Year-round digital people, "swept away" Southeast Asian anchors

Produced | Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group

Author｜Zhou Yueming

Editor｜Miao Zhengqing

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI‌

In the TikTok live broadcast room at 1 o'clock in the morning, a stylishly dressed girl was still enthusiastically introducing a sneaker in fluent Vietnamese. Interestingly, this girl also appeared in different live broadcast rooms speaking Indonesian, Thai, and English at the same time, but her actions, tone of voice, and the products she introduced were surprisingly consistent.

This is actually a digital human product that Aji is using. As a veteran player of cross-border live broadcast, Aji has already formed his own anchor team in Southeast Asia. However, with the advent of the AIGC technology tide, he also gradually began to reduce the size of the team and divert the cost to digital humans.

Aji's move is not uncommon in the sea circle. Li Qi, another cross-border seller in the European and American markets, told Huxiu that he has recently replaced many advertising materials with AI-made videos. "Simple product explanation materials no longer need to find real people to appear on the scene, which saves me a lot of time and money." He said.

Like many fields, cross-border business is being profoundly changed by AIGC technology. Whether it is cross-border live broadcasting, advertising, product copywriting, or customer service communication, it seems that AIGC has begun to appear in every link. Moreover, due to the natural language gap, AIGC seems to be able to directly address the pain points of cross-border people, and countless cross-border businesses have begun to flock to AIGC eagerly.

"Regardless of real money or soft costs (such as time costs, communication costs), digital human videos are much lower than real-life materials."

Baizhou, head of the brand marketing of Youdao Ads, a digital marketing provider under Netease Youdao, told Tiger Sniff.

"Digital humans are used for cross-border live broadcasting in some garbage time and fragmented time, and sometimes the ROI will far exceed expectations." Fang Lin, a senior industry insider, told Tiger Sniff.

However, some cross-border merchants are not optimistic about AI technologies such as digital humans. "This model has poor interaction, no temperature, and the possibility of platform risk control. The risk is not low." Wang Xi, a senior cross-border businessman, told Huxiu that he had also consulted with Digital Human Technology Company, but after careful consideration, he chose to give up. .

Whether AIGC is a gold mine or a trap, the balance in the minds of cross-border merchants is constantly swinging.

Reduce manpower input

"According to the cases that have been operated, the production cost of overseas advertising using video materials produced by digital human technology has been reduced by at least half."" Baizhou told Tiger Sniff.

Greatly reducing investment is the most important reason why cross-border merchants choose to use AI technologies such as digital humans.

Tiger Sniff once consulted with a digital human technology company as a buyer, and its salesman constantly emphasized the cost advantage of digital human products in the process of communicating with Tiger Sniff.

**According to his introduction, the current digital human product models are roughly divided into three types, which are divided into public model, anchor customization and source code system. **

The so-called male model, that is, the public model, is a general-purpose digital person produced by the seller through cooperation with a model agency and obtained image authorization in batches. Buyers can choose anchors with different images, languages, and backgrounds on the public model website. According to the quotation of the salesman, the price of the male model is the lowest, which is 399 yuan/month and 2399/year.

However, the defects of the male model are also more obvious. Judging from the screen, the cutout marks are heavy, the body and expression are relatively stiff, and the background is relatively simple. In terms of effect, it is easy for male models to collide with faces and voices, not only cannot establish IP attributes, but may also trigger the risk of violation due to similarity.

A higher-level product is a customized digital human anchor. The fees for this type of model are much higher than those of public models, ranging from a few thousand yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan. The more exquisite the picture, the more natural the accent, and the higher the similarity to real people, the higher the fee. Some big anchors even cost millions of dollars to customize their digital personalities.

The general buyer only needs to provide a character image that can be cloned, shoot 3-5 minutes of video material for appearances, record the audio of daily live broadcasts, and wait a few days to get a customized digital human. The salesman told Tiger Sniff that the price of their company's customized version of the digital human anchor is 3999/permanent.

The model with the highest price is selling digital human system source code or SaaS software. **In the ad that the salesperson gave to Huxiu, "Buying a set of source code is equivalent to having a team that works non-stop" is bolded and marked red. According to his introduction, after purchasing the digital human source code, buyers can modify the code according to their own needs and preferences to produce different digital human beings. For this system, his quotation to Tiger Sniff is 50,000/permanent. **

However, according to Chao Kong, the person in charge of the data product line of Hangzhou Tekan Technology, told Tiger Sniff that the quality of cross-border digital human anchors in this price range is generally not good. At present, due to the uneven technology, the quality of digital human anchors also varies greatly.

**"Currently, the core of cross-border live broadcast digital human is mainly the ability of lip-sync." Chao Kong said to Huxiu. According to his introduction, the price of one of their digital human models is 6,000 yuan, while the subscription fee of saas software is only 6,000 yuan per year. It takes 44,000. **

When Huxiu communicated with the above-mentioned salesperson, it also found that its digital human technology application can support multiple languages in short videos, but the application only supports English as a foreign language during live broadcast, and Vietnamese, Indonesian and other minor languages Live streaming is not possible.

The price of digital human anchors is undoubtedly very attractive to many cross-border merchants.

**Take Indonesia, where Aji is deeply involved, as an example. It employs a local Indonesian anchor. The monthly salary of a more mature one is around 4,000 to 5,000 yuan, and the annual salary is 50,000 to 60,000 yuan. The monthly salary of an Indonesian anchor can basically buy a customized digital person all year round, and the annual salary can buy a complete set of software, which is equivalent to a multi-person team that is open all year round. **

Aji told Huxiu that after finishing the calculation, he did not hesitate to start using digital human anchors. He believes that once the test is optimized, the ROI will be considerable.

Reduce Hidden Costs

In fact, many cross-border merchants believe that the pain point hit by AIGC technology in the field of video and live broadcast is not only the price.

"Overseas real face-showing videos can certainly increase the effectiveness of advertising by 30%, but the time cost and communication cost are not low." Baizhou told Tiger Sniff.

According to his description, an overseas live-action video ranges from tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars. From script writing, English translation, selection, shooting, reshooting, to getting the original filming materials and corresponding local language scripts, at least Starting from 7 days, the time will be doubled in case of factors such as local holidays and complex scripts.

In addition, due to the time difference of actors from all over the world, it takes at least 3 days from the selection of actors to the official start of filming. Except for developed countries, some countries have very few actor resources and basically have no choice. Some actors' schedules are still very unstable, they will suddenly disappear or suddenly reject orders, and their performance level is also erratic.

"If you use AIGC technology, you can first find domestic actors to shoot, and then make overseas video materials by double-changing faces and adjusting different languages." Baizhou said. No matter from labor cost or time cost, the cost is greatly reduced.

**However, according to Baizhou, at present, this type of video is mostly suitable for performance advertisements placed on large media (such as Google, Facebook, etc.), and product promotion advertisements still need creative materials. **

In addition, products such as social apps that are driven by emotions to make decisions are more suitable for this type of advertising because of their shorter links, and the effect is better.

Digital human short videos can effectively reduce various intangible costs, while digital human live broadcasts can allow cross-border businesses to make full use of various fragmented time.

"In some garbage time periods and corner time periods, it is actually very suitable to use digital human live broadcasts." Fang Lin, a senior industry insider, told Tiger Sniff, and sometimes the effect will be unexpected. 50,000 in sales.

Still in a gray area

Of course, in the face of new technologies and means, many people are skeptical and worried.

"Compared with live broadcasters, AI digital humans still appear stiff, cold, and not warm enough, which will affect the conversion effect, especially in overseas live broadcast rooms that focus on entertainment and interaction." Wang Xi, a cross-border merchant, told Huxiu. His live broadcast room usually allows the anchor to play many interactive games with the audience, such as lottery, smashing golden eggs, etc., and some anchors already have a fixed fan base, and gradually form a personal IP. In Wang Xi’s eyes, these are digital people The anchor is far behind.

"What I need to consider is whether there is really a conversion rate for using digital human anchors in garbage time, and whether it will affect the overall data and tonality of the live account." Wang Xi added.

In addition to concerns about conversion rates, more people worry about the platform's attitude towards digital people.

For platforms such as TikTok, short videos and live broadcasts featuring real people are definitely conducive to the control of the overall content quality, so is digital human technology on the opposite side?

"The attitude of the platform is relatively ambiguous at present, and no clear rules have been given." Fang Lin said to Huxiu. In its view, on the one hand, the platform needs a steady stream of materials to enrich the content, and digital human video and digital human live broadcast can do this; but on the other hand, the platform will also control the quality of the content, if the digital human material similarity If it is too high and the content is unnatural, it will definitely damage the tonality of the platform, and the platform will most likely ban such content. At present, some digital human live broadcast rooms have triggered ban rules, and some have been judged as unmanned live broadcast.

However, at present, many cross-border merchants adopt models such as digital human anchors and real-person assisted broadcasting in order to avoid risks. This mode not only enhances interactivity, but also has real-person appearances, and the cost of auxiliary broadcasting is much lower than that of mature anchors. . For them, AIGC is still a gold mine with silt in the cross-border business.