Good day and good evening. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tencent Holdings Limited 2022 fourth quarter and annual results announcement webinar. I'm Wendy Huang from Tencent IR team. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. For participants who dial in by phone, if you wish to ask a question, please press five on your telephone to raise your hand. If you are accessing from the Tencent Meeting or VooV Meeting application, please click the raise hand button at the bottom left, and please be advised that today's webinar is being recorded. Before we start the presentation, we would like to remind you that it includes forward-looking statements which are underlined by a number of risks and uncertainties, and it may not be realized in the future for various reasons.
Information about general market conditions is coming from a variety of sources outside of Tencent. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures that should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for measures of the group's financial performance held in accordance with IFRS. For a detailed discussion of risk factors and non-IFRS measures, please refer to our disclosure documents on the IR section of our website. Let me introduce the management team on the webinar tonight. Our Chairman and CEO, Pony Ma, will kick off with a short overview. President Martin Lau will discuss strategy review. Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell will provide a business review. Chief Financial Officer John Lo will conclude with financial discussion before we open the floor for questions. I will now pass it to Pony.
Great. Thank you, Wendy. Good evening. Thank you everyone for joining us. During 2022, we increased our business efficiency, sharpening our focus on four activities, and developed new services and revenue lines, positioning us for a sustainable growth model in the future. A few notable achievements. In Weixin, Video Accounts became a leading short-form video and live streaming platform in China, while Mini Programs achieved strong growth in both DAU and GMV, contributing to the real economics' development. For games, domestically, we significantly reduced our minor's time spent while sustaining our market leadership. Internationally, we elevate VALORANT as a top global franchise and publish two out of the top three new mobile games of the year.
In advertising, we return to positive revenue growth in the fourth quarter through the launch of Video Account in-feed ad, enhance the transaction-driven capability of our ad inventories, and improve our machine learning infrastructure. For cloud, our upgrade strategy resulted in initially lower revenue but improved gross profit margin. We assisted that the digital transformation of non-internet industries and public services. During the year, we return increased capital to our shareholders through distribution in-kind, share repurchase, and cash dividend. We also made significant progress in our drive to create sustainable social value. For example, we announced our commitment to carbon neutrality by 2030. Our digital charity platform raised donations for over 25,000 projects and engaged more than 100 million users. In support of basic research, we pledged RMB 10 billion over the next 10 years to establish the New Cornerstone Investigator Program.
On the governance front, we welcome Professor Zhang to join the Tencent Board last August. Martin will rotate off the Board at the upcoming AGM while fully dedicated as our exceptional president. This adjustment will more clearly separate Board from execute the responsibilities, increase the proportion of independent directors, and increase the proportion of female directors. Let me go through the headline financial numbers for the quarter. During the fourth quarter, total revenue was RMB 145 billion, up 0.5% year-on-year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. Gross profit was RMB 62 billion, up 7% year-on-year and broadly flat quarter-on-quarter. Non-IFRS operating profit was RMB 39 billion, up 19% year-on-year or down 4% quarter-on-quarter. Non-IFRS net profit attributable to equity holders was RMB 30 billion, up 19% year-on-year or down 8% quarter-on-quarter. Now I will hand over to Martin for the strategy review.
Good evening and good morning to everybody, thank you, Pony, for the kind words earlier. I look forward to sustaining and indeed enhancing my dedication as Tencent's President in the years ahead. With that, I will share some of our perspectives on our strategy for the future, which we believe is actually very exciting. In the year of 2022, we aligned our businesses with the new industry paradigm while continuing to invest and pursue value creation opportunities in strategic areas. Today, I'm pleased to tell you that our consistent efforts have yielded encouraging results, and we have successfully repositioned ourselves for sustainable and high-quality growth. Let's take a look at our financial performance, which has started to improve since mid-2022. Particularly for the fourth quarter, our revenue stabilized on a year-on-year basis following the decline in the last two quarters.
We achieved year-on-year improvements in gross margins across all business segments. Non-IFRS operating profits and net profits both increased 19% year-on-year compared to low base in the same period last year. The improved financial results reflect our proactive initiatives coupled with an improved macro environment. First, we executed efficiency initiatives to improve margins and promote earnings quality. These included reducing costs and sharpening business focus. Second, we made significant progress in developing new high quality and high potential revenue streams, such as Video Accounts in-feed ads and international games. Third, for the macro environment, we're encouraged to see positive signals related to post-COVID recovery and regulatory normalization. Looking forward, we're confident of our future growth potential underpinned by multiple drivers. First, we see expanding opportunities in advertising, fintech services, and games, along with continued recovery in macro environment.
Second, we're still in the early stage of monetizing Video Accounts. We are nurturing additional revenue streams such as live-streamed e-commerce. Third, we'll continue to focus on operational efficiency and remain disciplined in resource allocation. Fourth, we have been leveraging our long-standing expertise in developing and applying AI technologies as a growth multiplier. The recent industry breakthroughs in foundation models and consequently in generative AI applications present exciting opportunities for us. In the next few slides, I will discuss more about some of these drivers. Let's start with advertising. While it's still early days for macro recovery in China, I'm pleased that our ad revenue returned to double-digit growth in the fourth quarter, albeit comparing to an easy base period last year. We registered positive growth in the fourth quarter, even if we take out the new contribution from Video Accounts in-feed ads.
To enforce, reinforce our growth potential as macro environment improves in 2023, we have been expanding ad inventories as well as improving our capabilities to enhance conversion for advertisers. For new ad inventories, we see strong market demand for Video Accounts in-feed ads. We're making very good progress in ramping up revenue on the back of rapid user engagement growth and high advertisers demand. Additionally, we're increasing ad load of Weixin Official Accounts and enhancing access to quality inventories in mobile ad network. To drive conversion for advertisers, we have been upgrading our transactional capabilities via innovative ad formats, CRM tools for merchants, and shopping tools for users. The portion of Weixin ad revenue generated from click-to-purchase and click-to-message ads has been increasing and exceeded 1/3 in the fourth quarter.
This possible trend demonstrates that advertisers increasingly recognize our differentiated capabilities in driving transactions, positioning us well for consumption recovery. We have been investing in our new machine learning infrastructure that rolled out a new ad targeting engine, enabling us to enhance conversion rates and help improve ROI for advertisers, especially for long-tail advertisers. The new infrastructure allows us to achieve greater processing efficiency by increasing training speed and lowering per unit training costs. Turning to FinTech services, despite the temporary COVID impact during the fourth quarter, we expect our commercial payment business will benefit from consumption recovery in China. This is evidenced by the strong rebound in our total payment volume growth since the beginning of 2023. On top of macro recovery, our commercial payment business have been structurally benefiting from synergies with Mini Programs.
As a leading transaction platform in China with several trillion RMB of GMV in 2022, Mini Programs enables online plus offline solutions for merchants to reduce transaction friction and drive repeated sales. As a result, the proportion of commercial payment volume contributed by Mini Programs has been increasing over time and has reached high teens percentage level. In terms of new business development, we're well-positioned to capture further opportunities in the FinTech sector as the regulatory environment in China normalizes. For wealth management, we're expanding our user base through investor education, better services, and a broadening product line. For consumer loans and online insurance services, we're exploring new opportunities through close cooperation with licensed financial institutions under a new regulatory framework. For games, we are now gearing up for global expansion. In domestic market, we navigated through industry challenges during 2022 and are now well-positioned for reigniting growth.
Our key franchises have demonstrated resilience and longevity. For example, in January 2023, Honor of Kings had its best ever Chinese New Year period in terms of gross receipts, thanks to very successful launch of new content, top quality outfit, as well as targeted offerings for players. In addition, Dungeon and Fighter delivered its strongest fourth quarter performance over the past three years, leveraging the success of game mechanics evolution to attract returning users. Furthermore, we're benefiting from normalization of Banhao approval, which enables us to strengthen our game releases for 2023 and beyond. Under the new industry norm, we're sharpening our focus on launching new games. In addition to titles in high potential genres such as Undawn, we'll bring to the market new games combining popular IPs with our expertise in genres such as shooter and auto chess.
We'll publish leading international franchises such as VALORANT and Lost Ark. In international markets, we have made strong progress in reinforcing our growth potential over the medium and long term. Our international games revenue for the fourth quarter increased to $2 billion, representing 1/3 of our games revenue. We have expanded our top franchise portfolio as VALORANT goes from strength to strength with record users and revenue. As Miniclip acquired top casual game franchise, Subway Surfers. Our emerging studios have achieved initial success in their new title launches, including V Rising by Stunlock and Darktide by Fatshark. The next few years, we're building a strong pipeline to tap into multiple opportunities in the international markets. Notably, we're expanding our regional IPs into new platforms, markets, and genres such as VALORANT on mobile and Honor of Kings in international markets.
We're also supporting our emerging studios to launch bigger titles with greater longevity, as well as bring in more highly acclaimed PC and console IPs to mobile devices. Turning to Video Accounts, which is a key strategic growth driver. Video Accounts continue to experience strong user engagement growth. In the fourth quarter, its total time spent reached 1.2 x that of Moments. The number of videos with over 100,000 likes more than doubled year-over-year. We're now building on our user engagement in short-form videos to expand into live streaming services. Over the past year, we achieved rapid growth in live streaming services as we enriched our content and drove traffic for creators. We're gaining user mindshare in live events. For example, over 190 million viewers watched the 2023 CCTV Spring Festival Gala via live streaming on Video Accounts.
To keep up with the growing demand for merchants to conduct transactions, we're enhancing our e-commerce capabilities. One of these improvements is the launch of Video Accounts Shop, which offers seamless shopping experience to users. We are broadening monetization opportunities in Video Accounts, capitalizing on the rapid expansion in short-form videos and live streaming. While live streaming tipping revenue experienced strong growth in 2022, in-feed ad revenue are ramping up rapidly and exceeded RMB 1 billion in the fourth quarter. We're building infrastructure for live streaming e-commerce to promote GMV growth. Since the January 2023, we have started charging commissions to develop a new revenue stream. To conclude the strategies section, I would like to share with you our perspective on artificial intelligence, specifically the implications of foundation models for Tencent.
The most important takeaway is that we expect AI to be a growth multiplier for us going forward. We have a long-standing experience in developing and adopting AI technologies, which has already benefited many of our businesses, such as advertising, games, short-form videos, and cloud computing. Recent industry breakthroughs in foundation models, and consequently in generative AI applications, are very beneficial to us, as our core social and gaming businesses are user-to-user oriented and involve very premium content, which are hard to be disrupted by AI technology, but can stand the benefit of being enhanced. On the other hand, foundation models facilitate our introduction of user-to-machine services, such as digital assistant and search, which can become new growth areas for us.
As for strategies, we have been developing our foundation model and plan to gradually roll out these models at the back end while introducing front-end use cases across our full product range. We are leveraging AI technologies to enhance our product innovation, monetization, and operational efficiency. We believe that we have strengths across the entire AI value chain because first, we have a broad range of use cases for AI via applications with deep user engagement, including Weixin, our leading game titles, our office productivity software, and our entertainment services. Second, with our long-term investment in machine learning, we have strong teams and deep expertise in technologies such as natural language processing and computer vision. Third, the breadth and depth of data accumulated in our businesses offer a strong foundation for our model training process. Fourth, Tencent Cloud is one of the leading cloud providers in China.
The scale and sophistication of our infrastructure can support the growing demand for computing power from not only our in-house products, but also our clients' applications. Building on these competitive capabilities. We are rapidly advancing our proprietary foundation model, Hunyuan, which has strong capabilities in Chinese language processing. With that, I'll pass to James to talk about the business review.
Thank you, Martin. For the fourth quarter of 2022, our total revenue was up 0.5% year-on-year. VAS represented 49% of our revenue, within which the social network sub-segment was 20%, domestic games 19%, and international games 10%. Our ratio of international games revenue to overall games revenue, which is seasonally higher in the fourth quarter, increased from 28% in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 33% in the fourth quarter of 2022. Online advertising was 17% of our revenue, FinTech and Business Service is 33%. For value-added services, segment revenue was RMB 70 billion, down 2% year-on-year. Social network revenue was also down 2% year-on-year to RMB 29 billion.
Revenue from music and game-related live streaming services decreased, while revenue from Video Accounts live streaming service increased, driven by more paying users as we enriched our content offering and enhanced recommendation efficiency. Our video subscription revenue increased year-on-year, driven by ARPU growth as we adjusted membership pricing. Video subscriptions decreased slightly due to content scheduling delays. In January 2023, we released a self-commissioned drama series, Three-Body, which became the highest-rated domestic science fiction series in the past five years per the Douban review aggregator site. Music subscription revenue increased year-on-year. Paying users and ARPU grew as we offered additional membership privileges such as improved sound quality and enhanced user engagements in music genres. Domestic games revenue was down 6% year-on-year to RMB 28 billion, reflecting lower gross receipts in the prior quarters, which flowed through to lower revenue accruals during the fourth quarter.
However, gross receipts in the fourth quarter increased year-on-year due to higher DAU and spending per paying user. International games revenue increased 5% year-on-year to RMB 14 billion, or up 11% excluding currency movements and a true-up revenue adjustment made in the fourth quarter of 2021. Key franchises VALORANT and League of Legends, as well as new launches Nikke and Darktide, contributed to the revenue growth. For Weixin, total user time spent has steadily increased through 2022, driven by growth in time spent for both chat and non-chat use cases. Among the non-chat use cases, the Moments content sharing feature, which accounted for the majority of Weixin's non-chat time spent in the fourth quarter of 2021, remains the China leader in the social category, with Moments time spent stable year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022.
However, users have also diversified and expanded their non-chat activities within Weixin. User time spent in Mini Programs approximately doubled year-on-year in the fourth quarter, surpassing time spent in Moments as more users activated Mini Programs more frequently, especially content and productivity programs. User time spent in Video Accounts more than tripled year-on-year in the fourth quarter, also surpassing time spent in Moments. For QQ, we added Super QQ Show avatars in video chats to provide fun and lifelike interactive experiences. Utilizing motion capture technology, the avatars can mirror users' facial expressions and gestures in real time during video calls. Mini World, the short-form video service within QQ, enriched its anime content, games content, and launched AI-powered video creation tools. DAU and time spent per user significantly increased year-on-year.
Moving to domestic games, as Martin has already discussed, key games such as Honor of Kings and Dungeon and Fighter have performed well in recent months. In February, we launched Undawn to tap into the emerging Survival-O pen World-C rafting genre. Featuring high-fidelity graphics and immersive experiences, Undawn ranks first by gross receipts among new mobile games released in China year-to-date. Looking at international games, League of Legends gross receipts increased year-on-year this quarter due to a Battle Pass and creative outfit series tied into the World Championship Finals. VALORANT's MAU and gross receipts grew year-on-year as players responded to its new agent and best-of-nine game mode. While PUBG Mobile's gross receipts declined year-on-year, the rate of decline improved notably versus prior quarters on an easier base effect and its innovative outfit designs appealed to players.
Call of Duty Mobile celebrated its third anniversary with World Cup-themed content, new battle royale play, and top-tier outfits, contributing to increased gross receipts. Among new releases, Nikke was the first-place title internationally by gross receipts among all new mobile games released in 2022. We recently added a PC version of Nikke. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, a co-op action shooter PC game developed by our subsidiary Fatshark, was ranked by Steam among Steam's top new releases for the year. Moving to online advertising, our advertising revenue was RMB 25 billion in the fourth quarter, up 15% year-on-year.
The resumption of year-on-year revenue growth was driven by demand for our Video Accounts in-feed ads and Mini Programs ads, upgraded performance from our mobile ad network, and an enhanced machine learning infrastructure powering more effective matching of users and advertisers. By category, ad spend from e-commerce platforms, fast-moving consumer goods and game advertisers increased notably year on year. Our social and other advertising revenue for the fourth quarter was RMB 21 billion, up 17% year on year. We experienced substantial demand for Video Accounts ads, prompting us to release more inventory. Video Accounts in-feed ads exceeded RMB 1 billion in quarterly revenue. Mini Programs ad revenue increased with higher adoption of rewarded video format. Our mobile ad network resumed year on year revenue growth due to improved conversion rates and increased adoption of the bidding mechanism.
Our media advertising revenue for the fourth quarter was RMB 3 billion, up 4% year-on-year. Looking at FinTech and Business Services, segment revenue was RMB 47 billion in the quarter, down 1% year-on-year, though up 5% quarter-on-quarter. FinTech services revenue grew slightly both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. Our average daily commercial payment volume declined quarter-on-quarter in the fourth quarter as COVID-19 outbreaks temporarily suppressed consumption activity but has rebounded to a robust year-on-year growth rate quarter to date in the first quarter, benefiting from resumed consumption activity. The Business Services revenue declined year-on-year while gross profit increased as we reduced loss-making activities, optimized costs, and focused on our self-developed platform as a service offerings.
Within Business Services, we're actively helping automobile manufacturers such as NIO, BMW, and GAC Motor enhance their IT infrastructure and product offerings in areas such as smart cockpit solutions, digital maps, and data management. Now I'll pass to John for the financial review.
Thanks, James. For the fourth quarter of 2022, total revenue was RMB 145 billion, largely stable year-on-year. Gross profit was RMB 61.9 billion, up 7% year-on-year. Net other gains was RMB 85.8 billion last year flat year-on-year. This was mainly due to RMB 106.6 billion gain from certain disposal of Meituan, partly offset by impairment provisions on certain investees. Operating profit was RMB 116.8 billion, up 6% year-on-year. Net finance costs were RMB 3.7 billion, up 96% year-on-year. Year-on-year change was due to foreign exchange losses incurred this quarter versus gains in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Share of losses of associates and joint ventures was RMB 1.6 billion on a non-IFRS basis. Share of profit was RMB 3.1 billion versus share of losses of RMB 0.8 billion last year. This improvement reflects better profitability of certain domestic associates as a result of their cost optimization initiatives. Income tax expense increased by 18% year-on-year to RMB 4.6 billion, in line with higher profit and increased withholding tax provision. IFRS net profit attributable to equity holders was RMB 106.3 billion, up 12% year-on-year. Diluted EPS was RMB 10.977, up 12% year-on-year. Now I'll share our non-IFRS financial figures. For the fourth quarter, operating profit was RMB 39.4 billion, up 19% year-on-year.
Net profit attributable to equity holders was RMB 29.7 billion, up 19% year-on-year. Diluted EPS was RMB 3.042, up 19% year-on-year. Moving on to gross margins. For the fourth quarter, overall gross margin was 42.6%, up 2.5 percentage points year-on-year by segment. Gross margin for value-added services was 49.8%, up 1.1 percentage point year-on-year. Year-on-year margin increase was largely driven by a favorable shift in revenue mix. Gross margin for online advertising was 44.2%, up 1.5 percentage points year-on-year. The year-on-year margin was mostly due to strong demand for Video Accounts and feed ads, which led to a faster growth in revenue compared to cost.
Gross margin for FinTech and Business Services was 33.6%, up 6.5 percentage points year-over-year. The year-over-year margin improvement was driven by our cost rationalization and efficiency improvement, as well as lower cloud project deployment costs as we've scaled back loss-making activities. On operating expenses, selling and marketing expenses was RMB 6.1 billion, representing 4.2% of revenues. This reflects a decline of 47% year-over-year due to tightened spending on marketing activities across our organization. R&D expense was RMB 15.9 billion, up 14% year-over-year as we continue to invest in strategy areas in both domestic and international markets. G&A expenses excluding R&D was RMB 11.4 billion. The year-over-year increase was mainly driven by higher expenses incurred by some of our overseas subsidiaries.
As of quarter end, we had approximately 108,000 employees, down 4% year-on-year or broadly stable quarter-on-quarter. Let's look at our operating and net margin ratios. For the fourth quarter, non-IFRS operating margin was 27.2%, up 4.2 percentage points year-on-year. Non-IFRS net margin was 21.1%, up 3.2 percentage points year-on-year. Let's discuss earnings per share and dividends. For 2022, IFRS basic EPS was RMB 19.757 . Diluted EPS was RMB 19.341 .
Non-GAAP basic EPS was RMB 12.138. Diluted EPS was RMB 11.835. On the 16th of November , 2022, we announced a special interim dividend in the form of distributing a specially of May 20 shares. Subject to the shareholders' approval at the upcoming 2023 AGM, we are proposing an annual dividend of HKD 2.4 per share, up 50% year-on-year. Our annual dividend will be payable to shareholders on the 5th of June , 2023. To conclude, I will highlight some key cash flow and balance sheet metrics for Q4. Total CapEx was RMB 5.7 billion, down 52% year-on-year.
Within total CapEx, operating CapEx was RMB 1.9 billion, down 76% year-on-year or up 80% quarter-on-quarter. The year-on-year decline reflects our efforts to re-assess and tighten our spending. The sequential increase is mainly driven by higher CapEx on servers in the fourth quarter. Non-operating CapEx rose by 4% year-on-year and 184% quarter-on-quarter to RMB 3.8 billion. The sequential increase was due to additional expenditure on office buildings. Free cash flow for the quarter was RMB 23.1 billion, down 31% year-on-year. The year-on-year decline was mostly due to lower operating cash flow, partly compensated by decreased payment for CapEx and media content due to cost optimization.
Net debt position was RMB 14.8 billion compared to RMB 27.3 billion in the previous quarter. The sequential improvement in our net debt position was due to a free cash flow generation, partly offset by payments for the repurchase outstanding shares. Thank you.
Thank you, John. We shall now open the floor for questions. If you are dialing in by phone, please press five to raise question, then press six to unmute yourself. If you are accessing from the Tencent Meeting or VooV Meeting application, please click the Raise Hand button at the bottom left. We will now take one main question and one follow-up question each time. The first question comes from Kenneth Fong from the Credit Suisse.
Hi. Good evening, management. Thank you for the opportunity to ask question. My first question is about advertising recovery trend. With our macro improving and our algorithm and ecosystem upgrade driving higher ROI, how should we think about the pace of ad recovery over the next few quarters? In particular, which are the key verticals that you see a stronger performance, where we are gaining share, and which verticals which is generally weaker? My follow-up question is on the global AI race and the ChatGPT product launched by our peers globally and domestically. Management just shared some competitive strength for Tencent. Would you mind sharing more about the opportunities, use cases, such as for AIGC, online gaming, cloud products, et cetera?
In particular, with high computing power GPU being the constraint, how should we think about the product priority, on a to-B side or the to-C side, and how should we think about the pace of our financial benefits over the next few years? Thank you.
Thank you for the questions, Kenneth. I'll take the first one on the advertising outlook and on specific advertiser categories. In terms of the overall outlook, we believe the advertisers are generally cautiously optimistic on a China consumption recovery this year. In more detail, companies that sell low-ticket price items are seeing a broad-based recovery already. For companies that sell higher-ticket priced items, it varies category by category, but they're all aware that, you know, China consumers have built up substantial excess savings in the past three years. At some point, there'll be the opportunity to tap into those savings. There's also some factors that are benefiting Tencent in particular.
You know, we see there's great demand to advertise in the short-form video format to consumers who previously weren't reachable in short-form video format. You know, from that perspective, our Video Accounts are highly appealing because many of the viewers of Video Accounts are not viewers of, you know, Douyin or Kuaishou or other existing short-form video services. We see, you know, great desire among certain categories of advertisers, for example, luxury products, to advertise in a format where they actually own the relationship with the consumer as opposed to being intermediated. For those advertisers, the Mini Program inventory is very attractive. Also as we see the broader economy turning around, there are certain advertiser categories who are extremely price sensitive.
For those advertisers, our mobile ad network that has very low revenue per 1,000 impressions is a natural destination for spending. In terms of advertiser categories, we mentioned in the prepared remarks that we see particularly robust contributions from e-commerce platforms, from fast-moving consumer goods, from games. You know, I think part of that is macro, part of that is more company specific. For e-commerce, we see some big e-commerce companies who used to advertise less on us in the past have become much more active in recent months. For games, because of the popularity of mini games within Weixin, there's you know, increased opportunities for app-based game companies to reach people who are already playing a different kind of game.
For fast-moving consumer goods companies, they find the, you know, click-to-purchase opportunity. Within Weixin inventory are highly effective and aligned with their needs. That's on the advertising question.
In terms of the ChatGPT and AI, I think, you know, in our prepared remarks, we did talk about our thinking, and I'll highlight a couple right now. The first one is, like, we do believe that this is a growth multiplier for us. And the reason is because our business is actually primarily in the social and communication and gaming business which means that, you know, it's primarily user to user, and it's involved very high quality content. As a result, it's. These are businesses which can be supplemented by these generative AI technologies and to the foundation model technologies. They're not necessarily that easily disrupted by such technology, not like the user-to-machine experiences like search.
As a result, the strategy that we'll be taking is that we'll definitely be investing a lot of resources in building our foundation model because we feel that this is something which will add to each one of our business lines in the future. At the same time, it can actually also help us to launch new businesses going forward and take our strength from user to user into the user-to-machine arena. Our strategy is that we will try to do it right rather than do it in a rush. We wanna make sure that the foundation of the foundation model is actually built correctly and on solid footing. The first release in our view is actually one of the many iterations that we will be launching.
It's a long-term game and it involves a very iterative process. We also believe that chatbot is one of the many applications that we'll be launching going forward. It is a business opportunity that we can actually build over time and not a business threat that we have to tackle immediately. That actually allows us to be able to focus our resources, but at the same time, build our capabilities and build our models in a sustainable way. We do believe we have a lot of competitive capabilities to build it right. As I've mentioned, we have use cases, we have data, we have a very strong cloud computing infrastructure, and we also have a long-standing history of building AI applications to supplement our existing businesses.
In terms of the infrastructure, we do have enough and required amount of chips to actually create the model. That's not a problem. More importantly, we felt we actually have a very strong cloud business and the relevant technologies to really arrange and make use of the chips in a scalable and a high density way so that we can create very large clusters of chips that can really deliver the performance that's needed to train these very large models, especially when the models get more and more sophisticated over time after a few iterations.
In terms of the commercial prospect, I think, you know, as we have alluded in our prepared remarks, it's a growth multiplier. That means it will improve our existing businesses along the line of improved monetization. Imagine, advertisings can be actually improved with the generative content, which is highly targeted to the users. That can be very, very effective in conversion. It can actually increase efficiency. Imagine, a lot of our content platforms and content business can actually make use of these tools to generate content, for both the creators as well as for ourselves on a much more cost-efficient basis, and the user experience can be much more engaging. At the same time, I think, as we said, we also we look at new business opportunities.
For these new opportunities, I think, you know, the business models will probably evolve over time, just like in the history of internet. You first of all create something that's useful, and over time you think about the right business model. Without, this is actually a very exciting opportunity for us.
Thank you very much, Martin and James. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is, Alicia Yap from Citi.
Hi. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay. Good evening, management. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions. Number one, related to your cloud business. Can management share more details on whether the strategic shift of reducing the lower margins business are largely behind us? Is that fair to assume that we will see growth gradually normalizing with faster rebound of the business and higher margins in the second half of this year? Second question, just a follow-up on the AI. Do we have any plans to incorporate this generative AI technology into Weixin and also the QQ app in the coming future? How would the foundation model convert to the higher revenue growth opportunity? Thank you.
In terms of cloud, I think, you know, you actually have answered your questions pretty well right now. I think, you know, the optimization shift. It's largely over. It's a pretty painful process, but after the entire effort, I think, you know, the business is actually in a much more sustainable and a much higher quality state. Yes, we will see. Well, with the business coming into the right shape, we will see normalizing growth, and now it's time for the business to push for higher growth. After the strategic shift, I think you, we now have a business that has an organization that's much more focused, nimble, and efficient.
We have a product mix that is focused on high margin, high value add, as well as self-developed and recurring revenue. At the same time, I think the operational procedure of the business has been improved, in that we're much more capable in managing the cost for the highest part of the business, as well as delivering better services to our customers. I think the quality of the overall business has improved, and we're now in the right mode for pursuing higher growth, especially for the second half 2023.
In terms of the generative AI, it's definitely natural, right, you know, for us to incorporate some of these technologies into our flagship products like Weixin and QQ and, you know, we can actually improve the efficiency of the user experience. For example, we can actually allow Mini Program developers to develop Mini Programs at a much faster rate with these generative AIs. That's, you know, in the category of content generation. We can also improve customer service for our flagship products so that each one will have a customer service assistant behind it, right? These are all possible.
At the same time, if you think about on the front end, if there is a very good chatbot service that we develop, then we can easily incorporate it into Weixin and QQ so that, it enjoys the large distribution and customer reach of these platforms. There's a lot of possibilities going forward, and that's why we call it a growth multiplier for us.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Robin Zhu from Bernstein.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. If I may have my first question on live streaming e-commerce. I mean, if I look at some of your peers, this is typically quite an ops-heavy business in terms of having teams doing, whether it's customer service, logistics, you know, things like that. Tencent has historically not done ops-heavy businesses as much. Would love to hear your thoughts on, you know, whether that's a new direction that the company plans to head in, what that implies in terms of headcount or kind of investment in that direction. Then another follow-up, if I may, on, you know, AIGC and so on. We've seen OpEx as a whole decline now for a couple of quarters.
Would love to hear your thoughts on how that sort of interplays with some of the new investments, whether it's AIGC, whether it's overseas gaming. Are we at the point of peak cost-cutting or, you know, does management think there's more room to go in the coming quarters, given the costs associated with these large models? Thank you.
Thanks for the question. In terms of live streaming e-commerce, we do believe this is a good opportunity for Video Accounts to develop over time. I actually emphasize the word over time. You know, Our plan is actually to grow it on a consistent measured, and high quality basis. It is true that in e-commerce business, you actually need to have heavier live operations. And we do intend to put in a heavier live operation to support this. At the same time, we emphasize, one, that it is actually profitable, right? You know, so, you know, even if you put in the live operations, you know, the cost is gonna be small compared to the potential benefits.
More importantly, the way that we're doing it will be, I think, much more thoughtful, much more efficient in the sense that we will try to focus on the high quality merchants and high quality product categories, which means that the live ops associated with these will be actually less because, you know, a lot of times the live ops is actually focused on solving problems. When we actually focus on high quality, the problems will be fewer. We'll be much more focused on creating tools so that a lot of these live ops can be actually executed by tools. As a matter of fact, the AIGC will be very helpful in that regard.
If we want to grow it in a very fast manner, then maybe you just have to load in a lot of people. If we actually sort of stretch it over time, then we can actually build the tools to make our operations more efficient. We'll also leverage on our existing infrastructure, such as Mini Programs, such existing brands who are already selling on our Mini Programs, to make sure that we know these merchants, and as a result, the amount of live operations will be actually less and more efficient. That's sort of, you know, the way we are going to tackle the problem.
Robin, I think your second question was around where we are in the cost management cycle and specifically whether overseas game investments or AIGC investments will cause substantial upward pressure to our cost base. You know, we believe we'll be, you know, structurally more disciplined and cost-conscious going forward than we've been in the recent past, and we don't think that, you know, either of the factors you identified change that trajectory. In terms of the international games, then, you know, we've very clearly been investing and in fact, acquiring studios, you know, through the slow period in the last 12 months. You know, those investments are paying off quite nicely.
You can see that our international game business is now half the size of our China game business. We've had a number of, you know, successful international game releases, both from bigger, better established studios such as Riot, VALORANT, but also from, you know, small up-and-coming studios such as V Rising from Stunlock. We'll, we'll continue investing in international games, but that's a business as usual investment. It's not a disruptive new investment from our perspective. On the AIGC, you know, as you're probably aware, it is not the provision of, you know, AIGC itself that is costly. You know, if you look at a service like Discord, that actually is, you know, already profitable from distributing AIGC service Midjourney for creating, graphics.
Rather it's the decision to build the large language model that powers the AIGC that is capital intensive. You know, the capital is not small. Microsoft has stated that their large language model costs several hundred million dollars to build out. However, the nature of the cost is very different from the nature of costs that China Internet was facing one to three years ago, meaning that one to three years ago, most of the cost-heavy projects that we and our peers in China Internet were engaged in were actually projects where the cost scaled with the number of users you had. If you decided to get into community group buying, then, you know, the more users you had, the greater your absolute cost base was. Large language models are different.
There's a fixed cost or a table stakes for being in the game, which is the CapEx that Microsoft referred to. You know, that is the majority of the cost, at least in the near term, prior to generating revenue. You know, we're absolutely embarked on bearing that fixed cost. You know, if you compare that fixed cost with our revenue, you can see it's a sizable number, but it's not a number that, you know, has very dramatic consequences for our margins. Every other company that wants to build large language models, whether they're larger than us or smaller than us, will have a cost that's somewhat similar in absolute fixed terms.
This kind of fixed cost, this kind of cost, we think is a more desirable cost because it is fixed, as opposed to something like the subsidies, where the more users you have, the more cost you bore, which, you know, naturally disadvantages us as the company with the most users.
Thank you. Bear in mind that a lot of the cost is actually a hardware cost, which can be now amortized over a few years rather than you spending for a year.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Robin. Next question is Alex Yao from JP Morgan. Alex, your line is open.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we can hear you now. Go ahead.
Yeah. Sorry, I was on mute. Thank you, management, for taking my question. I have a few follow-up on the prepared remark. The first one is regarding FinTech. I think that this was a less of a discussion for future growth area in last year, probably because of the regulatory environment change. I noticed that you guys start to talk about FinTech as one of the key future growth drivers in this prepared remarks. Can you share with us your thoughts on FinTech development strategy in a new regulatory environment? The second one is on Video Accounts monetization. Can you share with us a bit more feedback on the monetization progress so far in addition to the quarterly revenue of RMB 1 billion?
For example, what's the ad load? What's the advertiser feedback, and how do you think about the monetization pace in the coming quarters? Thank you.
In terms of our FinTech strategy, right? You know, I think the situations that, you know, we have been through a process of regulatory scrutiny, in which, You know, the authorities have taken a very good look at all our FinTech businesses and provided a lot of guidance as to how, you know, the business should be adjusted in order to be both compliant with the regulations and regulatory direction as well as complying with what the intention of the regulators are. Through that process, we have also explained very carefully the way we conduct our business, right?
You know, which is actually compliant with regulation, which is very focused on risk management, which is very focused on value creation for the users, and also focused on working with a lot of licensed financial institutions. Through that process, I think, you know, we have adjusted our FinTech businesses to be even more compliant with the regulatory direction. At the same time, I think the regulators have actually got a better understanding of our FinTech business as well as FinTech strategy. I think, you know, the top regulators have already made the remark that there's gonna be a normalized regulation for FinTech businesses going forward. Through that process, I think our FinTech business actually, you know, continued to grow on a consistent basis.
That's points to the strength and the quality of the business itself. Going forward, we felt our FinTech business will continue to expand alongside with the macroeconomic development of the economy, as it's very important provider of support to consumption and to merchants' activities. That's number one. Number two, we felt the basic tech rates of our FinTech business will remain stable, but we would over time think about ways through which we can roll out value-added services to allow merchants to have better conversion rates, to give them tools so that they can manage their businesses more efficiently.
In those cases in which we can actually generate better value for the merchants, then we can actually share a little bit of the value creation, and that would provide additional monetization mechanism for us. Thirdly, in terms of financial products that tied in that can be developed, such as wealth management, such as loans, such as insurance over the longer term, we felt that there's also opportunities if we can actually develop these businesses in a cautious way, in a compliant way, with a very high focus on risk management and at the same time, with more focus on working with the existing licensed financial institutions. We feel that there is a good prospect for our FinTech business going forward.
In terms of the Video Accounts monetization, Alex, you know, the advertising load factor, it's a very light ad load, both compared to other Tencent properties and also even more so, compared to the big incumbent short video services. The advertiser feedback is very positive. You know, I say that both from a quantitative perspective, but also, you know, quantitatively, that the revenue per thousand impressions that we achieve on Video Accounts ads, you know, following a substantial increase in inventory in recent months, is actually superior to the revenue per thousand impressions achieved by Weixin Moments and substantially superior to the revenue per thousand impressions achieved by the 2 short-form video incumbents.
In terms of the growth trajectory, if you compare it with Weixin Moments was more of a sort of step change model of expansion and then consolidation, and then expansion, then consolidation. With Moments, we'd be fairly programmatically, you know, periodically increase the maximum number of ads that a user could see from one to two to three and so forth. You know, today with the Video Accounts, it's much more dynamic and therefore a sort of progressive continual expansion. One of the reasons we can do that now is because of the much more powerful machine learning infrastructure we have at the back end, supporting our ad technology and our ad systems overall.
You know, while the growth in Video Accounts from front end is very impressive, and you can see it simply from the added inventory, a big part of the turnaround in our advertising revenue is what we're doing at the back end with the machine learning infrastructure. Thank you.
Thank you, Alex. We will take the next question from Ronald Keung from the Goldman Sachs.
Thank you, Pony, Martin, James, John, and Wendy. I wanna ask one question on games. I think we haven't touched on that so far. Second on WeChat, Video Accounts time spent. For games with the approval mostly normalized, how does management see the outlook for domestic games this year, particularly this year of a reopening, but yet with a low base last year? After the kind of strong January with the seasonality in January and Feb, how is the grossing trending for a cleaner month like this month, and especially for your legacy titles? Then my second question would be on Video Accounts, time spent. How, how is our time spent trending compared with previously?
I think we've shared around the 30 minutes or so versus the other two players typically at a longer time spent. On that, do we see time spent and ad potential kinda tied together or we actually could have a higher return if they're more purpose-oriented and live stream sessions that could come? Would our ad scale gradually gonna reach the moment ad revenue scale that we mentioned before? When should we expect a potential reaching of moment ad scale for our Video Accounts? Thank you.
For our domestic game business then, you know, overall we're quite optimistic. You know, we've begun the year in good shape and, you know, that trajectory is so far very healthy. You asked specifically about the low base dynamic versus the reopening dynamic. The reopening dynamic is something we've looked at a great deal because, you know, we're in the unusual position of operating in very big, somewhat similar games in the Western world as well as in China and other geographies. We can actually, you know, look at how reopening plays out on games in those different geographies.
You know, what we see is that the reason why in Western economies there has been a roughly one-year hangover period for the game industry post-COVID is because in those Western economies, the majority of the population was, you know, working from home for a period of many months. You know, that process of most of the population working from home for multiple months did create a high engagement base and monetization base, which the Western game industry is only now emerging from. On the other hand, in China, there was no phenomenon of the majority of the population working from home for many months. You know, there were individual cities where people worked from home for two weeks or in some cases two months.
You know, those were sporadic and scattered, and the impact has diminished because it was spread out over three years rather than concentrated over one and a half years. You know, at this point in time, we don't see a, you know, quote-unquote, "reopening headwind" for our game business. You know, I think it's possible that we won't see one, given the unusual nature of the COVID outbreaks work from home behavior in China.
Now, in terms of Video Accounts, it is still true that the average time spent per user is actually much lower than the incumbents on short video. The number actually has been growing consistently, and this is sort of part of the driver of why the total time spent on our Video Accounts has been growing quite rapidly, and now it's at 1.2 x of Moments. The driver of this increase in average time spent is our as our recommendation algorithm continue to improve and as the size of our creative community and the amount of high quality content continue to grow, then, you know, we have much more ability to make our users spend more time on the content.
In terms of the average time spent, of course, it reduces total time spent, and as a result, it reduces the total amount of advertising dollars. I don't think the average time spent per person actually would necessarily reduce the monetization per unit time. As a matter of fact, if somebody actually spent 30 minutes on a platform versus if somebody spends 150 minutes on a platform, the first 30 minutes probably would carry higher value per unit time compared to, you know, the latter number of minutes. We actually feel pretty comfortable that we have a good revenue generation opportunity here. From the amount of time that we right now have, the monetization is actually relatively light.
As we continue to grow the total amount of time, then, the potential for more advertising dollars would actually continue to increase.
Sure. Thank you, James and Martin.
Thank you.
Sure.
This question is, Will Packer from Exane BNP.
Hi, management. Many thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, since the last earnings call in November, we've had the two sessions and some other regulatory news flow. Could you update us on any developments in the domestic regulatory backdrop? Specifically, could you comment on the implications for video games, short-form video, and the financial services segment? As a follow-up question, could you update us on your current capital allocation thinking? Are you considering further stake monetizations via distribution or sales during 2023? On the other hand, How are you thinking about your third-party investment priorities? Many thanks.
Okay. On the regulatory updates, we previously talk about regulatory direction is actually trending towards supporting healthy development of our industry and completing the ratification and also going forward, carrying out a normalized regulation. We believe this trend continues based on recent supportive remarks from top leaders. For example, the president in a recent CPPCC meeting remarked that the government supports healthy and high quality development of the private sector. He mentioned supporting platform companies to show confidence, creating employment, driving consumption, and international competition. Premier also highlighted private sector will have a significant potential in the China economy. The government's report also reiterated to practice normalized regulation and also facilitate the healthy development of the platform economy. Overall, the trend continues.
In terms of specifically on the different segments that you talk about, in the area of games, we can see the most tangible positive development as the game Banhaos are approved on a more regular basis, illustrating that the industry regulation is indeed normalizing. We have received six Banhaos so far for the year of 2023, including import BanHaos for Merge Mansion this week. If you look at short video, I think the regulation is broadly stable, right? You know, if there's one potential issue, it probably may be on the time spent per user is actually very high. If you look at our platform, the time spent per person is actually way below industry standard.
That even as an issue is probably not gonna be that much of an issue for us. In terms of the financial services, we do believe that there is also a normalization trend. Having said that, right, you know, I think we still would be going forward, continuing to place very high emphasis on compliance, on the responsibility as a platform, and also on the proactive communication with regulators. That's the update on the regulatory side.
In terms of capital allocation, Will, you know, on the capital return front, we're very active. You know, we'll be sending out the Meituan distribution in kinds in the next two days. We announced today we'll be increasing our regular annual dividend by 50%. You know, previously when we were in an open trading window, we were buying back shares most days. You know, we're very busy. I wouldn't say I'm personally busy mailing out Meituan checks, but collectively as an organization, we're busy on the capital return front. On terms of investing capital in other companies, you know, looking domestically at China, we're actually quite optimistic given what we see on China consumption.
You know, we can't forecast how the market will value companies, but we can see what China consumers are doing, which is becoming more active. You know, we ourselves have therefore become more active in terms of, you know, making investments in small, early stage, privately held companies in interesting growth areas in China. Internationally, the environment's obviously extremely dynamic and, you know, we're being very selective, but also seeking to be opportunistic. That's on returning capital and on investing capital.
Eighteen.
Many thanks.
Thank you. next question comes from John Choi from Daiwa.
Thank you management for taking my question. I have a question on your international game opportunity. I know that I think on the prepared remarks, you know, management did lay out a few things such as expansion of origin IP, new titles for emerging studios and, you know, bringing top PC consoles to mobile. Considering that if you look at the global gaming market itself, it's also growing at a much slower pace, which drivers do you think will be important for our international game business? You know, can you kind of give us a priority of where the investments will go through and, you know, what kind of growth that we should be expecting over the longer term period?
As just a quick follow-up, as we could see from the recent, you know, more scrutiny from other, you know, social network platforms elsewhere on a geopolitical region, do we see any risk on our gaming business as we continue to thrive internationally? Thank you.
In terms of the international game opportunity, you know, we don't think it's stuck in slow growth mode. We think that the last year, you know, has been a transitional period because of the hangover from the work from home phenomenon that I discussed earlier. We're actually structurally very positive about the game business globally, including internationally. There's obviously been a number of games, you know, whether it's Call of Duty this year or, you know, Elden Ring or Harry Potter that have been, you know, phenomenally successful, both in the traditional premium game model as well as increasingly in the games as a service model. Our market share of the international game market is still only in the mid-single digit percentage.
We think that, you know, we have certain structural competitive advantages that we can bring to bear, including the sort of development capabilities from China, including the fact that we're at the forefront of trends such as multi-platformization, such as shifting to games as a service rather than premium game model. You know, therefore, both the China game industry in general and then Tencent within that are well-positioned to, you know, increase their market share of the global and the international game industry over time. You know, our focus is around those areas. It's around, you know, developing great games, particularly games that, you know, have, you know, long life and, you know, those could be more.
Player versus player games that are similar to physical sports, or they could be more, you know, content-driven player versus environment games that are more in the nature of storytelling. We're building up our capabilities in both kinds of games. In, you know, operating those games effectively. You know, operating games in the games as a service era involves, you know, much more continual hands-on support than, you know, publishing games in the premium game era. You know, we're investing to be good at both developing and operating good games. If we do that, we think we can continue to creep up our market share in, you know, this very big, you know, $150+ billion international game market.
On the geopolitical front, you know, everything faces some degree of geopolitical risk. I think the risks faced by the game industry are, you know, dissimilar to the risks faced by, you know, social platforms that you alluded to, for a few reasons. One is that, you know, games generally, you're not seeking to collect data on individual users and then, you know, optimize, that user's experience based on, you know, very sort of targeted, data. You're interested in collecting, you know, scale data on a large number of anonymized users, you're not following, you know, the behaviors of individual, actors.
In addition, you know, with media platforms, you know, that there's concern around, you know, the content that's distributed, particularly the news content that's, you know, distributed to users. You know, with games, you don't have news content that's distributed to users. People don't go into a video game if they want to watch CNN. You know, while I wouldn't say that games are absent from geopolitical risk, I think the nature of concerns around games is, you know, different from the nature of the concerns around, you know, media platforms or social platforms.
John, next question comes from James Cordwell from Atlantic. James, your line is open.
Thank you very much, management. Thank you very much for taking my question. I actually wanted to go back to Alex's question on the FintTech business and try and get a little bit more detail, if I may. Two parts. Just first of all, looking nearer term, would you say the double-digit quarter-to-date growth you described in the release represents, you know, a fully recovered growth rate? If not, what kind of level should we expect from that business once it is fully recovered? Maybe if there's any color on what you've been seeing March in the month of March.
Secondly, looking a little bit longer term, you did tell in the release some of the other initiatives you're investing in within the FinTech area to augment growth. I was wondering if there's any kind of framework you could give us as to how much of FinTech's growth in the next couple of years will come from volume, how much might come from increasing take rate, and how much will come from, you know, the value-added offerings you describe?
Well, in terms of the growth rate in the fourth quarter, the number is actually against. The number we reported is actually against January and February, right? Which is, if you think about 2022, those two months were actually relatively normal periods within the COVID period. Starting from March, April, those are sort of, you know, the more disrupted times. It's actually tougher comparison from a number perspective for January and February, and then easier comparison when you step into March and April. That's sort of the nature of comparison. I would say in general, when our payment business is actually sort of, you know, as big as it is, then it grows pretty much with consumption.
So I would say double-digit is actually pretty good growth rate. Now in terms of the areas that drivers growth, I think, you know, I actually explained this quite a bit already, which is, now our volume would grow, but that would be alongside with the consumption. In terms of take rates, I don't think we want to increase the basic take rate because we felt, you know, if there's any additional gain that we want to make, then, we should be making it from value creation.
We'll be very focused on saying, "Oh, if we actually serving these merchants and helping these merchants to cover the customers, you know, how can we actually help the merchants to make their transactions easier," right? You know, for example, if they are actually making transactions over our lease programs, then there are ways through which we can actually make the conversion better. There are ways through which we can actually help them to increase their ticket size. When we actually do these things which are value added to the merchants, then I think, you know, it's fair for us to charge a certain monetization for the value creation, a part of the value creation that we are making for them.
In terms of additional, you know, drivers of growth, it would be coming from the financial products, right? Our loan products and when we are offering wealth management products and when over time we offer insurance products that would help our users and our merchants to be served better. When we offer these products, which are in conjunction with licensed financial institutions which is completely in compliant with the existing regulatory framework, then we actually can generate more revenue from them. That's the way we think about our FinTech business.
Thank you, Martin.
Okay, James. We will take the last question from Thomas Chong from Jefferies.
Hi, good evening. Thanks management for taking my questions. I have a question regarding on the margin side. Given that on the top line we have a lot of opportunities ahead on the OpEx side we are seeing the sales and marketing expenses made a very good job on a sequential basis. Just want to get some color with regard to the margin outlook in 2023 and whether the OpEx in Q4 can be used as a basis of a benchmark going forward. My second question is really about the consumer behavior post the pandemic. Any color that would affect our business or incremental to our business segments can be shared would be grateful. Thank you.
Yeah. In terms of the margin, while we don't provide guidance, I would like to share with you some bits and pieces. As you understand, approximately half of our revenue have grossly contribute and benefit from China economy activity. Our business has stayed resilient when facing macro challenges, and we are well positioned to benefit from the economy. On a holistic basis, we have been seeing positive signs in January and February for games payment and advertising upon reopening. You know, we can assume that, you know, for some of our services, you know, on a margin basis, there's some room for improvement.
Of course, you know, when you look at, you know, some of our segment just like online advertising, there might be some seasonal fluctuation and margin trend, although should show positive, you know, on a year-on-year basis in, you know, 2023, due to industry recovery and growing contribution for higher margin Video Accounts in-feed ads. In terms of the expenses, you know, I think Martin and James have covered a little bit, but I would just elaborate a little bit more. Promotion and advertising, you know, inside the selling and marketing has already increased by 40% year-on-year for the whole 2022. I would say that this has already been pushed to a very low base.
We expect that expenses may notch up with new business opportunities, for example, new games. We are very focused on our eye, you know, well, in the past. It will be increased in a more disciplined way. For R&D, you know, it increased by 18%, you know, year-on-year in 2022. While we will continue to invest in strategic areas just like games and AI, we expect R&D to increase, but the growth rate would be more moderate. Say for instance, as Martin has explained earlier, even for AI investments, a lot of the investment is in form of service, which is the cost of which will be amortized over, you know, a period of four years. The impact is not that material.
Going to the one another big item, which is the staff cost. It grew 16% year-on-year, while the headcount dropped by 4% despite there were a few thousand additional headcounts from graduates and another 2,000 from newly acquired subsidiaries. We expect headcount to grow but remain disciplined and at a measured place in 2023.
Great. In terms of the consumer behavior, you know, we have a couple of lenses including, you know, Tenpay activity, including Mini Programs transactional activity. You know, what we see is generally quite positive. There's obviously some nuance. As I mentioned earlier, our low ticket price items are selling better. Certain high ticket price items like cars not, but certain other high ticket price items also selling better. In terms of offline versus online, there's a sharper, y ou know, both are growing, but there's a more pronounced turnaround for offline because offline was, you know, more impacted last year, particularly early in the second quarter last year and late in the fourth quarter last year. At the margin, the pickup is more pronounced for offline than online.
You know, overall a broad-based consumption recovery, that, you know, we're seeing, you know, flowing through to us in terms of our payment volumes and revenues, in terms of our Mini Program activity and revenues, in terms of our, you know, advertising activity and revenues. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for all the questions. We are now ending the webinar. If you wish to check out press release and other financial information, please visit the IR section of our company website at www.tencent.com. The replay of this webinar will also be available soon. Thank you. See you next quarter.