit opportunities.
However, it also shows that after rough customer acquisition and user retention, interesting headlines will follow the old path together with today's headlines: subsidizing content and creating a comprehensive light entertainment content ecosystem.