Luo Yonghao’s “digital clone” live broadcast debut achieved good results, with a GMV of more than 55 million yuan and more than 13 million viewers, even exceeding the record of live broadcast. However, can digital human live streaming really become the future of live streaming? This article will delve into the current situation and challenges of digital human live broadcasting, analyze its advantages and disadvantages in terms of traffic, cost, technology, etc., and compare the practices of other leading anchors and MCN institutions to reveal the true fate behind digital human live broadcasting.
A few days ago, Luo Yonghao’s “digital clone” live broadcast finally made the slightly quiet goods industry of 618 finally have a splash.
It is reported that the digital human “Luo Yonghao” made his live broadcast debut on Baidu Preferred, which is not inferior to the real person, and even slightly better.
Its GMV exceeded 55 million yuan, and the number of online viewers exceeded 13 million, which was 30% higher than the per capita viewing time of Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast in May, and the GMV surpassed the real-life one-hour performance in just 26 minutes.
If you count from 2021, when the metaverse debuted and brought fire to the era of “virtual digital humans”, this track has grown for four years. At the beginning, digital humans and virtual anchors also caused ridicule from time to time, but now unlike the past, before Luo Yonghao, there were some reports of personally “certifying” digital humans.
For example, the “2025 Virtual Digital Human Industry Report” shows that in 2024, Baidu’s GMV of selected digital human live broadcasts will increase by 11 times year-on-year, and some brands will achieve a 50% increase in conversion rates and a 3-fold increase in the test drive rate of car live broadcast rooms through digital humans. iiMedia Consulting shows that the penetration rate of virtual digital human live broadcast has exceeded 60%, becoming one of the driving forces for the development of e-commerce.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
View details >
Let the “digital twin” sell goods, and he is happy, which is currently one of the major selling points of Luo Yonghao’s strong admiration of digital human live broadcast. But can this good wish really come true?
Luo Yonghao “urgently needs” new traffic
Interestingly, this is not the first time Luo Yonghao has competed with a digital human anchor.
As early as 2022, the “Daily Economic News” reported an article “The head virtual anchor brings goods, and the sales volume is not as good as Luo Yonghao’s fraction”, at that time, it was the time when all kinds of virtual idols were in the limelight, from the perspective of the data of bringing goods, the cumulative sales of the head virtual anchor “I don’t eat for nothing” in the past three months reached 10.8899 million yuan, and 37 related live broadcasts.
However, Luo Yonghao, who was the head of Douyin at that time, had cumulative sales of 915 million yuan in live broadcasts during the same period, and 128 related live broadcasts, which was obvious. After three years, Luo Yonghao personally “incarnated” a digital human, does this live broadcast, which far exceeds the real-life results, really once again confirm the feasibility of digital anchors?
If you look closely, it’s not necessarily.
First of all, the current space for digital humans to bring goods is probably not as large as imagined. According to a report by the Head Leopard Research Institute, under the scenario of daily traffic, the sales of virtual anchors in the first three days after the application of the live broadcast room can indeed reach 150%-200% of the live broadcast, but the sales after 3 days will quickly fall back and stabilize at 10%-30% of the live broadcast room.
Secondly, in the era of virtual anchors, the influence of the anchor itself is not large, and public information shows that the virtual anchor itself actually accounts for less than 10% of the traffic impact, but the IP of the anchor’s image, voice actors, and even the “people in the middle” behind it are the key to attracting traffic.
Last year, 618, digital human live broadcast set off a wave.
At that time, this field was well versed in the “star benefit”, and the digital images presented were all Internet celebrity entrepreneurs with their own traffic, such as Dong Mingzhu, Jieliya’s “towel young master” Shi Zhancheng and other 21 president digital people. According to iiMedia Consulting, in 2024, up to 42.23% of the AI digital human types purchased by Chinese companies are digital celebrities.
Today, this logic has been transferred to Luo Yonghao, not so much that Luo Yonghao has achieved lying down with the help of AI technology, but rather that it is the digital human “borrowing” the aura of the former head anchor and Luo Yonghao’s Internet celebrity effect for many years, so that he can shine in the live broadcast room.
However, one thing to note is that Luo Yonghao’s traffic efficiency can always “bless” digital humans? In the past two years, Luo Yonghao’s ability to bring goods has visibly declined with the naked eye, and after experiencing the real version of “true return”, he has repeatedly withdrawn from the network, started a business, returned, and frequently changed the live broadcast platform…… It has already made its status in bringing goods much worse than before.
It can also be glimpsed from the financial report of “Make a Friend”.
According to the data, the GMV of making a friend in 2022 will exceed 7 billion yuan, and the GMV in 2023 will increase by 71% year-on-year to 12 billion yuan; However, in the first half of 2024, the GMV growth rate declined significantly, with a year-on-year increase of only 18% in the first half of the year, and for the whole year of 2024, the net profit attributable to the parent company of Make a Friend decreased by 31.6% year-on-year; adjusted net profit decreased by 32.4% year-on-year.
During this period, Luo Yonghao, who had announced that he would quit the network to start a business, was not really absent, and even during the Double 11 period in 2024, Luo Yonghao himself personally sat in the live broadcast room almost at full attendance. Last year, when Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui were on the hot search, Luo Yonghao ridiculed his old club more than once in the live broadcast room.
This move caused many netizens to complain, and on August 8, 2024, Luo Yonghao posted a long post on Weibo in response.
Perhaps it is precisely because Luo Yonghao is no longer as popular as before that he made a friend that he set his sights on digital humans in the next step. Last year, Make a Friend presented a contradiction throughout the year: its revenue was still growing, but its profits began to shrink rapidly. Analyzing the surge in costs, sales and marketing expenses increased by 45% year-on-year to 420 million yuan, mainly used for the signing fee and traffic purchase of head anchors.
In 2024, the overall GMV growth rate of the live broadcast e-commerce industry will drop from 42% in 2023 to 27%, and iiMedia Consulting data shows that the average daily viewing time of users will experience negative growth for the first time, about -3.2%. In the context of the head anchor losing its charm and the traffic procurement getting higher and higher, making a friend feels pressured.
The emergence of digital humans seems to have alleviated the company’s tension in cost, talent, and traffic to a certain extent, but unfortunately, although the traffic of the head anchor is disappearing little by little, the appearance of the digital anchor still needs to rely on his popularity, from a certain point of view, this seems to form a traffic circle.
Why don’t “Li Jiaqi” use digital humans?
In fact, before Luo Yonghao, some big anchors and leading MCN agencies had formed a relationship with digital humans.
For example, in July 2023, Taobao’s head anchor Lie’er Baby and the digital human “Lie’er Baby” will be broadcast live on the same stage; In August 2023, Qianxun announced the AI digital human live broadcast business; In February 2024, AI digital human YOOKI entered Taobao Live; In June 2024, the beautiful wrist will launch a digital human live broadcast.
However, these explorations passed by in the hustle and bustle of the cargo track, leaving basically no value.
Especially Li Jiaqi’s beautiful wrist, when this MCN agency makes efforts to make digital human anchors, it neither let real people and digital people share the stage like Lie’er Baby, nor does it directly “clone” the big anchor like making a friend, but skips Li Jiaqi’s traffic signboard and reshapes a new image.
During 618 in 2024, the digital human anchor of the beautiful wrist “Yiyi” completed three live broadcasts, mainly focusing on the two peak hours of 9:30 a.m. and 11 noon. Judging from the data, the number of views at the 9:30 live broadcast was 61,000, and the number of views at noon reached 213,000 and 868,000 respectively.
This traffic is almost negligible compared to Li Jiaqi.
A puzzling question emerges: instead of making a friend, why did the beautiful wrist choose to surpass Li Jiaqi, a ready-made traffic IP, and start over on a new track? The answer to this question may hide the true fate of digital human anchors in the live streaming industry.
It is undeniable that digital human live broadcast has indeed brought certain efficiency improvements to the industry, especially at three levels: the geometric growth of time value, the disruptive optimization of cost structure, and the industrialization of content production. But aside from these factors, from the perspective of the big anchor himself, consumers, and the entire live broadcast market, the advantages of digital humans are lackluster.
Let’s look at the anchor level first.
Since last year, many head anchors have actively or passively stopped broadcasting. The platform is de-anchorized, the MCN is unbound from a single character, and the head anchor acts in a low-key manner…… Together, they form the current new ecology of live streaming, and phenomenal anchors like Li Jiaqi have reached the point where their personal words and deeds are bound to MCNs.
Dispersing the IP image to digital humans is not only not in line with Li Jiaqi’s “cautious” development path at this stage, but it is also difficult to clarify the responsible subjects for future turmoil.
Let’s look at the consumer level.
In the past two years, countless houses have collapsed in the live streaming industry, and consumers’ trust in live anchors is still declining year by year, not to mention virtual anchors, and there is a set of data on Zhihu: from 2020 to 2025, consumers’ trust in live streaming e-commerce has plummeted from 72% to 43%.
Although there is no exact data to test consumers’ specific attitudes towards digital anchors, in 2024, the State Administration for Market Regulation disclosed 6,969 complaints related to “intelligent customer service”, a year-on-year increase of 56.3%, with slow response, nonsense, low processing efficiency, and lack of emotional value…… It has become the hardest hit area of AI customer service.
Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast, as a technical party, Baidu has done its best to present the “vitality” of a digital anchor, using AI to generate a total of 97,000 words of script-style explanation content, completing 8,300 action designs, and calling the knowledge base 13,000 times. But not every MCN has such strong technical support behind it.
For example, the digital anchors of the beautiful wrist are far inferior to real people in terms of content presentation and product recommendation, and the data shows that the number of products on the shelves of the beautiful wrist “one by one” live broadcast is about 130.
Although it covers multiple categories such as food and beverage, digital appliances, and daily necessities, it is still not as rich as the live broadcast room. The “richness of goods” directly affects consumers’ willingness to consume. It is reported that among the current factors affecting consumers’ willingness to buy, product quality accounts for 34.69%, product discounts account for 32.80%, and product richness accounts for 30.61%.
Finally, the entire live broadcast industry.
At present, whether digital anchors can smoothly integrate into the live streaming ecosystem is still a question, at least Channels, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms have an intriguing attitude towards digital humans, last year, several mainstream streaming platforms have issued relevant governance statements on AI delivery, among them, Channels’ response to virtual anchors is particularly conservative.
The reason is also very good: the overall age of the platform users is relatively old, and this consumer group has a weak ability to distinguish between digital humans.
According to the “Statistical Report on the Development of China’s Internet Network”, as of June 2024, the proportion of netizens aged 50 and above has increased from 25.8% in June 2022 to 33.3%, with 157 million elderly netizens aged 60 and above, and the online shopping usage rate of elderly netizens is 69.8%.
To sum up, the future of AI is uncertain, compared with Luo Yonghao, Li Jiaqi and others have only chosen a relatively safe path.
Is the “dream of democracy broadcasting” going to be cut off by AI?
Since about 2019, Internet celebrities and anchors have become the ideal professions of this generation of young people, and this ideal has not even died out so far.
According to the “China Online Audiovisual Development Research Report (2025)”, as of December last year, the number of online live broadcast users in our country was 833 million, a year-on-year increase of 17.37 million, accounting for 75.2% of the total number of netizens, a year-on-year increase of 0.5 percentage points, of which the scale of professional anchors reached 38.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.5 times.
Will the emergence of digital human anchors have a huge impact on young people’s “anchor dreams”?
Judging from the current reaction of some MCN institutions, an impact is inevitable. According to iiMedia Consulting data, 42.86% of companies said that their operating costs were reduced by 20%-30% after using AI digital humans, and 42.55% of companies said that their operating costs were reduced by 10%-20%.
Cost reduction is self-evident for MCN agencies in the post-live streaming era.
After all, Crowley’s research data shows that less than 10% of MCN institutions have achieved double revenue and profit growth in the past year. In 2024, 61.4% of institutions said that it is difficult to find new growth businesses; 60.3% of institutions believe that competitors in the same field continue to increase.
The future of digital humans themselves is gradually becoming bright under the foreshadowing of various external environments.
The “Virtual Digital Human In-depth Industry Report” predicts that by 2030, the overall market size of virtual digital humans in our country will reach 270.3 billion yuan. The Action Plan for the Integration and Development of Virtual Reality and Industry Applications proposes that by 2026, the overall scale of our country’s virtual reality industry will exceed 350 billion yuan.
Looking at Baidu alone, Baidu does not give up e-commerce, but also focuses on the development of e-commerce on digital humans. According to the data, up to now, more than 100,000 merchants have been broadcast live on Baidu through digital humans, covering dozens of industries such as e-commerce, education, doctors, and law.
Despite this, young people who want to continue to be anchors don’t need to be too pessimistic.
Although digital humans are embarking on the road of bringing goods in a high-profile manner, compared with the flexibility and professionalism of live broadcasts, digital humans are obviously still far from being able to do so. What’s more interesting is that in addition to the technology filter, some practical factors may be the real reason: live streaming has been running for a long time, and Baidu seems to be “no one available”.
Of course, Baidu is not without training live anchors.
On August 30 last year, Zhu Shimao made his live broadcast debut at Baidu Preferred, Chen Peisi was present to help, and the two combined to open up a new way of playing with sketches, and the GMV of a single game exceeded 13 million. At the same time, Baidu Preferred gave a set of data: in 2024, the number of merchants will increase by 594% year-on-year, the average number of daily anchors will increase by 682%, and the number of talents will increase by 624% from the third quarter of last year.
However, the life cycle of celebrities is limited, and it is not a long-term solution to stimulate consumption only by nostalgia and feelings.
As for the number of talents, although the number of domestic anchors is increasing, in fact, it is difficult to discover high-quality anchors. According to the “New Career Development Report for Online Anchors”, as of December 2023, 15.08 million people in China regard online anchors as their main business, and it is expected that by 2025, the talent gap in our country’s live broadcast industry will be 19.415 million.
When Douyin and Kuaishou are busy creating gods, Taobao and JD.com have their own e-commerce genes, Baidu has not ushered in its own head anchor for a long time, whether digital humans can fill this gap, the answer is not very clear, and the “dream of national democracy” of young people may be able to persist a little longer. At the forefront of consumption, to provide you with professional and extremely neutral business observations, this article is an original article, and any form of reprinting of the author’s relevant information is not accepted.
