On 25th July 2022, iResearch and Inmyshow Digital jointly released the "2022 China’s KOL Economy Industry Development Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"). The report conducted a detailed and systematic study of the industry chain and internal ecology related to China's KOL economy. This is the first time detailed analysis has been carried out to include emerging technology concepts such as the Metaverse under Web3.0 in this industry.

In 2024, the industrial scale will exceed 7 trillion

The report pointed out that the new KOL economy is one of the typical forms of China’s digital economy. According to statistics, the market size of the new KOL economy-related industries in China will reach 5.7 trillion in 2022, and the industry market scale of the new KOL economy-related industries in China is expected to exceed 7 trillion in 2024.

At present, the typical business ecology of the new China’s KOL economy is divided into three core business models: the traffic conversion from the KOL, the content conversion from KOL, and the conversion of supporting services from KOL. The overall market size of KOL marketing in 2021 exceeded 80 billion yuan impacted by pandemic, profit margin and sales market. From the perspective of investment categories, beauty and personal care, as the category with the largest year-on-year growth, has accounted for 26.5% of the category due to factors such as market demand and the high ROI of KOL marketing. At the same time, low-frequency and high-customer unit-price products such as automobiles and furniture appliances have also entered the market.

Metaverse brings all-round impact on the new KOL economy

The report mentioned that with the development of blockchain technology, digital humans and virtual IPs have entered the new KOL economy.
The introduction of virtual spokespersons shortens the IP authorization cooperation link and reduces the cooperation risk which is favored by brand owners. In terms of content creation, the promotion of blockchain technology makes the KOL’s traffic gradually turn to asset value, and the content creation of KOL will be transformed into digital assets in the virtual world.