Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kuaishou Technology fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. Please note that the English simultaneous interpretation will be provided for management's prepared remarks. This English line will be in listen-only mode. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Heather Diwu, Director of Investor Relations at Kuaishou Technology.
All right. Thank you, operator. Good evening and good morning to everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. Joining us today, we have Mr. Cheng Yixiao, Co-Founder, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Jin Bing, Chief Financial Officer; and Senior Advisor, Mr. Nicholas Yik Kay Chong. Before we start, we would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from those mentioned in today's announcement and discussion. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking information, except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-IFRS financial measures for comparison purposes only.
For a definition of non-IFRS financial measures and reconciliation of IFRS to non-IFRS financial results, please refer to our results announcement for the fourth quarter and full year report ending December 31 , 2021 issued earlier today. For today's call, management will use Chinese as the main language. A third-party interpreter will provide simultaneous interpretation, mainly prepared remarks section and consecutive interpretation during the Q&A section. Please note that English interpretation is for convenience purposes only. In case of any discrepancy, management statements in the original language will prevail.
I will now hand the call over to Yixiao.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Kuaishou's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. Kuaishou has always been committed to creating happiness to our users. In the fourth quarter of 2021, we had 578 million MAUs and 323 million DAUs in China.
As our user base continues to expand, we're more aware that as a highly interactive and large volume digital community with high user stickiness, Kuaishou will leverage its strengths and capabilities to provide technologies, products, services, infrastructure, and solutions for the digitization of more products and industries, helping users reducing transaction costs, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, and promote social productivity and development of digital economy. In the past year, billions of product orders were sent over the country through Kuaishou's platform, of which nearly 560 million were orders for agriculture products. More than 20 million users earn income from Kuaishou, of which more than 60% come from low and mid-tier cities. According to a third-party estimate, by the end of 2021, Kuaishou had created 34.64 million jobs for the society.
At the same time, we have been actively expanding new businesses such as local services and recruitment. We aim to meet customer demand through our short video and live streaming capacity, getting a high frequency and low barrier digital community, and provide more users and industries with a high quality, efficient, convenient digital platform. Looking back at 2021, in the face of many challenges and uncertainties, we made a series of timely internal adjustments to strengthen our own advantages, improve organizational efficiency, and clarify our strategic direction, which ultimately brought satisfactory and significant results. First, I would like to share our work relating to the traffic growth and e-commerce and ecosystem cultivation. In the fourth quarter of 2021, our DAUs and MAUs hit a historical high.
DAUs reached 323 million, achieving the highest ever year-over-year growth rate of 19.2% in 2021, and the corresponding quarter-over-quarter growth also outperformed our typical seasonal patterns. MAUs reached 578 million, achieving the highest ever year-over-year growth of 21.5%. Our MAU base grew by more than 100 million comparing with the fourth quarter of 2021. With more users joining Kuaishou, an inclusive and prosperous digital community, our user mix become more diverse. In the fourth quarter, average daily time spent per DAU increased by 32.3% year-over-year to 118.9 minutes, and total traffic achieved rapid growth of 57.6% year-over-year.
Through continuous expansion of short videos and live streams in content and use case scenarios, user engagement and stickiness in Kuaishou ecosystem continues to grow. User base and time spent accelerated the growth in the second half of 2021. It was attributable to the strengthening of our social advantages, in-depth operational feature content, and highly efficient iteration of our organizational structure. First, we continued to build our social attributes and strengthen Kuaishou's characteristics, thus forming a close connection between users, creating an interactive networking, atmosphere and enhancing user stickiness and activity. We have increased our investment in attracting new customers through building social mindsets early in the user lifestyle. Also algorithms and products are continuously optimized to actively facilitate a conversion to a more mutual relationships.
By the end of 2021, pairs of mutual followers on our platform exceeded 19.6 billion pairs on a cumulative basis, up by 68% year-over-year, with more than 200 mutual follow relations established per MAUs on average. At the same time, the quality of private domain content has improved continuously through ongoing governance. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the absolute value of private domain traffic of the platform continued to grow, and the quality experience of mutual follow relations also have been improved. The interactive and consistent content creation ecosystem essential for us. We have always abided by the principle of inclusiveness, providing greater support to creators across various aspects such as traffic. In the fourth quarter, content from mid-tier and long-tail creators contribute more than 80% of the platform's video views consumption, and this percentage continues to rise.
High-quality content creators can be seen and discovered on Kuaishou so that they can accumulate valuable private domain traffic and generate on some results. In the fourth quarter, the number of high-quality content creators on our platform continued to increase quarter over quarter. We have been creating new refined and distinctive content categories, targeting different user group and improving our content operation and recommendation abilities. This has developed a differentiated content mindset, achieving positive results in terms of user acquisition and time spent. The new content verticals we created, such as short plays, sports, and knowledge sharing, rapidly grew in 2021. Take Kuaishou Playlet, for example. We are aiming to build an expansive and refined content supply ecosystem supporting UGC creators while launching Project Astral, which leads to the practice of quality short play creation in this sector.
By the end of 2021, Project Astral launched 240 exclusive customized short plays, of which more than 100 received more than 100 million views. With more than 10,000 short plays on our platform at present, we have become home to many blockbuster short plays and lead the industry. Short plays have also brought us user growth with more female users in high tier. In 2021, more than one billion users watched short plays on Kuaishou. The proportion of video view of short play has quickly increased the level of top content verticals, demonstrating our objective for creating featured content in users' share of mind and heart. In terms of organization efficiency, since the adjustment of our organizational structure of the growth department in June, we have strengthened the infrastructure construction of growth system and data integration.
This measure laid a more solid technical foundation for our efficiency improvement. At the same time, with the continuous evolution of industry and user mindset, we expanded differentiated channels and formulate dynamic management solutions for user acquisition and reactivating targeting users at different groups and also stages of their life cycle. We have also helped us to find best solution to maximizing the returns and improving customer acquisition and retention efficiency. On the basis of rapid traffic growth, our total revenue reached RMB 81.1 billion in 2021, up 37.9% year-over-year. Revenue from online marketing services business was RMB 42.67 billion, achieving a rapid growth of 95.2%. The revenue contribution to total revenue increased to 52.6% in 2021 from 37.2% in 2020.
The macro environment has been continuously challenging since the second half of 2021, but we still fully unlock our growth potential, maintain a more resilient growth performance in online marketing services business and further increase our market share. First, Kuaishou provided advertisers with a fast-growing and huge traffic pool. On Kuaishou, the breadth of our public domain and the thickness of our private domain and closed loop system for our business ecosystem, together, they provide a unique traffic combination and thriving ecosystem that continues to attract new advertisers. The continuous optimization of advertising content and materials has also earned us a space to further improve and load. Second, although our online marketing services business started relatively late, through continuous iteration of our advertising system and products and enhancing our operation and service capabilities, our advertisers experience and rate of return was further optimized, leading to enhanced industrial competitiveness.
In 2021, we consolidated Xiao Dian Tong and Fans Toutiao to Magnetic Engine so that our advertisers would be able to conduct more refined investment and budget allocation in both public and private domain, and thus improve decision-making efficiency and rate of return. In terms of maturity of the algorithm model and price mechanism, we have conducted product research and also optimized the algorithm to boost efficiency. With regards to services, we provided the target solution to our customers from various industries so as to cater to the advertising requirement more precisely. In 2021, the number of advertisers increased by more than 60% compared to 2020. Advertising of our closed-loop ecosystem is also one of the growth engines of Kuaishou advertising business. With the growth of GMV and active merchants and optimization of our products, in 2021, revenue from advertising business achieved three-digit growth.
In the future, we will also continuously improve the return on merchants investment by strengthening the value of our closed loop business and product efficiency. Also in addition, brand advertisement also achieved a breakthrough performance, with revenue up more than 150% in 2021. Kuaishou's large and diverse user base and long-term private domain value market is unparalleled resources for brand advertisers. Coupled with our investment in and also operation of high-quality content such as Impact Games and Super Night Show, we have enabled us to successfully attract more high-quality brand advertisers on our platform. The marketing solution that integrates the product efficiency also fully realized commercial closed loop value. In 2021, the number of brand advertisers more than doubled. Live streaming e-commerce has the characteristics of high efficiency, strong interaction, and its content-oriented.
On the basis, Kuaishou has formed a distinctive, trustworthy e-commerce model with a high repeat purchase rate. Their superior experience is gradually changing the e-commerce shopping mindset of far more users. In 2021, our e-commerce GMV reached RMB 680.0 billion, representing rapid growth of 78.4%. Specifically, the proportion of Kwai Shop, our self-built e-commerce, continues to increase. In December 2021, Kwai Shop accounted for 98.8% of e-commerce GMV. Trust is undoubtedly the foundation of Kuaishou's e-commerce business. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the monthly e-commerce repeated purchase rate of our platform increased by five percentage points compared with the same period last year. This is due to the persistent efforts made by the platform as merchants provide users with more guarantee and cost-effective shopping experience.
In 2021, we launched the Kwai Shop Trust Card transaction protection mechanism to provide users with protection rights and worry-free shopping experience. We have seen a merchant who activated the Trust Card saw their GMV increase by 20% within 30 days. This not only protects customers' rights and interests and reduces the cost of user order decision-making, but also improves the conversion rate and throughput of our transactions and live streaming. The platform has also improved the timeliness after sales. This measure has also increased the willingness of repeat purchase for new users. In the second half of 2021, the repeat purchase rate of new users increased by more than 10 percentage points compared with the first half of the year. Currently, we have integrated dozens of trust indicators into a system, and a trust index of merchants will determine the traffic distribution.
In addition to strengthening trust, we also continue to optimize the supply of merchandise and improve merchandise quality. In 2021, we upgraded Kuaishou Selection to Kuaishou Distribution, which lowered the threshold for merchants and brands to join and distribute, allowing more high-quality merchants to join the Kuaishou Distribution system. At the same time, the products are set to refine layers, and high quality products identified through algorithms will be matched with more rights and interests, form a more accurate and intelligent buyer mechanism matching platform. In the fourth quarter of 2021, more than 30% of e-commerce GMV came from the Kuaishou Distribution system. For brand merchants, we established a KA team to provide tailor-made services. In 2021, the e-commerce business of brand goods developed rapidly.
The e-commerce GMV from self-operated live streaming and Kwai Brand was more than nine times of the first half of 2021, significantly driving the conversion of new active buyers. We're delighted to see that in 2021, the consumption frequency of annual active buyers in R2 further increased. People and content are essential for live streaming of e-commerce. The platform active e-commerce streamers continued to grow in 2021. The further optimization of quality of live streaming content, coupled with the continuous enrichment of merchandise supply, lays a solid foundation for continuous increase of e-commerce penetration. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the penetration rate of the platform live streaming e-commerce further increased. Our technical team continued to optimize the algorithm, especially in distribution of e-commerce content in public domain. In 2021, our order conversion rate increased significantly.
In the second half of 2021, we began to build a service provider system and empower more merchants and streamers to enhance stores efficiency. By the end of 2021, more than 500 service providers has been attracted by Kuaishou platform. The monthly GMV rate of the merchants exceed that of the total GMV by 20 percentage points. For our live streaming business in the past year, we continue to optimize content quality, improve operational efficiency, and explore scenarios expansion to give full play to the value of the underlying infrastructure and promote the increase in user engagement and stickiness.
In 2021, the revenue from live streaming business continued to improve, reaching 31 billion RMB, of which the live streaming revenue in the fourth quarter reached 8.8 billion RMB, an increase of 14.3% quarter-over-quarter and 11.7% year-over-year, achieving the first positive year-over-year growth in the year. Live streaming is an important content supply for the platform. The talent agency business is a bootstrapping point of the platform to reach content supply. It is also an important part of platform in terms of building healthy and open live streaming e-commerce. Also in the middle of 2021, we launched the Blue Ocean Plan to strengthen cooperation with talent agencies and support with traffic resources. We hope to discover high quality and promising in talent agencies and break through bottlenecks of existing industry, obtaining new growth opportunities.
Benefiting from the platform policy and our openness of ecosystem, talent agencies bring diversified streamers to platform. At the end of 2021, the cumulative number of streamers signed by talent agencies has more than doubled year-over-year on couple. More high-quality content supply has been recognized by users, and users' willingness to pay has been enhanced. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the average monthly ARPU of live streaming business reached RMB 60.7, an increase of 17.2% year-over-year, and 8.2% increase quarter-over-quarter. At the same time, high-quality content stimulates the total increase in the live streaming penetration rate and growth of paying users. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the active user penetration rate of live streaming business increased by 15 percentage points over the same period last year.
The average MPU of the live streaming business increased by 5.2% quarter-over-quarter to 48.5 million. We believe that there is room for further expansion in short video and live streaming scenarios. New digital needs of users are constantly evolving, and a community like Kuaishou with highly active user engagement has more touch points with users, enabling it to capture user needs faster and form new transaction base for our users bilateral networks in huge community. We have gradually begun to explore our scenarios such as online procurement and local services to empower more industries and people with short videos and live streaming. As for the overseas market, we identified the key markets in 2021. We achieved successful user acquisition in the first half of the year, gained a reasonable market share.
Since the middle of last year, we have focused more on the strengthening of our differentiation and improving quality of users, and optimizing the construction and structure to key out this market, and increase investment in featured content and targeting core user groups more precisely. At the same time, we have bettered the direction, planned direction and pace of investment overseas resources in the second half of 2021. Despite with more distinctive investment and the supply investment, the user time spent and user retention rate in overseas market continue to increase quarter-over-quarter. In a relatively mature market, we have been exploring monetization opportunities such as advertising, live streaming, and e-commerce. In the future, we hope to develop differentiated products and user mindsets in overseas market, and continue to achieve high-quality development and better return on investment. My sharing ends up here.
Next, I would like to ask Jing Bing to share the company's financial performance. Thank you, Richard.
Hello, everyone. I'm pleased to have become part of Kuaishou family and meet with all of you in first earnings call in Kuaishou. We ended the year of 2021 with a strong quarter of financial performance as we continue to take initiatives in cost control and financial efficiency improvement through efficient capital allocation and a disciplined investment approach. We aim to add delivering values for our users, content creators and partners, driving high quality growth and improving our monetization and operating efficiency at the same time. In the fourth quarter, we continued to optimize our revenue and cost structure and realize operating leverages, leading to a significant quarter-over-quarter decrease in both our operating loss and adjusted net loss.
For the full year of 2021, our total revenue reached 81.8 billion, 81.1 billion RMB, up 37.9% year-over-year, implying our strong growth momentum was sustained into the fourth quarter despite a challenging macro environment. Our revenues for the fourth quarter increased 35% year-over-year and 19.2% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 24.4 billion. An increase was primarily driven by the online marketing services and other services growth, in particular, the e-commerce business growth. Our online marketing service maintained the rapid growth and further gained market share. In the fourth quarter of 2021, its revenue reached RMB 13.2 billion, representing an increase of 55.5% year-over-year and 21.3% quarter-over-quarter.
Revenue for Online Marketing Services for the full year of 2021 was RMB 42.7 billion, increasing by 95.2% year-over-year. This was mainly driven by vigorous growth of total traffic and continuously improved visualized advertising products and operational updated capabilities. All of these contributed to further optimize advertising experience and ad performance attracting a growing number of advertisers using our platform, as well as increased advertising budget on our platform. Our services, including e-commerce, also thrived with revenue of RMB 22.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, representing an increase of 40.2% year-over-year and 27.3% quarter-over-quarter. In 2021, revenue of Other Services reached RMB 10.4 billion, increasing by 99.9% year-over-year.
As we further enrich the merchandising supply, improve service capabilities, and optimize distribution algorithms, our total GMV of e-commerce reached RMB 680 billion in 2021, representing an increase of 78.4% year-over-year. On the monetization side, we prioritize supporting merchants to grow by offering competitive net commission rates. Revenue from our live streaming business was RMB 8.8 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, up 11.7% year-over-year and 14.2% quarter-over-quarter, marking the very first time of year-over-year growth for live streaming in 2021. The increase mainly resulted from enhanced live streaming content and more efficient streaming operations, which together drove paying user growth and recovery of their willingness to continue and consume.
Average MPUs for live streaming grew 5.2% quarter-over-quarter to 48.5 million, and monthly RPU for live streaming on our Kuaishou App expanded 17.2% year-over-year and 8.6% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 60.7. Gross profit for the year of 2021 reached RMB 34 billion, growing 42.9% year-over-year. Gross profit margin in 2021 was 42%, improving from 40.5% in 2020. Our enhanced gross margin was a result of optimized revenue mix and improved management of operating costs. Selling and marketing expenses were RMB 10.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2021, representing 41.9% of total revenues with a 77.1% quarter-over-quarter decrease.
The decrease were primarily due to our more efficient and disciplined spending on our user acquisition and maintenance as we prioritize efficiency optimization, as well as refined operations and management and took initiatives to pursue high quality user growth. Selling and marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues decreased throughout the year from 68.5% in the first quarter of 2021 to 41.9% In the fourth quarter. At the same time, we strengthened the optimization of organizational personnel efficiency. In the fourth quarter of 2021, research and development expenses were RMB 4.0 billion. This was a decrease of 4.8% quarter-over-quarter, representing 16.4% of total revenues in the quarter, down from 20.6% in third quarter.
Its related expenses for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased slightly by 0.7% quarter-over-quarter to RMB 920 million, representing 3.8% of total revenues versus 4.5% in third quarter. Our adjusted net loss for the fourth quarter of 2021 was RMB 3.6 billion. Our adjusted net margin improved 7.9 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet position with cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, restricted cash and wealth management products of RMB 49.6 billion as of the end of 2021. We generated a positive operating net cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2021 as we improved monetization efficiency and better managed our working capital.
Looking forward, the sustainable and healthy development of our core business will lead to a further resource deployment and planning, at the same time, continue implementation to reduce costs and improve operating efficiency to fuel our business development and create long-term value for our shareholders. So much for my sharing. Please, now we're gonna have Q&A.
再按一字键。如果您需要撤回您的问题，请按井字键。请先用中文提出您的问题，再将您的问题翻译成英文。我们现在进入问答环节。第一道问题来自Credit Suisse的Kenneth Fong，请发问。
好，谢谢易肖总、金总接受我的提问，也恭喜你们有非常强劲的业绩。我一个问题是关于第四季度的用户，还有这个流量增长的趋势，两个也达到这个历史的新高。我想理解一下，就是背后的增长的驱动力会是什么呢？然后我们也看到第一季度春节的活动的效果也非常好，也想理解一下，就是我们2022年就性的情况是怎么样？我自己翻译一下。
Thank you management for taking my question, and congrats on the very strong set of results.
We saw fourth quarter user and traffic has been very strong, and both are reaching historical high. Can you please share with us the drivers behind? The first quarter spring event is also very well received. Can you share with us some of the user growth outlook for this year? Thank you.
谢谢你的问题。首先大方向上，短视频和直播作为更具有丰富性、互动性和传播性的内容形式，仍然对传统的媒介进行着迭代。对于内容和使用场景的承载力，在不断地拓展，并得到进一步的普及。并且短视频筛选程度更高，呈现的效率也更高，成为主流的消费形态。我们认为中国的短视频DAU规模有机会达到十亿。我们作为一个成立了十年的公司，在增长侧不断地取得振奋人心的成绩。2021年下半年，我们的DAU和总流量同比增长，分别达到了18.5%和58.3%。特别是四季度，我们的DAU达到了历史新高3.23亿，这也进一步加强了我们实现中长期四亿DAU目标的信心。
First of all, in terms of general trend, short video and live streaming are richer and more interactive and easily disseminated content formats, which have become increasingly prevalent, iterating traditional media format through capacity expansion to support more content and broader use case scenarios. Furthermore, short video has gradually become a mainstream format as it can be more effective in content filtering and more efficient in content display. We believe that China's short video DAUs can potentially reach 1.1 billion. Against this backdrop, we continue to achieve exciting results on the growth side a decade after our company's founding. In the second half of 2021, our DAUs and total traffic increased by 18.5% and 58.3% year-over-year respectively.
In particular, the fourth quarter, our DAUs reached a historical high of 323 million, which has further enhanced our confidence in achieving our mid- to long-term DAU target, which is 400 million.
我们在增长侧的主要工作主要是围绕对手差异化的强化，以及对自身组织效率的提升两个方面。短视频行业从最开始的增量发展阶段逐渐地往存量发展阶段切换，这要求我们为用户创造更多的差异化价值，形成更为独特的用户心智。社区平台的定位是快手区别于其他短视频平台的首要的优势，这是我们底层价值观和流量分发逻辑决定的，非常难以复制。截止2021年底，我们平台累计互相关注的用户对数已经超过了163亿对，相比去年底增长了68.2%。互关率的话，行业非常领先。快手私域流量也在保持增长，这证明了快手私域的高质量和强心智。
Our work on the growth side is mainly twofold: first, strengthening our differentiated advantages, and also improving our organizational efficiency. As the short video industry is shifting from a pure growth stage to a stage where participants compete for existing users, it is requiring us to create more differentiated value for users and become a more unique presence in users' minds. Our foremost differentiation against other short video platforms is our positioning as a social platform. This is difficult to replicate since this is predicated upon our unique values and also traffic distribution logic. By the end of 2021, we have more than 16.3 billion pairs of mutual followers accumulatively, an increase of 68.2% compared with the end of 2020. This places us as an industry leader in terms of the mutual relationship penetration rate.
Our private domain traffic also continued to grow, demonstrating the high quality and strong mind share of Kuaishou private domain.
内容方面，我们持续服务于用户更加个性化的需求，并且探索了更多短视频和直播形态可以承载的新特色品类，形成了更加差异化的用户内容心智。除了刚才我提到的快手短剧，像体育、新知识等垂类都为我们贡献了正向的获客和时长上的回报，并且带动了用户内容创作的活跃度。我们的内容评赞比行业领先，充分体现了用户在内容消费以外，更加喜欢基于内容的互动，并且彼此之间有非常强的信任连接。在商品和服务侧，也不断地丰富了用户的选择，并开始把短视频直播的场景拓展至本地生活、招聘等新的领域，满足更多用户需求。
With respect to content, we consistently serve the personalized needs of our users. We explore unique and also new categories that can be supported by short videos and live streaming, aiming to inspire a more differentiated user mindset through content. In addition to the Kuaishou Playlet we mentioned, content verticals such as sports and knowledge sharing have both contributed positively to our user acquisition and user time spent, as well as promoted content creation on our platform. Our comments over likes ratio is industry leading, reflecting users' strong willingness to interact based on content and the trusting connection with each other that expands beyond content consumption. We have also continuously enriched the offerings of products and services for our users, and have started to expand the use case of short video and live streaming to the areas such as local services and recruitment, catering to the needs for more users.
组织高效的工作也同样作用于用户的增长。去年三季度开始，我们持续地优化了获客的效率以及用户的留存率。那么一季度呢，是互联网行业获客和流量增长的旺季。今年我们做了春节活动和冬奥活动的联合运营，结合过往的经验和提效工作，拉新的效果确实比往年都好。春节后的留存率同比提升。今年一季度，在用户春节项目的总投入相比去年有了进一步的优化，效率提升比较显著。我们对于今年总流量的增长保持信心，稳步朝着中长期四亿 DAU 的目标在迈进。
Our efforts to improve organizational efficiency also boosted user growth. Since the third quarter of last year, we have been continuously optimizing user acquisition, efficiency and retention rate. The first quarter is the peak season for the Internet industry to gain users and grow traffic. This year, leveraging our past experience and efforts on efficiency improvement, our Chinese New Year and Winter Olympics joint events achieve better results in attracting new users compared with last year. Our user retention rate also increased year-over-year after Chinese New Year. Total investment on users as well as Chinese New Year events in the first quarter were further optimized compared with the same period of last year, demonstrating our significant improvement in efficiency. We remain confident with our total traffic growth this year and are steadily moving toward our mid-to-long term target of 400 million DAUs.
来下一个问题。好的，下一个问题来自JP Morgan的Alex Yao，请发问。
好的，谢谢管理层接受我的问题啊。我们也很高兴地看到这个季度我们的电商业务，还在保持高速增长，尽管宏观环境是有些令人堪忧的。那我有几个问题，一是咱们怎么去看直播电商行业的长期天花板啊，然后第二个是和其他的平台相比，咱们快手的电商的竞争优势有哪些？啊，最后一个就是最近也看到一些监管要求啊，在这个推进，比如说，主播这个税务的问题的审查之类的，那么这些新的监管要求是不是对咱们的电商业务，有，会有一些负面影响？啊，那我自己翻译一下吧。
We are glad to see our e-commerce business continue to grow robustly in this quarter despite of the macro weakness. A couple of questions on e-commerce live streaming. Number one, how do you guys see the long term growth potential for e-commerce live streaming? Number two, compared to other similar platforms, what is the competitive advantage of Kuaishou e-commerce live streaming? Lastly, we've been seeing increasing regulatory requirements in e-commerce live streaming. Are you concerned that those incremental policies or requirements will negatively affect the e-commerce live streaming near-term outlook? Thank you.
好，谢谢你的问题。我们始终认为呢，直播电商作为一个新的内容承载方式和销售渠道，对消费者和供给端都展现出来了非常巨大的优势。首先，直播电商是一个更高效的内容承载形式。相比于传统货架电商图文为主的信息展现方式，直播电商明显地更加的直观生动，叠加在用户和主播之间、用户之间的高密度的实时互动，可以为在直播间里的消费者提供更丰富的决策信息，从而带来更优的购物体验和更高的转化效率。其次，直播电商是一个更好的能满足消费者逛的美购物需求的一个销售渠道。在中国人生活水平不断提高、商品选择高度多元化的当下，消费者越来越多地处于有明确的购物预算和意愿，但购物目标不清晰的一个心智状态。这时候消费者通常去逛和消费的内容，在这个过程中购买目标得以被发现和明确。直播电商有趣的内容消费体验可以更好地满足用户逛的购物需求，而直播间里的热闹氛围也可以进一步激发用户购买意图并促成转化。长期来看，我们认为直播电商行业GMV规模有机会达到六万亿人民币。
Thank you. It has always been our belief that live streaming e-commerce as a new form of content for online sales channels offers greater advantages to both consumers and suppliers. First, it is a more efficient content format compared with information display in forms of graphics and text for traditional shelf-based e-commerce. Live streaming displays merchandise more vividly. This, coupled with the intensive interactions between streamers and users, provides richer information to consumers for decision making, leading to a better shopping experience and higher sales conversion rate. Secondly, live streaming e-commerce is a sales channel that can better satisfy consumers' need for shopping. With the continuous improvement in Chinese people's living standards and highly diversified merchandise selection, consumers often have clear budget and intention to purchase without specific target in mind. In such circumstances, consumers would go shopping and consume content, discover and determine their targets.
The fun content consumption experience provided by live streaming can better meet users' needs for shopping, and the lively vibe of the live streaming session further stimulates users' intention to buy and facilitates conversion. In the long term, we believe the total GMV of live streaming e-commerce could reach RMB 6 trillion.
第二个问题呢，关于快手电商的竞争优势。那我们快手呢，在产品、流量和长期主义价值观上的多年坚持，使得我们拥有高质量的私域流量和强信任、高互动的用户群体。私域信任电商模式的雏形也在快手上应运而生，这是我们不可被复制的特色和宝贵沉淀。对私域的扶持呢，也让我们的商家和主播更有动力去做长效的用户关系和经营。那消费者的体验呢，就得以进一步的优化，我们的月复购率也行业领先。其次，相较于其他平台，快手在下沉市场用户人群更加具有优势。我们也注意到，这部分人群的收入增速是高于整体的，随之也会产生消费升级的需求。消费升级的本质是对于商品差异化属性的付费意愿的提升，而品牌商品的核心就是在表达差异化。所以消费升级通常会表现为购买更多的品牌商品。
Second question is about Kuaishou's competitive advantages. Our years of commitment to products, traffic, and long-term value has provided us with high quality private domain traffic and a highly engaged user base with strong trust. Trust-based private domain e-commerce is taking shape in Kuaishou, which is also a unique, unreplicable feature of us derived from a valuable experience. Our support to the private domain motivated our merchants and streamers to focus on long-term user relationships and operations, further optimizing consumer experience, contributing to our leading, industry-leading monthly repeat purchase rate. In addition, compared with other platforms, Kuaishou has more advantages in the lower-tier markets. We also noticed that consumers in these markets experience higher than average income growth, which brings requirements of consumption upgrade.
Essentially, consumption is upgraded along with the consumers' higher willingness to pay for differentiated merchandise, which is at the core of brand. As such, consumption upgrade usually comes with increased purchase of branded merchandise.
我们发现，除了传统意义上的知名品牌，一些新兴的以快手作为主要经营阵地的快品牌更容易脱颖而出。这些品牌通常出自于产业带的源头，拥有相较于知名品牌更加具有性价比的货源，这个也和下沉市场用户的消费水平和消费心理更加契合，同时具备出色的内容能力，能更高效地利用直播这个载体吸引用户持续观看和转化。最后也有强烈的商业化的投放意愿，持续曝光，打造品牌形象，沉淀品牌资产。部分快品牌已经初具规模，年销售额可达几亿乃至数十亿。为什么这些新兴品牌能在快手上成长起来呢？一方面，快手作为一个具备流量优势的内容平台，赋予了这些品牌打造品牌故事和品牌形象的内容阵地。另一方面，快手在私域流量具备核心优势，快手用户能在快手持续地复访和复购，我们的月复购率行业领先，能有效地沉淀用户的品牌心智，从而实现品牌的长期健康经营。这些颇具竞争力的快品牌是快手的特色供给，不仅能满足快手现有用户的需求，也能够有效帮助我们获取新买家。
We discovered that besides the traditional well-known brands, it is easier for some emergent Kwai Brand basing their operations on Kuaishou to stand out. These brands usually originated from the production headstream and have more cost-effective supply sources than well-known brands, making them a better match for the consumption levels and mindsets of users in the lower tier markets. At the same time, with excellent content operation capability, these brands can leverage live streaming more effectively to attract users and facilitate conversion. Lastly, these brands have a strong desire to invest in promotion and commercialization because of their intention to increase exposure, build brand image, and accumulate brand equity. Some Kwai brands have already reached a considerable scale with annual sales of a few hundred million and even several billion Chinese Yuan. Why are these emerging brands able to grow up on Kuaishou?
On one hand, as a content platform with a traffic advantage, Kuaishou provided these brands with a home base to build their brand narrative and image. On the other hand, Kuaishou's key strength in private domain attracts users to repeatedly visit and purchase, helping cultivate brand mind share, and achieve long-term healthy operations, benefiting from industry-leading repeat purchase rate. Meanwhile, these competitive Kwai brands have become a unique offering of Kuaishou, which not only meet the needs of our existing users, but also help us to acquire new buyers.
最后是关于近期的监管问题，那的确呢，对我们的治理工作也提出了更高的需求。直播电商是一个新兴的行业，作为行业的带头平台，我们会与监管部门保持良性的沟通，确保行业有序和健康的、可持续发展。我们一直致力于电商基础设施建设和强化平台治理，提高用户在平台的消费体验和对我们平台的信任。我们推出的小店信用卡保证机制，提供了包括退款、不退货等等用户权益。对于在直播间内经营销售卖假冒伪劣商品、虚假宣传、刷单等不正当行为的主播和商家，执行了严格的惩治和打击措施。未来我们希望和行业一起成长，改变更多用户的消费体验，以及商家的销售体验，为数字经济发展做出贡献。
Lastly, the recent regulatory changes indeed raised the requirements for our governance. As live streaming e-commerce is a new industry, it needs to be standardized, and relevant laws and regulations need to be improved constantly during its development and expansion. Leading platforms should lead by example and have benign interaction with the regulatory authorities to improve systems and rules to ensure the industry orderly, healthily and sustainable development. We have always been committed to strengthening e-commerce infrastructure and platform governance to enhance the user's consumption experience and their trust in the platform.
We launched the Kwai Shop Trust Card, a transaction safeguard mechanism to provide users with rights such as refund without return. Meanwhile, we rolled out the strict punishments and countermeasures for streamers and merchants selling fake and shoddy merchandise, or engage in false publicity and click farming. In the future, we hope to continue growing with the industry and change more users' consumption experience and merchant sale experience to contribute to the development of the digital economy.
下一个问题。谢谢。下一道问题来自Morgan Stanley的Alex Poon，请发问。
谢谢管理层，接受我的提问，恭喜很好的业绩。我想问一下，在四季度我们看到降本增效方面有很明显的提升，请问今年公司计划如何收窄这个亏损，实现国内业务平衡？谢谢。
I'll translate my question. First of all, congrats on very strong results. My question is related to our efficiency improvement. Can management share with us how will we control our cost and to achieve China segment breakeven this year? Thank you.
好，谢谢Alex。我们对于今年内实现季度的国内业务调整后净利润转正很有信心，我们的路径也是非常明确的。首先，我们认为公司的毛利率水平在今年会持续的提升。第一，随着广告、电商业务的发展，这类高毛利业务占收入比重会进一步拉升，来提高整体公司毛利率的增长。第二，在不同业务线下，我们也在进行更多的成本管控工作，希望更好地控制收入分成等成本。第三，作为降本增效的一部分，我们也在推动带宽、服务器、折旧、餐销等营运成本及人工成本释放更多的经营杠杆效应，提高资产使用效率。2021年第四季度，我们的总流量同比增长57.6%，但是流量相关的运营成本同比仅增长了10.8%，占收入比也下降了3.1个百分点。第四，虽然在其他的成本项，我们会小幅增加对于内容成本的投入，但是我们认为内容可以帮助拉新、拉回、提高参与度，具有很高的用户价值和商业价值。对于内容投入，我们也会谨慎地评估ROI。2021年我们的毛利率达到了42%，比2020年提升了1.5个百分点，今年也会持续提升。
Thank you, Alex. We are very confident that our domestic business will deliver a quarterly adjusted net profit within 2022, and the path is quite clear. Most importantly, we expect continuous gross margin expansion this year. First, with the development of high margin business like advertising and e-commerce, the revenue mix will further increase, driving overall gross margin expansion. Second, for each business line, we are also carrying out cost control measures aimed at better managing revenue sharing cost, among others. Third, as part of our initiatives to reduce costs and increase efficiency, we are managing our operating costs such as bandwidth, servers, depreciation and amortization, and labor costs to release more operating leverage and improve asset utilization efficiency. In the fourth quarter of 2021, our total traffic increased by 57.6% year-over-year.
In contrast, our traffic related operating costs only increased by 10.8% year-over-year, leading to a 3.1 percentage point reduction as a percentage of revenue. Fourth, while we slightly increased the cost of content in the other cost item, we believe that content can improve the user acquisition, user retention, and engagement, which has significant user value and business value as well. We will maintain a discipline in the ROI based approach with our content investment. Our gross margin reached 42% in 2021, increasing 1.5 percentage points comparing with 2020, and this will continue to expand this year.
其次，在费用管控上，我们希望今年继续释放效果。在销售及营销费用方面，从去年的三季度开始，我们在保证用户增长和优化留存率的同时，通过组织架构调整、效率优化等手段，使得单用户获客成本以及单DAU维系成本保持下降的趋势。今年呢，我们会持续加强精细化的运营管理，而且从外部渠道的竞争环境来说，较去年也有所缓和。这样我们希望今年的销售及营销支出绝对值不高于去年，使得占收比也有明显的下降。在人员相关费用上，公司目前的人才储备相对充分，我们也在不断优化人效和员效的管理，希望研发和行政费用占收入的比例也能得到进一步的优化。
Secondly, we strive to continue delivering results in expense control this year. With respect to selling and marketing expenses, thanks to our organizational restructuring, optimized efficiency, among other means, acquisition costs per user and retention cost per DAU have both been trending down since the third quarter of 2021, while we ensure user growth and optimize retention. This year, we will continue to refine our operations in an effort to keep the absolute dollar of selling and marketing expenses to be no higher than last year, and significantly reduce these as a percentage of revenue, especially in light of the easing of external competition. In terms of personnel related expenses, we currently have a relatively sufficient talent pool, and we are constantly optimizing the management of our personnel productivity and unit spending efficiency.
We are targeting further optimizations to our R&D and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenue.
好的，谢谢。下一道问题来自 Jefferies 的 Thomas Chong，请发问。
晚上好，谢谢管理层接受我的提问。看到我们在第四季度广告继续保持一个非常强劲的增长，但是我们看到宏观那边呢依然是有很大的不确定性，这个会多大程度地影响我们新一年的广告的目标。还有就是，我们如何继续提升广告市占率呢？
Thanks management for taking my question. My question is about our online advertising services. Given that we have seen a very strong growth momentum in the fourth quarter.
However, what we are seeing right now is that a macro is not very certain. How would that affect our 2022 advertising KPI? How do we actually maintain or increase the advertising market share for this year? Thank you.
尽管如此，我们的全年线上营销服务收入达到427亿元，这个体量上依然取得了超行业95%的高速增长。这背后呢，有几个原因。首先呢，能看到广告主对大体量且流量持续增长的视频化平台还是有预算倾斜的。2021年四季度，我们的总流量获得同比接近58%的高速增长。其次，快手提供了市面上少有的综合广告产品组合以及闭环成交链路。
我们有内外循环加品牌联盟、巨星五种综合广告产品，满足客户在营销链路上的整体诉求。同时，快手电商的闭环商城帮助广告主能更高效地完成交易转化，优化体验和效果。内循环广告增速比大盘更快，达到了三位数。
The challenges from the macro environment do exist and also continue to affect the entire advertising industry, including us.
Despite this, our annual advertising revenue reached RMB 42.7 billion, growing at current scale and the rapid and above-industry rate of 95%, helping us continue to gain market share in the online advertising sector. There are several reasons behind. First of all, advertisers continue to have budget biases for large video-based platforms with scale, growing traffic. In the fourth quarter of 2021, our total traffic increased at a fast pace of nearly 58% year-over-year. Secondly, Kuaishou provides a combination of comprehensive advertising products and a closed loop transaction that are rare in the market. We have five comprehensive advertising products, including closed loop e-commerce ads, external performance ads, brand ads, and Kuaishou Union and Star Magnet, to meet consumers overall marketing and sales needs.
As Kuaishou's closed loop e-commerce platform helps advertisers to improve sales conversion while optimizing user experience and advertising effectiveness.
Our native e-commerce ad has grown faster than our overall advertising business at a triple digit growth rate year over year.
虽然我们的广告业务起步相对较晚，但也意味着更多的增长和抓手和空间。从广告主的覆盖上来说呢，随着快手的品牌力、业务实力和服务能力的提升，2021年广告主数量增长超过了60%，且仍然存在进一步的提升空间。同时，我们对算法和产品的不断投入和迭代，广告系统和产品有了进一步的优化，广告主的月均消费额取得了双位数的增速。我们的外循环效果广告受宏观经济和相关广告主所在行业的监管政策的影响，但趋势上呢，相对于行业展现出了更强的韧性。
Although our advertising business started relatively late, it also means more opportunities and upside for future growth.
In terms of advertiser coverage, as we strengthen our brand, business and service capability, the number of advertisers grew by more than 60% in 2021, and there is room for further improvement. Meanwhile, our continuous investment in algorithm and product iterations have further optimized our advertising system and products, contributing to a double-digit increase in average monthly spending by advertisers.
While our external performance ads have been affected by macroeconomic factors and regulatory policies, its trend has shown a stronger resilience relative to the industry。
第四，广告质量和算法的优化以及产品的创新，也为我们赢得了广告加载率和转化率的提升空间。快手的广告内容更为的原生化，我们也有行业领先的算法能力和持续迭代的产品力，这都能为我们提供更优的广告体验，打下了非常坚实的基础。21年我们的广告加载率按计划小幅提升，并且的话还有增长空间。
Fourth, the improvement of advertising quality and algorithm optimization, as well as product innovation, has also given us further upside in ad load and conversion rates.
Our more native advertising content, combined with industry leading algorithm capabilities and continuous product iterations, have laid a solid foundation for us to provide a better user experience in ad consumption.
In 2021, our ad loads increased by a small degree as planned and still has room to grow.
最后一点，我们的品牌业务、联盟业务以及巨星业务都处于早期阶段，相对于成熟公司具有更大的增长潜力啊。这些驱动力会继续在今年推动业务增长，提升我们的广告市场份额。同时我们也对大环境的恢复持有保持谨慎的那个观察态度，更多聚焦在自身业务的发力点。
And lastly, our brand ads business, Kuaishou Union and Star Magnet are all in their early stage, possessing greater growth potential relative to mature companies.
These drivers will continue to propel our business growth this year and increase our advertising market share. Meanwhile, we remain cautious and continue to monitor the recovery trends in the general environment that will be more focusing on our brand business, our own business of, development.
下一个问题。谢谢。下一道问题来自UBS的Felix Liu，请发问。
郭一凡，晚上好，谢谢接受我的提问，也再次恭喜公司四季度强劲的业绩。
我的问题是关于公司的一些新的业务方向。注意到公司最近推出了专注于蓝领招聘的快招工新功能，也和本地，美团在本地生活建立了战略合作。所以我想请问一下管理层对于我们这些新业务的思考，中长期的发展空间和进一步的这个执行的策略。
Let me translate myself. Thank you management for taking my question and congratulations on the strong fourth quarter.
My question is on your new business initiative. I noticed you launched an online hiring service focused on blue-collar hiring, as well as established a strategic collaboration with Meituan on local services. I'm just curious, can management share some insights on your thoughts on the new business, their long-term growth potential, as well as your next strategic and execution plan? Thank you.
谢谢你的问题。我们认为短视频和直播作为基础设施，具有承载和改变非常多行业的能力和潜力，推动数字经济发展，提升商业效率。近年来，随着社会经济的发展，我们观察到许多行业的供需关系正在发生变化，导致部分需求无法以传统模式得到充分的满足。蓝领招聘就是其中之一。蓝领人群和企业之间长期存在的信息不对称、人才结构不匹配、用工荒等痛点，都阻碍了就业效率和经济发展。相关的数据显示，我国目前的劳动人口中，蓝领人群规模超过了四亿，是白领人群规模的两倍以上，也是全民就业的基本盘。反观中国的网络招聘市场，蓝领市场渗透率只有十几个点，而白领渗透率已经50%以上。蓝领人群在网络招聘市场的增量空间和增速都是最有潜力的。
Thanks for the question. We believe short video and live streaming as infrastructure have the ability and potential to change many industries, advance the development of digital economy and boost business efficiency in recent years. Economic development has changed the supply and demand relationships of many industries, resulting in demand that cannot be fully met through traditional modeling, and models. Blue-collar recruitment is one of them. Pain points such as the information asymmetry between blue-collar workers and enterprises, mismatch between talent and jobs, and labor shortages have long existed, impeding improvements in employment efficiency and economic development. According to the available statistics, within China's current working population, over 400 million people are blue-collar workers, more than twice the size of white-collar workers, and represent the overall employment situation of the Chinese population.
The penetration of online recruitment is only a little over 10% in the blue-collar job market, compared with more than 50% in the white-collar job market. This is to say that blue-collar jobs have the most potential in online recruitment in terms of market size and growth speed.
我们也一直在进行关于直播生态化的探索。那蓝领招聘对于快手来说就是非常合适的起点之一啊。快手上有规模庞大的蓝领用户，且用户彼此之间，用户和平台之间已经构建了强信任关系和高频的真实互动。通过短视频和直播，应聘者可以最短时间以及更加直观的方式了解岗位、用工环境以及相关信息，提高决策效率，让求职体验更加的靠谱。同时呢，企业也可以利用快手的流量和算法技术，更高效地找到合适的求职者。由于蓝领的话，更换工作的频率呢也相对更高，企业对于招聘成本和回报率也更加的敏感。规模更大、更高效的实时线上产品也是企业急需的。我们希望逐步完善视频化的招聘体验，为蓝领招聘市场创造更好的就业转化率。未来呢，我们也期待进一步利用自身能力和优势，推动数字经济和实体经济进一步融合和长期健康发展。
We have been exploring the industrialization of the live streaming ecosystem and blue-collar recruitment is a very suitable starting point for Kuaishou. We already have the massive blue-collar user base featuring strong user trust and frequent real interactions among users and between users and our platform. Via short video and live streaming, candidates can understand the job position, working environment, and other relevant information in the shortest time possible and in the most straightforward way, which will improve decision-making efficiency and facilitate a more reliable job search experience. At the same time, enterprises can leverage Kuaishou's traffic and algorithm technology to find suitable candidates most effectively. As blue-collar workers change jobs relatively more frequently, enterprises are more sensitive to recruitment costs and return, making them in urgent need of a large-scale online product that is more effective and timely.
We hope to gradually improve the video-based recruitment system to create a better job conversion for blue-collar market. In the future, we look forward to tapping into our own capabilities and advantages more deeply to facilitate the interaction of digital economy and the real economy and their long-term healthy development.
好的，今天的问答环节到此结束。现在有请Heather做总结性发言。
感谢大家今天的参与。如果您有更多问题，欢迎随时与快手资本市场及投资者关系团队取得联系。谢谢大家。
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please contact our capital market and investor relations team at any time. Thank you.