Reinforce our industrialization strategy, and then in the future, growth will be very sound. Our second strategy is ecologicalization, that is about WOS. Well, as we all know, the past two years, in relation to WOS, we made a lot of investments. Last year, there was a loss of RMB 1 billion. In the past, we did a lot of R&D work and investment on WOS, and starting this year, we can see that WOS has led to some changes to us. First of all, last year, we started to lower costs and improve efficiency. Comparing with last year, there is a contraction of R&D expenses, but iteration speed was not affected. Overall speaking, efficiency is greatly enhanced. New product development speed improved almost 70%. Number of work orders decreased 46%. Automated testing coverage improved significantly.
This year, for our efficiency and capacity, there is a big improvement. We think that WOS can help us enhance our effectiveness and efficiency. Externally, for our ecological working partner, well, that is Weimob Cloud. For Weimob Cloud, in the first half, for three parties' ecosystems, there is 247% year-on-year growth in revenue from three parties' ecosystem. Key customer penetration rate, 76.3% on Weimob Cloud. That is 76% of key customers go through Weimob Cloud to do different types of developments. Weimob Cloud experienced 37.6% year-on-year growth of customer unit price. For our core brand benchmark customers, they are using Weimob Cloud. The core ground layer is WOS, the PaaS platform. In other words, there is a lot of personalized application and development on that platform.
We serve so many ecosystem customers. To our WOS ecosystem strategy, I think it plays a very important role. WAI, Weimob AI. In May this year, in Beijing, we announced Weimob WAI, and the ground layer is ChatGPT, including Tencent, Baidu, third-party model, and we also have open source model. For products, we use Yantu model. Based on the open source model, we are working on more enhancements. Overall speaking, some very good results have been achieved, and for WAI, well, there are very good external reviews. In terms of products, recommendation or product promotion, advertising, copywriting, enterprise WeChat, and so on, and also live streaming, copyrights. Well, commodities recommendation copywriter, 15 minutes becomes one minute. Advertising copywriter in Xiaohongshu from 45 minutes down to 10 minutes.
We can have 70% usability. That is 70% of generator product titles can be used. Will be on Weimob and also Weimob Smart Retail and so on. We believe that SaaS business this year can maintain a good growth. These are some critical reasons for Weimob Marketing and also advertising. This year, we achieved strong growth. First of all, the economy recovered. Last year, there was COVID-19. As a result, many enterprises did not place advertisement. After the pandemic, many enterprises resumed placing advertisements, that's why there is quite a good growth. Besides, the most important reason is WeChat Channels. Last year, in the first half, there is commercialization of WeChat Channels. Video accounts brought about a lot of direct benefit to Weimob. Growth generated by WeChat Channels made big contributions.
At its peak for WeChat Channels, it contributed to 20%. Or more than 20%, almost 10 million, single GMV, and it exceeded 20% of the overall Video Accounts growth. The growth generated by Video Accounts is very obvious. Commercialization of WeChat Channels is still in its first stage only. In the future, there is still room to dig deeper. Growth in this regard can be regarded as rather certain. The third thing is cultivating deeply into the industry. For marketing advertising business, well, there is deeper cultivation and more regional development. This year, we have achieved quite good results in the industry. Video Accounts, tourism, mobility, lifestyle services, healthcare, and so on. In all these areas, we achieved quite good progress.
For the overall industry, they brought to us quite good growth, which became quite a good driving force. Finally, multi-brand development. Apart from the Tencent ecosystem, we are also on Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu. They generated more than 200% growth. For Kuaishou, growth, overall speaking, is 412%. Xiaohongshu, 232%. We think that this year, with the multi-brand layout, a lot of contribution can be made to our overall growth. For Weimob Marketing business, well, I have not analyzed to the external parties in an in-depth way. There are still a lot of growth potentials. First, mainly on Tencent platform. In the future, if we can open up multiple platforms, even overseas, Facebook, TikTok, and so on, then I think future growth will see huge potential.
This year, we became Google's and Apple's service provider. For Facebook, TikTok, we think that future growth will be very significant. The above is my analysis of the business highlights. Finally, I would like to talk about business outlook. Let me make four points. Just now, I already covered some content. This year, the macro environment will still be challenging, but for Weimob, what kind of position or what kind of stance should we take? In the past one year, we lowered costs and improved efficiency. We achieved quite good progress. Through refined management and operation, we realized that our efficiency is enhanced a lot. For our organization and operating efficiency, they are quite satisfactory.
In the second half, we think that we should be able to achieve a break-even. Next year, we hope that we can have profit for the whole year, and the loss can be halved. In 2025, SaaS single product should be profitable, whole year profit. If SaaS single product is okay, profit can exceed, like, RMB 500 million. Starting next year and the year after next year, that's our financial target. At present, in the second half, the target should be achievable. Next year, there shouldn't be much problem. For the year after next year, it depends on single SaaS product profit. I see a lot of opportunity in that, including key customer and also AI and WOS. I think there are many opportunities. Business outlook for the second half of the year.
Well, we have just had a strategy meeting, the most important thing is industrialization strategies. We should dig deeper into our key customer to implement industrial strategies. For industrial strategies, just now, I made some brief remarks. In terms of our organization, there will be some changes and adjustments in order to implement the industrial strategies better. In the past, it is just a department's work, but now it is on company level, industrial strategy. In the future, there will be a unified industrial and business analysis, unified industry sales, marketing, and also production and operation. There will be some organizational changes to tie in with the industrial strategies in a better way. Besides, in each industry, we will deepen vertical industry solutions. For example, fashion clothing.
We will identify some industries with highlights, and we'll go according to changes of the economic cycle. We will pick those industries that will more easily accept our digital solutions. During economic downturn, there are industries or customer groups with purchasing power, so we will dig deeper into industries. Industries development, we will have unified industrial strategy, and in the second half, I think industrial strategy is the most important thing. Second, AI+ SaaS. We have already announced why. AI + SaaS is an unprecedented historical opportunity. Through the SaaS scenario, plus our AI automation capabilities in the future, we can help merchants enhance efficiency over a large scale. In the future for, let's say, if we have 100,000 customers, half of them buy our WAI, then one year, RMB 5,000 a year.
This is quite a, quite, not a small income contribution. We have a lot of business expectation in this regard. Number three, we will intensify the walls' ecology and achieve mutual promotion of ecologicalization and key customer development. In the past, we often talked about ecosystem. This year, for our half yearly strategy meeting, this term ecosystem becomes even more important. In the past three years, we mentioned the moving up market strategy. In the coming three years, the ecologicalization strategy will be of equal importance. In the past, we talked about ecosystem as well. Internally, many products have not been clearly defined. In the future, we will embrace our working partners and ecosystem even more. We hope that through our working partners and ecosystem strength, we can solve a lot of key customers' problems.
Right now, key customers face a big problem, and that is how to very quickly satisfy demands and needs. If we only rely on standardized products, it will be very difficult. We think that the function of ecosystem is of critical importance. In the future, we will attach even more importance to ecosystem. In the future, for the walls ecology, we will invest more resources and efforts and profits, so that we can build this e-ecology with our working partners. Finally, multi-platform layout to expand more commercial feasibility. I just mentioned that we will move more towards Kuaishou and Little Red Book and overseas brands. We will expand our layout to achieve more commercial feasibility. That is my analysis of our first half results. Now I will defer to Cao Yi, our CFO, to present financial performance. Thank you.
Analysts, investors, good evening. 2023 has been more than halfway through. In the first half, macro environment is about growth after the pandemic. In the beginning of the year, there was restart of the economy. People were optimistic. After that, benefits were realized. After the pandemic, there was then some volatility, and then there was macroeconomic stimulus. If you look at life, daily life related industries, there is also gradual recovery. Even though in different industries, the pace of recovery is different for different customers, but we can certainly see that economic consumption is gradually recovering. Under the new normal post-pandemic, the most obvious change is, no matter whether we're talking about capital markets and enterprises themselves, we do not only emphasize high investment and also scale growth. Well, enterprise development goes back to a more rational and stable way.
Not only quantity is emphasized, quality is also important, and we go back to the basics, and that is to create profit for shareholders. There are a lot of changes that have not changed. To a certain extent, after the pandemic, they have been strengthened. After the pandemic, benefit from traffic is disappearing. More and more merchants attach importance to refined management and operation and repeat purchase. Private domain becomes more and more important. At the same time, there is turning points and aging population development, so software and digital use enjoys advantage in product utilization. When we are implementing ecosystem buildup and other strategies, in the short run, consumption and retail are recovering. For the medium to long term, our SaaS and Smart Retail growth potential has not changed. The prospect is even clearer.
In first half 2023, our results returned to increase. Our revenue was up 34.5%, subscription RMB 706 million, up 21.4%, merchants up 58.3%, advertising gross billing 70%. For subscription and merchants revenue, they grew to a different extent. For precise marketing, after the downturn in 2022, starting last year, there was a rebound, and growth income continued its high growth. For recovery after the pandemic, for the first time, merchants advertising expenses was first to recover. Then there is online, offline store operation, and there are a lot of medium to small stores coming out after the pandemic. For mid to large scale stores, they are still affected by the pandemic.
Number of stores and digital budget is being under strict control. In the first half this year, there is rebalance. The share is 58.3% in terms of merchants revenue share, and then 40% merchants revenue. Subscription versus merchants, seven to three. In 2022, by organizational enhancement, cost control and efficiency improvement, personnel or manpower decreased. There is down 26% in cost. There are some expenses being capitalized, so if you look at the total salaries, down $230 million or 23%. In the second half, we will continue to strictly reduce costs and improve efficiency. On annualized basis, salary costs can come down further $160 million. This will be realized mainly in 2024.
In the middle of the year, total assets, RMB 8.09 billion. Overall, our financial position is healthy. Let's take a look at the details. On revenue side, after the pandemic, consumption recovered on the C-end. Then it passed on to the B-end. In the first half this year, we resumed growth. Overall revenue, as said just now, was up 34.5%, on half on half, 29% up. SaaS subscription revenue up 21.4%, RMB 706 million. SaaS business growth in the first half sees both opportunities and challenges. After restart of the economy, number of opening of small to medium-sized stores resume normal. For store closure, because of the pandemic, in the first half of this year, there is still deferred impact. If you look at turnover, it's up 0.8%.
That's the churn rate. On half on half, it's down 1 percentage point. As a result, number of merchants at the end of last year was 90- odd thousand, and it went up to 10,000, 100,090. For mid to large merchants, churn rate is low. For Smart Retail, it's up 44%. As a result, ARPU was up 26%. The first half, because there are store openings, as a result, well, there is cost control and also release on marketing and digital retail. There is still some room for improvement. In the future, during economic recovery, we believe that there would be some upside. For advertising market, there is strong recovery in the first half.
Gross income up 66.1% at 70%, half on half, 20%. Revenue up 58.3% and 120%, half on half. For merchant solution in the first half this year, grew fast. That is because of economic recovery. In terms of consumption, retail, and greater healthcare, there is recovery in demand. For Tencent Video Accounts, it is a new channel of advertising traffic. It grew well, there is additional growth momentum. When the advertising industry demand resumed, for channel competition in the second half, there is change. Discounts came down significantly. Revenue improved, Gross Profit margin in the first half also rebounded. Overall group GP margin in the second half of 2022 was at 52.2%.
It went up to 67.5%, up 15 percentage points. Subscription GP margin, 58.5% at the second half of 2022, is up to 66.1%. Merchants GP margin, 33.6%, up to 69.4%. Subscription gross profit margin, it is affected by capitalization of R&D and also high dealing impact. If these are excluded, in the first half, subscription gross margin was more or less the same as in the past, 85%, more or less. Starting 2022, we started to cost control and improve efficiency and deferred impacts of organizational optimization, we are going to start a new round of cost control and efficiency improvement. We think that this expenses, R&D expenses, will be kept at RMB 530 million. As a result, subscription GP margin will continue to rise.
In first half 2023, we narrowed the loss significantly. If we look at three metrics, in three different past periods, we did a comparison. Net loss in financial statements, $659 million, $1.26 billion, and then in first half 2023, it narrowed a lot to $417 million. For financial statement loss, it also included partial payment to staff and also convertible bond exchange loss and gain impact. These are not really related to business. These are accounting adjustments. If these impacts are excluded, adjusted net loss in the past three half year period, $567 million, $981 million loss, it decreased substantially to $254 million.
If you look at free cash flow in the first half this year, outflow increased to RMB 776 million. However, because advertising business in the first half of this year increased fast, it used RMB 220 million of funds. In the past half a year, there is inflow of RMB 117 million and RMB 218 million. For advertising, it is about changes in capital. For non-advertising business in the past, three and a half years, it is RMB 832 million, 500, 76, and so on. It is narrowing. In the first, in the second half this year, we'll continue to control costs and improve cash flow. What are the reasons behind the loss narrowing? First, subscription revenue in the first half this year was up 21%.
Gross profit margin was up 5 percentage points. All these led to an improvement in gross profit. For merchants, advertising gross income was up $1.8 billion. This year, $7 billion, last year, $4.2 billion, it's up $2.8 billion. For advertising rebates, last year, first half, it is at a high point, 6.9 points. This year, first half, 5.7 points. On a half on half, 5.7 points, there is a big improvement. However, comparing with first half last year, 6.9, it is still down 1.2 points. With these two factors, merchants' solution gross margin, up 1.05. For these two segments, there is a $210 million gross profit contribution. For staff cost, it's down.
It doesn't include the stock option. There is also expenses increased by RMB 10 million, mainly about channels. Comparing with 2023 or comparing first half 2022, we made additional provision of RMB 76 million exceptional provision. That is after excluding the catering food delivery company, we made a provision. As a result, in the first half this year, net loss was RMB 250 million. The main driver is revenue led to gross profit growth and then a staff optimization led to cost savings. In the second half of the year, when macro economy continues to recover, consumption and retail, retail remained healthy, the loss of the group will continue to narrow. In the second half this year, we will achieve a breakeven.
In first half this year, for adjusted loss of RMB 250 million, if we start from there, the one-off provision and impairment is in, is excluded. Recurring loss is RMB 178 million. For subscription and merchants' revenue, they will maintain year-on-year growth. There may be a gross profit increase of RMB 109 million. For personnel optimization, we just start a new round, and annualized total salaries will come down by RMB 160 million. After capitalization of R&D being excluded, there will be some savings. Per quarter impact, RMB 30 million. There will be some compensation to be payable, but for 2024, there will be impact for other expenses when manpower is reduced.
If we talk about business travel and accommodation, this cost will also come down by about RMB 20 odd million. Based on all these improvements and enhancements in the second half this year, adjusted operating loss will be kept at within RMB 50 million. It is a very small amount. We may even achieve a breakeven. In the second half this year, if it develops in this way, the loss will not exceed RMB 300 million in total. In 2024, we will achieve profit. Assuming, well, usually, at this point in time, we will not give the whole year 2024 guidance. Based on this year's development and also continuous improvement in external environment, subscription revenue next year will see a 15%-20% growth. This is possible.
If growth is 15% this year, RMB 1.5 billion subscription revenue next year, it will give RMB 105 million gross profit. Advertising gross billing, 15% growth being assumed, then gross profit will increase RMB 113 million. This gross profit increase, together with the new rounds of personnel optimization this year, next year, there will be cost savings of around RMB 100 million. Next year, we have confidence to achieve overall profit. This is on the financial side and our analysis of our results and future outlook. That's all in my part. I will now leave more time for analysts and investors to ask questions.
Okay. Thank you, management. We will start Q&A now. Please press star one, if you want to raise a question. If you want to cancel a question, please press star two. First question is from CITC, please. Hello? Can you hear me?
Yes. I'm Yuan Ye . I have two questions. First of all, congratulations on the very good results, given the very difficult environment. My first question is: in the first half this year, consumption, retail was somehow weak. When it comes to key accounts, you are still implementing the moving up strategy. For new brands, the number is smaller than before. If you consider this backdrop, for existing customers, how much more room and potential is there for you to dig deeper with your key customer strategy? It is very effective. In the second half of the year, what strategies do you have to develop key customers? My second question is about Smart Retail. You just mentioned your industrial strategies.
For smart retail, you are doing video, selling furniture, building materials, cosmetics, fashion, and so on. You are also doing community retail and other vertical products. Regarding industrial strategies, is it true that it is a necessary condition for fast growth in smart retail? What kind of capabilities do you need for that? In the future, if smart retail driving force is from industries, can you let us know, regarding industrial strategies, what kind of progress have you made, sales efficiency? In the future, if you look towards these industries, how big room is there for growth? Thank you.
Thank you. I think you have asked some very good questions. They are also important points, important directions for us down the road. Just now, in fact, I have covered many of the points already.
Let me give you an answer. Given the challenging macro environment for our key customers' potential and also our second half of the year strategies, first of all, for existing customers, they still have the opportunity for us to expand our service scale. In the past, we helped our customers to complete their operation digitalization and moving online. For example, for fashion customers, we helped them migrate to the cloud and open cloud stores. These are our past products. In the future, we want to see how to help these enterprises to do online operation and digitalized operation, so digitalization of operation and digital operation. Digital operation is some customers have already digitalized. We want to help them do member operation, private domain conversion, and so on. This year, one CRM product was launched.
Balabala, NEIWAI, and so on, these are very important key customers. For Balabala, the number of members exceeded 10 million. They are using our product already. For existing customers, they have the ability to buy more of our products. They should have quite a lot of demands. At present, how can we achieve more cross-selling among existing customers? This is one potential opportunity with existing customers. Secondly, now we realize that more and more top customers attach a lot of importance to unification, unified demand. As Weimob, for our retail group customers, where they have many brands. This year, Peacebird, Embry, Leyou , and so on. For these brands, they have the need for integrated products, integration.
That means companies like Weimob is expected to help them move their stores onto the cloud and also shopping guide and some other products. For example, WeCom and so on, and other demands. They hope to treat Weimob as an operating system. There are other smaller products on Weimob that can be further developed. For integration, there is not only the need for integration, but also many customers' brands have many, many programs. Mengniu have more than 130 Mini Programs. Integration of multiple ends, and also back office integration, application integration, and so on. Many customers said that they have this need, and Weimob can help these key customers satisfy their integration need. The third point is, right now, there are many super top customers.
For example, Mengniu, in the past, they invested a lot in IT. They hope that they can pass on their capabilities to their third party to lower costs. At the same time, they hope that they can also improve efficiency, and they can satisfy business needs. This year, we realized that many such top customers are willing to hand over some of their IT to us. I think in the future, this also presents good opportunity. Just now, I talked about existing products, and we want to dig deeper into the waist part customers. For example, for fashion, for women's wear, there is still big room with the waist part customers. There is still a lot of room for us to cultivate. Overall speaking, the environment is full of challenges, but to us, perhaps, we will have heavier workload.
We will have even harder time. For opportunities presented to us and future growth, there are a lot that is worthwhile for us to do. For strategies in the second half of the year, just now, I briefly went through them. First of all, we will continue the industrial strategies, our internal organization guarantee, and also dig deeper into the industries and also industrial expansion. For example, waist part customers in fashion. We want to develop more with supermarkets and convenience stores, small stores and big chain. We also will pay attention to economic recovery and put in place some necessary or appropriate solutions. We will embrace ecology, as such as now. Customers person, customization needs can be satisfied by means of WOS and also in-depth collaboration.
We will also develop the super top customers. We'll see whether WOS platform can be opened up for the super top customers. For these customers, they are really interested in our WOS. They asked whether our PaaS capability can be handed over to them. For these super top customers, they will be a direction for us to make an attempt. To answer your second question, is it a necessary condition when it comes to industrial strategy? Industrial strategy will be a critical path for smart retail to achieve sustainable growth and fast growth. Industrial strategy will be very important for future smart retail development. It is a critical pathway. For industrial strategies, what kind of capabilities do we need? First of all, we need to have enough abstract, generic product capabilities. This is achievable on WOS.
Number two, adequate open ecology capability. This is achieved by WOS. Number three, there should be enough customer reach capability for top customers, waist customers, or tail-end customers. Internally, we have IBU, GBU, CBU, corresponding to top, waist, and tail-end customers. We do have the capabilities to serve all these types. Finally, we need unified production, sales, marketing, capabilities or integration. We also have the strength. Finally, regarding cross bank of the industry, I won't elaborate too much, because in my presentation, I made the point. We will have finer strategy. In a big industry, for example, fashion, footwear, jewelry. In fashion, there is men's, females, and also kids' wear. Female fashion, there are top, waist, tail-end customers, we will be more refined in our operation.
For Smart Retail, I think there are a lot of driving forces for sustainable growth. That's all.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next investor, CLSA, Yang Yuan, please.
Thank you, Mr. Sun. Thank you, Cao Yi, for allowing me to ask questions. Congratulations on the strong results. I have a few questions. Let me ask them one by one. First question, AI. Just now, Mr. Sun said that in May, you launched Weimob big model products. Can you share with us in detail how many customers are now on the WAI product? In the future, for commercialization pathway, what is the outlook at present? How big is the scale of the team for this product, and how much are you going to invest in the future in terms of capital and manpower? That's my first question.
Okay. In May, we launched WAI. Overall speaking, it is in the internal testing stage by merchants. 200 odd merchants are using WAI right now. Basically, they are mainly key customers. Basically, these companies have been active in using WAI. For example, video, live streaming, selling, and so on, these are commonly used scenarios. For scale, right now, our scale is not very big because the ground layer model, well, we have not invested too much yet, our R&D team has 12 or so people. For application scenarios, there are the corresponding product people. For example, CRM. I want to add a friend circle sharing to a certain product, then there are some shopping guides people to do the work. We don't have too many people right now for the time being.
In the future, we will focus on two areas in terms of recruitment. First, we need people, operating team with industrial know-how. Actually, for copywriting or product recommendations, it all depends on the scenarios. We need to have more professionals to beef up the team. Besides, we will focus on industrial big model. On one hand, we will take a look ourselves to see whether there are big model talents. At the same time, we will work with some leading big model companies to develop together the industrials, the industrial big model. Why do we want to do industrial big model ourselves? Because if we use existing big models, then for our core competitiveness and also our own training and so on, it will be difficult for us to achieve core competency or competitiveness.
In the future, there will be the use of multi-models. ChatGPT, Tencent big model, Baidu model can be used. For short format, some shorter, precise copyright, for example, friend circle copyrights and also some special content, we have a lot of data reserves, and if we do the training ourselves, the outcome will be better. We will work on marketing big model for certain industries. We are now preparing some talent reserve, so perhaps in the coming period, we will also announce our own industrial big model. We are based on open source work, and together with Tsinghua open source big model, we are conducting some researches. For special vertical industrial big models, we may develop themsel- ourselves. Industrial ones, together with generic big models, they will be used in our business scenarios.
For future prospects, now we are testing the water. When it comes to the fees, or like RMB 4,800 per year, customers find it acceptable. If you exceed a certain volume, if I charge based on additional volume, it is still acceptable. If half of our customers can be converted, gain from commercialization may reach RMB 250 million. It depends on our own products, especially for key customers. I mentioned RMB 400,000, that may be for medium to medium size, there are also AI, industry-specific AI fees will be based on utilization. That is also one potential. It is difficult to estimate commercialization gain, that's a rough idea.
Thank you. Management, in relation to WeChat Channels, your consumption of WeChat Channels in the second half of last year, growth was around 300%. For Video Accounts potential, what do you think? In this high growth area, how much share can you grab?
For WeChat Channels, last year, we started commercialization. Growth is very fast. First of all, all along, we are the top service provider for Tencent. Our strengths in many areas are quite apparent, our operating capability, our products, ZhuKeTui, CID, technology. These can achieve good results in relation to customers' investment. We're able to achieve quite a lot of benefit amidst the rapid growth in the market. Our share of WeChat Channels is big in Tencent, 12%-13% share. Video accounts may account for a bigger share, almost 20%.
For WeChat Channels, well, it, they are in the initial commercialization stage. In the future, there is big potential. I think WeChat Channels in Tencent will be such that we will see quite good growth. In the coming one to two years, there'll be quite good growth. For the specific share, our share is already quite high now. We are not striving for an even bigger share for WeChat Channels. We hope to achieve sustainable, healthy growth. That is already satisfactory.
Okay, thank you. My last question. Management, regarding the second half, what is the outlook for advertising business in the future? In the advertising business, which are some new growth directions that you will identify? Thank you.
In the second half, for advertising growth, I think there is already some certainty. For single day consumption, it is very stable now. It is climbing up gradually.
In April to May, we exceeded RMB 40 million. Now RMB 50 million already, it will continue to go up in the future. In the second half of the year, I think the results will be quite certain. Now we want to go for higher quality customers and revenue. Customers, which will give rise to bigger growth margin. For growth, billing is no longer a very important metric. Overall speaking, we hope that growth in gross billing will be a secondary target. Gross profit, we look for those customers with bigger room for gross profit. Overall speaking, I think number one will be WeChat Channels. Number two, industrial strategies and industrial deeper development. Now, smart retail advertising can also become industrialized. I think there will be many new industries coming up.
For the advertising industry, where the macro environment is not good, it should be affected, theoretically speaking, for us. Some industries may not be doing good, but there must be some positive industries. For instance, some industries are suffering. High-end customers, or export-driven customers may not be doing well. Domestic sales customers may be doing better. As long as we can reach IRR, well, customers still have their advertising budget, so there will be customers reaching the required IRR. We will select those potential customers based on economic cycles. For example, F&B, traveling or tourism, and so on. These are doing quite well. We'll find new opportunities in various industries. In some customers and industries, there may be some which are affected, but there will be new industries emerging.
For advertising, we want to stabilize growth, and one core factor is to keep on identifying those industries with sustainable growth, and we should find more channels and platforms. This year, Kuaishou grew fast. In the regional layout, growth was fast, so Kuaishou will be an important channel for us. In the long run, I believe that for the traffic channel, our traffic channel is still Tencent, domestic Kuaishou, and also Little Red Book will be for future internationalization. Room for development is still wide. I believe future growth in the long run for advertising business will see sustainable, positive growth.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sun. I have no other questions.
Thank you. Because of time, we will conclude the session here. I would like to thank you for your participation in today's conference call on behalf of the Weimob management team. If you have further questions about Weimob, please feel free to contact IR team. Thank you. Thank you.