JD.com Photo:VCG

One of China's major e-commerce platforms JD announced on Thursday that the company has become the exclusive interactive partner of the 2022 Spring Festival Gala by the China Media Group (CMG), and will lead the charge in sharing digital red packets during the event.

JD said that the interactive activity will last from January 24 until the Lantern Festival on February 15, issuing a total of 1.5 billion yuan ($230 million) in red packets and other prizes.

Analysts said that JD won the right to cooperate with the Spring Festival Gala this year due to the low profile of other major Internet companies including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and Douyin, some of which have been involved in government anti-monopoly investigations, with Gala event organizers preferring a partner without any controversy.

JD said that it has the necessary technology systems in place, in addition to establishing a specialist working group to support the campaign, using dynamic rules to split algorithm, in order to support the peak traffic during the Gala, and providing users with a safe, stable and convenient red packet interactive experience.

Since 2015, Chinese Internet companies have taken turns to share red packets with the nation during the annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala as a means to gain both traffic and users.

In 2015, WeChat Pay made its debut during the Spring Festival Gala, handing out digital red packets, and official data showed that the total number of WeChat interactions during the 2015 Gala exceeded 11 billion times.

However, with the normalization of online red pockets and the fall in ratings for the Spring Festival Gala, issuing red packets at the Gala has become a loss-making exercise for corporate partners.

In 2019, Baidu became partner of the Spring Festival Gala, and the daily active users of its application quickly climbed from 160 million to 300 million during the event, but many users chose to uninstall the app after snapping up their red packets

Experts noted that the Gala still aligned with company's brand advertising needs, and remains one of the most effective ways to market directly to China's domestic audience.

As the level of frenzy to snap up online red packets during the Gala has dropped, analysts suggest more innovation on how the event is run, while making it more accessible to a larger group of people .

Global Times