Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Zhihu Inc Second Quarter and Half Year Interim 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Jingjing Du, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2022 financial results conference call. Joining us today are Mr. Zhou Yuan, Chairman and CEO of Zhihu, and Mr. Sun Wei, our CFO. 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 this discussion. The company does not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by law. During today's call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for comparison purposes only. For definition of non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results, please see the earnings release issued earlier today. In addition, a webcast replay of this conference call will be available on our website at ir.zhihu.com.
I will now turn our call to Mr. Sun Wei, our CFO.
Okay. Thank you, Jingjing . I'm pleased to deliver today's opening remarks on behalf of Mr. Zhou Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zhihu. Thank you for joining Zhihu's second quarter 2022 earnings call. The recent COVID-19 pandemic situation and macroeconomic condition created challenging environment in the second quarter. Against this backdrop, we focused on retaining high quality user growth in a sustainable and efficient manner. Confronting these uncertainties, we firmly executed our community ecosystem comes first strategy and improved business efficiency with optimized organizational structure. In addition, we continue to expand our fulfilling content offerings, enhance creators experience, and strengthen community culture. Together, this efficiently drove quality growth in our user base, improved engagement and stickiness, and bettered our bottom line performance. In Q2, our average MAU grew by 12.3% year-over-year to 105.9 million.
From January to June this year, the average time spent per DAU increased more than 12%. We are delighted to see our content creator becoming more active and creative, contributing more high-quality fulfilling content to our library. In the quarter, the average DAU of our high-ranking content creators increased by nearly 50% compared to the same period last year, with the average creation volume per creator almost doubling. With all of the effort we've made to enhance our community ecosystem, we are delighted to see fruitful rewards, not only in our community ecosystem centered around our users, creators, and content library, but also in our business results.
In Q2, despite many uncertainties, our total revenue reached RMB 836 million, growing 31% year-over-year, and 12.5% quarter-over-quarter, while our net loss narrowed by 24.4% from the first quarter of the year as a percentage of the total revenue. Zhihu's diversified revenue structure was a critical force in achieving remarkable top line growth amid adverse macro conditions. Paid memberships in the quarter grew significantly by 75.1% year-over-year, and contributed 32.4% of total revenue. This phenomenal growth clearly demonstrates the strength of content-centric business model and the resonance of our fulfilling content with users. We also saw strong growth in Content Commerce Solutions, or CCS, which grew 15.9% year-over-year, retaining strong growth momentum relative to the wider industry.
Our vocational training services are rapidly emerging as a new growth driver, contributing 5.5% of our total revenue in the quarter, with a sixfold year-over-year growth. Last year, we set 2022 as a transition year, focusing on the execution of our community ecosystem comes first strategy. We are now more than halfway through 2022. Given all the macro-level unexpected developments in the first half of the year, we have never been more sure that by investing in high-quality growth and focusing on achieving profitability in the near term will make our community and business more sustainable for the long run. Now, I would like to go through our business in detail, covering content, users, and monetization. Content. Fulfilling content that broadens horizons, provides solutions, and it resonates with users is the foundation that drives sustainable community growth.
At the end of Q2, the cumulative pieces of content in our community reached 551 million, including 462 million questions- and- answers, representing a year-over-year increase of 31% and 26% respectively. In Q2, we continued to implement the scenario-oriented app approach to fueling content creation in various verticals. This approach has worked especially well in scenarios surrounding career development and family needs. For example, during the time of once yearly national college entrance examination, the Gaokao, search traffic surges with parents and students anxiously seeking knowledge, experience, and insight to help with important decisions around this life inflection point. To meet this need, we broaden and deepen related content coverage by enlisting experienced users who previously sat for the exam with questions and sought Gaokao information on our platform to become Gaokao answerers and provide help to others in our community.
According to the summary report on college selection and application 2022, we released in July, the total number of questions on college selection application related topics increased to approximately 7.7 million. The total page views for Gaokao related content grew a remarkable 57% year-over-year to exceed 2.5 billion. After the exam period, we released more relaxing content in tune with the summer vacation and launched a well-received series of online summer events in categories including sentiments, movies and television, fashion, ACG. It is worth mentioning that the laughter and forgetting on Gaokao topic in Chinese Gaokao and high quality videoized content we produced during the summer break was not only well-received by the young generation, but also resonated among our mature users.
In June, we launched an online learning portal on our website to further promote our vocational training related content portfolio. The learning portal offers hundreds of online educational resources in both video and text and picture formats. The robust content library contains both career skill development and personal enrichment learning resources. Some examples include hands-on training and English exam prep, as well as photography and pop music educational content. The learning portal has been well-received and significantly drove engagement with our target users for the vocational training services business. Vocational training content is evolving into an important part of our closed loop monetization ecosystem. The second part is about users. Scenario-oriented content cultivation in various verticals and enhanced recommendation algorithm effectively boosted the demand for more quality content consumption.
During the quarter, we saw encouraging performance across a range of user growth metrics, including our user base, user consumption experience, user engagement, and stickiness. The average MAU for Q2 increased by 12.3% year-over-year to 105.9 million. Average monthly viewers for the quarter exceeded 647 million, rising by 26.6% year-over-year. We continue to see our user base remain young and gender-balanced, with a robust user growth trend from second- and lower-tier cities. We're also seeing inspiring growth across other closely watched key metrics used to inherently evaluate the well-being of our community. These include users' activeness, time spent, retention, and engagement. Moving to the content creator side, enhancing creators' creating experience and financial reward is one of the pillars to our strategy.
Our high-end plan for creator support scheme is a critical part of this effort. Within one quarter of the plan's release, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback from creators with survey results showing more than half of the high-ranking creators have experienced strong traffic support. On the financial side, we are gratified to see that both the number of creators who earn a financial income and average income per creator in Q2 retained strong growth momentum on a year-over-year basis. At the start of Q1, we set a target to help more than 100 creators earn more than RMB 1 million in a year while our paid membership program. We are proud to announce that we have progressed much faster than expected. The next part is about community culture.
During the quarter, we further reinforced our community compliance through improved product features and technical infrastructure, such as upgraded privacy protection features for users and copyright protection features for our content creators. We also increased thresholds to enhance youth protection in verticals such as e-sports. Our community culture and a strong brand further strengthen our content ecosystem, and we are firmly demonstrating our conviction to uphold our social responsibilities to maintain a healthy community culture and promote rational optimism as a social platform and content community. As we look at the second half of the year, we will continue to iterate our multimedia infrastructure and optimize product offerings. We believe we can further unlock our value in more commercial opportunities by better addressing our users' content consumption needs.
In particular, we see our diversified content formats providing greater potential to address users' needs in multi scenarios, including thoughts and live streaming, which are both gaining in popularity among users. We believe that the diverse and enhanced monetization capabilities will position us stronger and more resilient for long-term development. Now moving to financials. Our Sun Wei, will go through our financial results in detail later in this call, but I'd like to first highlight a few points how our content-centric monetization has proven itself resilient and strong in the second quarter. As many industries were heavily impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks and softer macro environment, advertisers and business partners became more cautious in online marketing spending, and placed greater weight on integrated marketing solutions that deliver more comprehensive influence on targeted consumers. Our community-based ecosystem is an ideal vehicle to accomplish this goal.
Through our content commerce solution and advertising, we successfully increased our recognition from brands and merchants, and attracted their market spending despite the challenging market conditions. The top five industries in revenue contribution in Q2 came from e-commerce, IT and 3C, cosmetics and skincare, internet services, and then automotive. There are two drivers, you know, raising the ceiling of CCS. In Q2, we continued to motivate our creators by publishing the Zhihu influence and growth list. The newly listed commercial content creators in the second quarter came from various industries, including IT and 3C, fashion, automotive, maternal care, among others. At the same time, Zhihu's platform maintained its role to effectively connect content creators with brands and merchants. The number of creators who have joined this platform and earn income through CCS continue to grow, both on year-over-year and a quarter-over-quarter basis.
We also further improved our commercial content distribution efficiency and further upgraded the assessment system for commercial content by implementing fulfilling content standards. Let's talk about advertising. Despite the fact that, you know, brand advertising budgets were negatively affected in Q2, our IP-based marketing campaign provided a unique value to advertisers. By leveraging our massive user base and trustworthy community culture, our multiple IP-based marketing campaigns have great influence on users' mindset through creative and fulfilling content. During Q2, our Curiosity Lab, in Chinese, 好奇实验室, this series partnered with one of our clients, a smart kitchen appliance manufacturer, to design, plan, and execute a fun and imaginative campaign centered around playful, quirky questions tied to their products and business. The campaign was a huge success.
One of the questions that generated huge engagement was, "If your kitchen smoke could sing, what opera would it sing?" The relevant content under this question attracted nearly 5 million views, and the accompanying experimental video we made has been viewed over 1 million times. Paid membership retained strong momentum during the quarter. Among Zhihu's premium paid content library, our Yan columns are particularly popular owing to the high quality of original works from our community creators. One such creator, the ER doctor, you know, Mr. Li Hongzheng, known in Zhihu community as Doctor House. We were attracted by his talent while big data, and invited him to start his own column in the community, Stories from the Emergency Room. There are many others like him.
The value of this mechanism is more than allowing us to scout for talented creators. It also provides a steady stream of creative inspiration for our creators. In the second quarter, the financial income earned by our premium content creators increased by almost 80% compared to the same period of last year. This community-based mechanism not only differentiates us from other premium content providers, but also offers strong potential to drive the vitality of our monetization ecosystem. At the end of Q2, our average monthly paying members reached 8.46 million. In July, the number exceeded 10 million. This growth demonstrates the remarkable success of our content-centric business model. It is encouraging to see a more diversified paying member base and a growing number of male users captivated by more content relating to history, fiction, and true stories in our premium library.
Male users have now grown to about 25% of our total paying members. Our rapidly developing vocational training business maintained robust growth momentum during Q2, contributing 5.5% to the total revenue. In the second quarter, we further enhanced the sales and the CRM system for the business by strengthening our technical capabilities. In addition, we continue to expand the number of course offerings, including newly launched courses in engineering and the design. Our growing library of diversified vocational courses helped further expand our user base, as witnessed by the number of paying users in this business tripling over last year. We view this business as an emerging growth driver with huge potential, and I believe it will make further positive contributions to our community ecosystem.
Marching forward by leveraging our self-reinforced content ecosystem combined with the enhanced commercialization capability, we will be able to drive the sustainable prosperity of our community ecosystem. At the same time, we will continue to implement prudent cost controls to achieve a rational balance between user growth and profitability in the long run. This concludes Mr. Zhou Yuan's remarks. I will now turn to our financials. We are delighted to report another strong quarter despite the resurgence of COVID-19 and the subsequent business disruptions in major cities across China. Our community business model continued to show its resilience as well as exciting growth potential through the impressive execution of our community ecosystem comes first strategy. Our revenue for Q2 reached RMB 836 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 31%.
Zhihu's overall top-line growth reflects the strength of our diversified revenue drivers. The CCS and our advertising business combined contributed 57.2% of total revenue in the quarter. Our paid memberships and the vocational training business together represented 38% of our total revenue, further demonstrating the value of diversified drivers within our monetization ecosystem. The CCS revenue alone achieved a year-over-year growth of 15. 9% And accounted for 28.8% of total revenue. In late Q2, our CCS reacted quickly and captured the demand uptrend in the market. As the macroeconomy started to show an upward trend in June, the effectiveness of CCS services was validated, recording increases in both the number of end customers and the average spending per CCS customer.
We have seen a negative impact on the advertising market since April due to the COVID-19 resurgence, with some of our brand marketing customers delayed or canceled their marketing campaigns originally scheduled for Q2. As a result, our advertising revenue accounted for 28.4% of total revenue in the quarter, down 4% compared to the same period of last year. Our paid membership services recorded a 75.1% year-over-year growth rate in revenue, reaching RMB 271.2 million in Q2. The average number of monthly paying members in the quarter hit another, you know, record high of 8.46 million, with a penetration rate of 8% of average MAU. Our fledgling vocational training continued its revenue growth momentum in Q2 and increased 6x year-over-year in revenue.
During the second quarter, our gross profit was RMB 400 million, with an improved gross profit margin to 48% compared to the previous quarter. The quarter-over-quarter improvement in GP margin was due to our diligent, ongoing cost control discipline and efficiency improvements. Across the wider industry, our gross profit margin continued to remain at high end. Throughout the quarter, we continued to look for ways to better optimize our operating expenses structure and improve operational efficiency. Our total operating expenses for Q2 were RMB 860.3 million, with improved operating margins on a sequential basis.
As a percentage of total revenue, sales and marketing expenses decreased over 5% compared to the same period last year, thanks to our optimized expense structure, with targeted spending on our promotion and advertising to adapt to the changing market conditions. At the same time, we selectively invested in our R&D capabilities and improved R&D staff incentives through a better organized employee benefit plan. Accordingly, our R&D expenses as a percentage of revenue increased 7.8% year-over-year, while G&A expenses decreased 13% as a percentage of our revenue. Our net loss was RMB 487 million in Q2, and it narrowed by 24.4% as a percentage of the total revenue from the first quarter of this year.
Our adjusted net loss, which primarily excludes share-based compensation expenses, was RMB 443.8 million in Q2. As of June 30, 2022, the company had cash and cash equivalents, term deposits, restricted cash, and short-term investments of RMB 7 billion.
In late May, we announced an up to $100 million share repurchase program. As of June 13, 2022, we have repurchased approximately 0.3 million Class A ordinary shares at a total cost of $1.1 million. This concludes my pre-prepared remarks on our financial performance for this quarter. Let's turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Xueqing Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead.
谢谢管理层接受我的提问，我的问题是关于会员业务的，有看到二季度实现了75%的同比增速，然后是本季度收入贡献最大的商务板块。想了解一下我们这块背后的驱动因素会有哪些，然后管理层怎么来看待我们会员业务长期的增长空间。
Uh, thanks management for taking my question, and my question related to the paid membership business.
We saw our membership revenue has achieved 75% year-on-year growth in the second quarter, and became the largest revenue contributor as well. So just wondering, what's the driving factors behind this? How does management think about the longer term growth rate of membership business? Thank you.
你好，我是知乎 CEO 周源。非常感谢你对我们严选会员业务的关心。简单说呢，会员，严选会员呢，他是生长于社区，并且在社区不断地壮大，并且能够反哺社区。目前呢，也有一定的这个溢出效应，所以呢，我们整体来看，觉得这个业务发展是很健康的。OK。
Hi, I'm the CEO of the company. My name is Zhou Yuan. First of all, thank you for your interest in our membership business. Now our members were grown and born in our community, and they come back and actually give us very positive feedback to the overall development of the community. Right now we believe that their development has been very healthy.
那么，具体从数据上来看，我们的付费会员数在这个MAU的渗透率呢，在六月份是7.98%，就是899万吧。那么到七月份的时候呢，已经超过了1,000万。这个数据呢，其实它在过去24个月是持续增长的。目前呢，我们没有看到增长势头放缓的趋势。OK。
Now the penetration rate of our paid membership in MAU was 7.98% in June, reaching 8.99 million. In July, it exceeded 10 million, and it has continued to grow in the past 24 months. Currently, there is no signs of slowing down of the growth momentum.
其实我们预计，付费会员的数量是会持续增长的。另外一方面，就是严选会员的内容，它不仅大量的社区用户在消费，我们也发现，就是它对新用户也是蛮有吸引力的。所以我们这里面看到了，越来越多的溢出的这个传播和口碑，那么反过来，对社区用户的增长也起到一定的推动作用。OK。
Now the number of members continue to grow. It not only help our existing users to consume some of the content, but also is a great attraction to attract new users as well. Now the spillover effect of the paid content of our members will continue to promote the increase in the number of paid members, which played an important role in promoting the growth of Zhihu's community users.
那么对长期的这个发展怎么去理解哈？我觉得首先第一个呢，应该理解，严选会员的原生性。知乎社区呢，大家可以理解，是中文互联网原创内容的一个powerhouse。那么原创的UGC内容是社区多种内容，整体这个生态的一个发动机。那么借助知乎社区，这个持续不断的创作者的涌现的机制，它就带来了内容的差异性。这个过程里面呢，我们孵化了这个会员的业务，其实它一路最后呢，就，现在吧，就成长为知乎内容生态中，最高效和健康的变现模式之一。
Now, in order to understand the long term development of our membership business, one first understand the organic growth of our members out from our community. Our Zhihu community is really the powerhouse of original content on the Internet in China. The original UGC content is the engine of our very diverse content ecosystem in the community. With the help of content differences brought about by the continuous emergence mechanism of content creators, which is very unique to the Zhihu community, we have incubated our membership business from the community, making it one of the most efficient and effective monetization models in Zhihu and in our content ecosystem.
第二呢，我觉得要理解它的规模是，严选会员的内容的不断成长的规模，它其实是来自于，就是它的这个质量满足了用户的需求，而这个质量呢，它是来自于社区机制的。所以呢，这个在用户侧呢，就产生了足够的差异性。我们实际上看到呢，在全网范围内啊，这个用户对优质的内容类和技能类的内容的需求是很大的，这个呢，都给业务留出了非常好的增长的空间。OK。
Now the other thing is the scalability of our membership business. We have noticed that the significant differences in the content that we are able to generate from our ecosystem actually meet the demand of a large number of users on the entire network that are constantly longing for high quality content, which makes our business growth space very significant and substantial. When we are able to incubate such an environment where the efficiency of content supply continue to improve and our user demand continue to expand, we believe that our business still have a lot of room for growth and the ceiling is very high.
在内容供给的效率可以持续不断地迭代提升，用户的需求也是可以持续地不断扩大的这么一个背景下，我们认为会员的这个业务是有很大的一个成长空间的，天花板也会比较高。我们预计持续会看到会员的这个规模增长的同时，那么长期来看，它的这个渗透率会达到20%甚至更高。
Now with that said, we have curated an environment that allow the efficiency of content supply continue to improve and also user demand continue to expand. It is expected that we will continue to see the penetration rate of our members in Zhihu MAU continue to increase, and in the long run, it's possible that we can achieve 20% or higher.
第三个是来自于持续性。我们在这个会员发展的过程中，有规模的、有效率的，且可持续地去发掘优质内容的机制，是会员业务不断增长的一个动力。社区呢，是我们这个会员发展的一个核心的优势。社区机制呢，它核心是可以让平台更加容易地去识别高潜的创作者，并持续帮助他们在知乎平台上通过创作获得收益。OK。
Now, the other aspect that I would like to mention is sustainability. In the process of our membership development, large-scale, efficient and sustainable discovery of high quality content is the key to really unlocking the high growth of our membership business. Our community is our greatest strength, and also it is the greatest driving force for our members development. The community mechanism makes it easy for us to identify high potential content creators and continue to help them, make profit through creation on our Zhihu platform. This has been very crucial for our membership business development.
那在今天啊，大家会看到社区里面有很多的活动，比如说这个创，社区的创作大赛，还有很多，包括我们现在推的这个海盐计划4.0。那么这些呢，其实都是在过去的发展中，我们形成了一系列的knowhow所带来的。这让我们一方面呢，让我们更加了解了我们的创作者，另外一方面呢，也更高效地支持了更多的严选创作者。OK。
Now, in the process of developing our membership business, we have formed a series of know-how through developing projects such as the Yan Selection 4.0, and also the community content creation contest, etc. We have curated a series of supporting activities that allow and encourage our content creators, which in turn allow us to efficiently support more Yan Selection content creators based on a better understanding of their creation style. Now the key to our ability to produce high quality content on a large scale really lies in this kind of improvement of this model.
社区机制呢，它其实本质上，为什么能够规模化地产出更多优质的内容，严选内容，它其实本质上呢是提升了创作选题到内容消费，到用户反馈，再到内容修订的这么一个整个闭环的内容创作的过程。它通过社区的涌现的这么一个机制，其实呢，很好地筛选和保证了优质内容的产出力。OK。
Now, this model is very effective in a sense that it allow us to curate a series of steps, which is closed loop process, including topic creation, content consumption, user feedback and content revision. The entire content creation process ensure the output of high quality content.
第四呢，我觉得可以关注一下ARPU吧，就是我们现在看到哈，这个用户非常喜欢的严选专栏，在我们上个季度，它新增的内容量同比增长是超过103%的。所以呢，我们想啊，这个我们其实也看到这个爆款的内容，它是更容易带动新会员的涨价的。所以我们预计呢，随着会员业务的发展，整个这个爆款呢，会越来越多，也还有很大的一个提升空间。
Now the new content of the Yan Selection, which is very popular among our users, increased by over 130% year-over-year in this quarter. These popular item and contents can fully drive the conversion of new members, and we believe that our membership business model will allow us to continue to generate high-quality content, which will in turn feedback very positively to the community ecology.
最后呢，我觉得生态系统也蛮重要哈。就是其实这个商业模式呢，它对社区生态呢，也是有了正向的反馈的。一方面呢，让创作者在生态内实现了可观的收入，产生的价值呢，又能够进一步支持社区的其他的创作基金，让社区的内容生态的健康度呢，得到进一步的提升。OK，谢谢。
Now the last point is about the ecology or ecosystem that I just mentioned. Because this membership business model allow us to have very positive contribution from our content creators, which could help us to continue to build our ecosystem, allowing our creators to achieve considerable income in the whole ecosystem. The value generated can further actually support other creative activities in the community, which further improve the ecosystem health of the community content.
谢谢。
Thank you.
The next question comes from Ashley Zhu from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
谢谢管理层接受我的提问。我想了解一下我们的生态第一的战略，这个战略在本季度会持续落地吗？想了解一下有没有什么具体的指标可以分享，能体现咱们在社区生态侧继续向好的情况，然后我们大概预期这种调整会持续到什么时间。另外就是这个调整对我们用户增长的目标会有什么样的影响，包括咱们今年年底的目标以及长期的目标。然后我自己翻译一下。
Thanks, management, for taking my question.
Want to get more color about our ecosystem first strategy, which has been executed this quarter. Are there any operating metrics that could be shared to showcase the improvement in our community? Also, what's the timeline of this adjustment? Should we expect any impact on our user growth targets both for the year end and also in the long term? Thank you.
好，这个问题的问题点很多，我一个一个来说。那首先呢，我们在年初的时候呢，定下了生态第一的战略，它的核心工作呢，是围绕，持续围绕创作者的体验、获得感内容、良好的社区氛围，以及与之匹配的商业化展开的。OK。
Now first of all, thank you for your questions. There are really multiple levels of questions to your statement, so I'm gonna respond to them one by one. Now regarding the first part of your question, actually at the beginning of the year, we started our ecosystem first strategy, which mainly revolves around our user experience, creator experience, content with a sense of fulfillment, a good community atmosphere, and really matching the development of commercialization.
那么首先，我们来看一下这个创作者的生态。在一季度和二季度，我们把工作的重点放在社区高等级的创作者的体验改善上。这项工作呢，是持续看到了正向的收益的。那么在二季度，我们高等级创作者平均的日活跃数同比增长了接近50%，那么日均的内容创作量这个同比呢，超过了接近100%。OK。
Now first let's look at the results for Q1 and Q2 ever since we adopted this new strategy. Now in terms of the content production, the average daily content volume increased significantly. Also ever since we highlighted the quantity of high-level content creators, we are able to observe actually an increasing activity rate of those creators and also the DAU of mid-level and high-level creators increased by 50% year-over-year, and the average daily creation volume nearly doubled year-on-year as well.
那么上次我介绍过二零二二年的海盐计划4.0，那这项工作呢，包含了在创作者，就是创作体系内流量的，流量的清洁，资金的收益，然后有很多项的措施。那我们其实在二季度呢，是在不断迭代这个计划，这个计划并不是一个简单的发布，所以我们看到呢，在高等级创作者群体上的变化也逐步逐步地开始推广到了中间部分的创作者的群体上。那么这项工作在二季度还是取得了不错的进展的。OK。
Now, last time I mentioned about launching the Yan Selection 4.0 projects, which involved a lot of resources allocation, and favorable supports going to the high level content creators. Now we are entering the second developmental stage of that project, which is more than just a few updates, we are really pushing forward a new iteration of that project, which means that the positive changes from that we observed from high level content creators are beginning to spill over to our mid-level content creators as well, which also generated very positive outcome for the second quarter of the year.
在创作者工具方面，我们在一季度升级了我们的想法，也就是短内容工具，它的目的是降低创作者生产内容的成本，这个也是我们持续的一个目标。这次升级在二季度受到了很多创作者的欢迎。一方面是拓宽了这个创作的形式，降低了创作门槛，另外一方面也吸引了很多新的创作者。现在看下来，这个创作量季度环比增加了一倍左右。OK。
Now, in terms of the toolkits that we provided for our content creators. First of all, the goal is to reduce the cost of content creation. Ever since the second quarter, we've received a lot of positive feedback regarding using those toolkits, because first of all, help them to really expand the creation format, allow them to lower the creation threshold and also attracted a lot of new content creators as well. That's why we've observed such positive growth for the second quarter of the year.
在这些工作的带动下，大盘的日均内容生产量环比上涨接近10%。
As a result, our overall content creation volume on a daily basis increased by 10% quarter-over-quarter.
那我们再看看这个消费生态这一块。我们Q二的DAU日均时长从年初到六月份上涨了12%。同时呢，我们看到在七月份日均时长的环比呢，还有较大的提升。我们的会员用户在屏时长已经是大盘用户的一倍左右了。那么有视频消费的用户的内容消费时长对比没有视频消费的时长差不多高出20%。这个呢，是说明了我们多元的优质的内容，它体现在人群、场景、需求、场景，尤其是在领域深耕方面的效果呢，还是比较显著的。OK。
Now in terms of the average time spent by our DAU as of the end of June this year, it increased by about 12%. Also the consumption that includes the content format of videos has been 20% higher than those kind of content consumption without the format of video, which means that our very diversified kind of content creation format really allow us to tap a lot of commercialization opportunities that really are leveraging the effect and benefits and advantages from our very diverse crowd of users as well as different kind of consumption scenarios as well.
我们在六月上面经历了这个中国的高考季，这个很多用户，这个新的这个考生在此期间，都会到知乎上来寻求解答。我们高考的相关内容的浏览量，年对年提升了接近60%。用户的活跃度，在Q2也稳中有升。同样，在七月份的活跃度也有比较大的一个提升空间。OK。
Now June is the typical college entrance exam month in China. We had observed a lot of students coming to our platform for that kind of related content. The content consumption or the viewing rate of those kinds of related content actually increased by about 60% year-over-year. The activity level of those kind of content related users increased substantially as well. We also see that kind of growth sustained for July of this year.
我想说呢，就是整个生产这样的一个落地呢，其实它并不是一蹴而就的，其实有非常多细节的工作，是一个循序渐进的过程。我们呢，现在呢，从这个产品和运营两方面入手，是在做更多的具体的改善的。我分别可以来介绍一下。
Now the optimization of our ecosystem doesn't happen overnight. There is a lot of details embedded in this process and we are taking them step by step. I'm going to talk about the details from two aspects of the product and operation.
社区侧呢，首先呢，是我们不断地持续地在提升这个技术建设。这部分工作呢，包含了我们获得把内容的这个分层分类、用户画像精细化上持续的投入，也包含了社区氛围和情绪识别方面的持续投入，这些呢都是确保用户体验的改善的基础。我们在这个事情上呢，是持续投入和迭代的。OK。
Now on our community side, and also our product side, our focus of work is first to continue to improve the infrastructure, which includes further, you know, have better classification of the content, further refinement of our user profiling and also the construction of our community atmosphere and also better emotion recognition as well. These are really the solid foundations that allow us to ensure the improvement of the user experience, and we are continuing to iterate this kind of community construction as well.
第二呢，就是我们持续地进行迭代升级。我们上个季度呢，对短内容想法进行了升级，我们的这个功能还在持续地迭代和改善。原生创作者对这个功能还是蛮欢迎的，主动使用频率很高，所以说我们从结果上也能看到，就现在吧，月均的发想法的创作者环比增长超过了150%。那么继发图文也发视频的创作者的数量也是持续环比在提升的。OK。
Now the second thing is, in order to continue to upgrade, you know, we have continued upgrading our media as well. The contents that we mentioned last quarter, which is named Thoughts, continue to improve, and we have done a lot of effort in improving the feature and the user experience. As a result, the activity level of using those kind of thoughts content has been very high. From the results, we can actually see that the monthly average number of content creator posting thoughts has increased by over 150% quarter-over-quarter. The number of content creators who send both pictures and videos have continued to increase quarter-over-quarter as well.
那第三呢，就是我们也觉得有一项工作是可以长期拿到很显著收益的，就是我们在降低社区中用户建立关系的这个成本，在优化对应的产品体验。我们现在的这个日活跃用户的新增关注，新增的这个主动关注，我们今年以来，我们两个季度呢都实现加速的一个环比增长。所以呢，我们现在优化用户通过社交关系去进行内容消费的体验，那么这个工作呢，它会进一步地提升整个社区生态的健康度和用户的粘性。OK。
Now, also, one thing that we noticed can generate long-term benefits, for us, is, to strengthen the community, relationship, and we have done so. For example, we are able to actually attract a lot of active attention based on our relationship referral and endorsement. With the improvement of our community governance, we have observed a lot of positive outcome as well. The new kind of active attention of our daily active users has achieved accelerated quarter-over-quarter growth in the past two quarters, since the beginning of this year. Strengthening the functions that are on social relationships can actually further strengthen the stickiness and the healthiness of the community ecosystem.
在运营侧，主要是两方面的工作，一方面是海盐计划的持续推进。现在我们收到了越来越多的正向反馈，所以我们会加速和扩大规模去推进它。另外一方面，就是在用户运营的方面，我们除了上个季度跟大家讲到的内容深耕和鼓励原创，今年我们还针对核心人群做了定向的内容突破。我们推出了一个系列的OGV，比如说大家现在可以看到的我所向往的职业。我们其实邀请的是知乎平台上的，比如说是硅谷的程序员来讲程序员的困惑和职业发展。我们邀请知乎上的新晋的红圈律所的律师、世界五百强的品牌总监，然后来形成一个比较好的内容品牌，引发用户的这种共鸣。这些工作，现在看起来，整体呈现的结果都还是蛮不错的。
Now, in addition to that, we have also been focusing on the targeted improvement of, for example, the Yan Selection plan or projects around the content creators as well, and we have been progressing step by step. Since we launched this plan, our creators have had a lot of traffic and income, which is very, very positive and beneficial for them. Our high level content creators also feel that their overall traffic has improved as well.
In terms of our user operations, in addition to the, for example, the cultivation of content, in-depth cultivation of content, and also the encouragement of originality and other such projects that I mentioned to you last time, we have also made targeted content breakthroughs for our core user groups this year. For example, we have launched the OGV projects named the careers that I desire, that's really targeting different kind of careers, you know, on that kind of project within that projects, we are able to invite a lot of professionals come here to share their experience.
For example, we invited programmers from Silicon Valley on our Zhihu platform to talk about their experience, and also answer a lot of questions about being a programmer. We also invited, you know, lawyers, well-known lawyers and successful lawyers from the Red Circle law firms. We've invited brand directors of Fortune 500 companies, etc., to really showcase, you know, what a typical workplace is like and to talk about, you know, different kind of scenarios. Overall, the feedback has been very, very positive.
在商业化方面，知识和年轻创作者都为平台的生态带来了很好的结果。我们看到的就是获取收益的创作者的人数和人均的收益都是超过我们的预期的，取得了比较明显的同比增长。我们之前一直在说这个基于社区的内容商业模式，就是要把变现更好地融入到社区生态中。OK。
Now, in terms of the commercialization, we believe that the CCS platform and the Yan Selection creators have all brought very good results, to the platform's ecosystem, and a number of creators, who have obtained income has increased, and also the income per capita has also increased year-over-year. We have been talking about the community-based content business model, which is really to integrate monetization into our community ecosystem.
刚才您还问到这个用户的增长。那么我想说呢，就是生态战略呢，它其实并不是一个项目，它是一个逐步推进的过程。那么刚才我大致已经介绍了，就是我们从生态的角度呢，从年初到现在，其实落地了非常多的措施，那很多的结果呢都得到了积极和正面的收益。那么在这个季度呢，我们的 MAU 呢也达到了1.06亿，这是一个年对年12%的增长。
Now, in the second part of your question, you also asked about user growth. As I mentioned earlier, ecosystem, the community first strategy is not a project, it's a process that we have to go through step by step. Now, from the perspective of ecosystem construction, ever since the beginning, we have launched a series of measures that have generated very positive outcome. For example, our MAU has reached 106 million, which is 12% year-over-year growth.
在这个季度，知乎的Monthly Viewer这个数字，其实代表了知乎上所展示的内容，它在全网真实使用的用户的数量和规模。现在已经达到了6.48亿，它的年对年增长还是蛮多的，21.6%。这个数据其实意味着知乎的优质内容，越来越多的覆盖到了更多的潜在用户。OK。
Now, this quarter in terms of our monthly view of our Zhihu content, which means the viewership of our content across the Internet has reached 648 million, which is about 21.6% YoY growth. This means that our Zhihu's content really is penetrating every single corner of the Internet.
我们在之前，我们对这个Monthly Viewer的产品的使用体验呢，主要是以简化的信息呈现为主。那不过呢，其实我们现在也注意到，就是随着知乎APP的功能的升级和丰富，两者的这个体验差距呢是在拉大的。虽然这部分工作短期还不是我们的重点，但是它还是比较明显的存在转化和迁移的空间。OK。
Now, monthly viewer in the beginning was just a simplified information displayed on other websites outside of the platform of Zhihu. With our upgrade of the functionality right now we are seeing a smaller gap between viewing the content from our website and platform versus viewing it from externally. Definitely this is not a work priority of ours, but we continue to push forward the development and the upgrade of this function.
宏观经济的压力在二季度还是比较明显的。虽然在三季度能够看到一些局部的改善，所以我们认为降本增效的措施还需要强化和优化，尤其是在受到很多外部影响的情况下，所以我们对于用户获取的支出就需要进一步提高效率和质量。我们关注的指标也会更加围绕生态。
Now, the macro environment has placed a lot of pressure on our second quarter performance. However, we believe the situation is being eased going into the 3Q this year. Therefore, we have to really reduce and control our costs and improve our operational efficiency, in the face of these external and macro challenges. Now, in terms of our user acquisition, we need to enhance the acquisition efficiency as well as control the cost as well, which means that we need to put more focus on our community based kind of user acquisition.
那总的来说呢，我们的投入呢，还会持续，这也是比较明确和坚定的。但我们呢，会更紧密地关注用户增长、投入和变现节奏的匹配，而不是单纯地追求短期的规模。那我们认为呢，这个在当下是对市场和股东最负责任的一个策略。OK。
Now, in summary, we will continue to invest in growing our users. However, we will definitely consider the return on investment, and we will pace a very good rhythm in terms of matching and balancing our investment as well as the monetization effect. In the short term, we are not going to prioritize or rushing into scaling up our platform. I think that's the only responsible move for our shareholders and investors.
好的，谢谢。
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Daisy Chen from Haitong International. Please go ahead.
晚上好，王尼成，谢谢接受我的提问。我代表Nana Ni来提问。我们的问题是有关咱们这个线上营销业务的，就包括传统广告和内容商业化部分，就可不可以请王尼成评论一下，就是二季度以来
这个广告和CCS增速下滑的原因。同时的话也请评论一下最近也就是六月、七月、八月的一个恢复情况，就比如说，广告主分行业来看的表现，它受一个疫情的影响，和它的恢复情况。然后另外的话也请管理层对于三季度和下半年这个广告和CCS的增速趋势做一下展望。谢谢。I'll try this myself. My question is about the traditional ads in CCS. Can management share more color on the reasons behind the revenue deceleration for ads practices in the second quarter? For example, the performance of advertisers and verticals that were affected by the pandemic resurgence. Also, can management comment on the recovery trend post-lockdown, including the trends in June, July and August.
Your expectations on the future performance in ads in CCS in the third quarter and the second half. Thanks.
好的，谢谢Daisy。我来回答一下这个问题。我们其实看到在二季度的时候，因为受到整个这个宏观经济疲弱，以及疫情的这个反复的影响，那对整个营销行业其实产生了有目共睹的一个负面影响。但是整体来看，我们自己的这个广告加上CCS在二季度还是实现了一个正向的增长。同时呢，我们也观察到，就是在客户端，就是短期来看呢，客户其实既追求一个更好的这个ROI，同时呢也更关注营销的这个长期的价值。那从用户这边呢，我们也看到消费行为本身变得越来越谨慎和务实，那用户在做这个消费决策的时候，他从内容平台去获取这个信息，去帮助他消费决策的时候，他其实会倾向于在更多的平台去获取信息，这已经变成了一个常态。OK。
First of all, thank you for your question. I'm the CFO. Let me respond to this question. Now for the second quarter of the year, the whole marketing industry has been struggling due to the macroeconomic effect and also the weakening demand side, as well as the resurgence of the pandemic. This is not just about, you know, an incident to our company, but for the whole marketing industry. Overall, our advertising and our CCS business still achieve positive growth. We also notice that our clients are actually paying more attention to pursuing higher ROI. At the same time, they are paying more attention to gaining long-term value from the marketing activities as well.
Now from the user side, we also notice that the consumption behavior has become more cautious and more pragmatic. When making consumption decisions, it has become the norm to really obtain information from content platforms, and also from multiple other platforms as well.
那具体来看，分别来看我们的CCS和广告，实际上我们看，我们观察到CCS凭借这个比较优质的内容，依然是成为承载客户信任的一个非常好的营销产品，它仍然在持续地取得市场份额。那我们看到二季度同比CCS的收入依然有超过15%的增长。那同时，CCS的商家也在，就是这个投放CCS的品牌或者商家在二季度依然是持续增长的。相对来说表现比较活跃的领域包括IT 3C、教培、电商。那同时，这个单一的CCS客户的投放金额也是一个同比增长的结果。那这个证明了我们这个产品，这些产品在相对比较恶劣的或者是相对比较疲软的经济环境下，它依然是品牌或者商家客户的一个最优的选择之一。
Now let me talk about the advertising and CCS business one by one. First of all, our CCS really has become a marketing product that gains the trust from our users with our high quality content. It continues to gain market share as well with a year-over-year growth of over 15%. The merchants and our customers that invested in our CCS continue to grow in Q2 this year. Also in terms of the vertical that are active using our CCS include our IT 3C electronics, education and training, e-commerce, etc. The average amount invested per customer also increased year-over-year, proving that we are actually still the go-to platform for brands and business customers even in a very harsh economic environment.
就广告来说，在二季度确实受到的外部影响是比较大的，尤其是品牌广告，它的收入受到的影响相对效果来说更加显著。但是我们认为呢，这样的影响在后面的几个季度，随着这个疫情的放缓和经济回暖，应该会有所改善。那同时我们自己在这个广告产品侧，也是在持续地进行迭代和变化，那与社区本身的这个内容以及创作者有更好的结合。例如我们推出的一系列的这个IP化这个商业产品，比如说好奇实验室、新奇实验室等等，基于IP的这样的商业广告产品都有非常好的口碑，那我未来还会延续这个系列的持续推出。
Now in terms of our advertising business, which is also affected by the overall macro element in the economy, our brand revenue is actually affected as well. We believe that such an impact will actually be eased in later quarters, especially in Q4, as we see the pandemic pressure continue to be relieved and also the economy gradually picks up. At the same time, we are also continuing to innovate on the advertising product side to better integrate with the content and creators of the community. For example, we have launched a series of IP based products, for example, our Curiosity Lab. You know, both of them have received very good reputation, and we will continue this kind of launching of different series of products and projects.
如果我们去展望一下Q3或者下半年的话，目前来看仍然是有不确定性。我们认为主要跟几个因素有关，第一个是从外部来看，疫情是不是还会有比较大的反复，以及这个宏观经济环境是不是会回暖。大家也都知道，最近像在成都、深圳、三亚都有比较大的疫情的反复，这是从外部因素来看。那从内部来看，是我们自己内生性的结构性的因素。比如说我们自己，从CCS和广告端的，像电商、日化美妆、IT 3C、网服、汽车和职教育这些领域，都是我们相对来说对我们的CCS和广告有比较大贡献的领域。所以这些领域的行业回暖情况，对我们就会有比较大的相关性的影响。
Now, about our Q3 and also the trends for the second half of the year, we will look at different factors externally and internally. Externally speaking, we are really depending on whether or not the pandemic will resurge. For example, lately we hear that kind of resurgence in cities such as Chengdu, Shenzhen and Sanya. Also internally speaking, we have to look at our vertical mix regarding these kind of businesses, for example, e-commerce, and daily care and also cosmetics, IT 3C electronics, internet service, automobile and also professional education. These are the top contributors to our business. Whether or not they can pick up very soon will also determine our forecast going into the second half of the year.
目前来看，七月、八月相对于六月，目前还没有特别显著的回升趋势，特别是电商在六月的投放高峰之后，其实会有一定的缩减。一般来说九月份，电商会在下半年会有一些去投放，如果下半年的宏观经济增速有所恢复的话，那可能电商这个行业会捕获第一波的收益。
Now, looking at our July and August performance, compared to June, there is no clear sign of recovery just yet, especially in the vertical of e-commerce. Typically, they will have some shrinkage in their investment budget after their June investment, which typically reached the peak of their budget. Typically, in September, the e-commerce players will gradually start their second half investment in the marketing area. If the macro economy begins to recover quicker for the second half of the year, basically the e-commerce vertical will be the first industry that can generate more profit and revenue for us.
那同样像日化美妆、食品饮料这些，它因为这个供应链的恢复程度也会对我们这个CCS做的广告的恢复是有一定的影响。当然整体来说，我们的CCS还是优于传统的广告的表现。所以长期来看，我们认为如果排除疫情和宏观因素的影响，因为我们CCS是一个远超广告的、普通广告的营销效率的提升，同时它是基于优质内容为核心的，所以我们认为长期来看，排除刚才说的这个不确定性，我们认为CCS的长期增长依然有非常大的潜力。OK。
Now, in addition to that, other verticals such as daily self-care, cosmetics, food and beverage, they are still suffering from the supply chain shortages, etc. Overall, you know, we also will have to judge the macro economic recovery speed in order to understand better our focus going into the second half of the year. Now, overall speaking, because our CCS is better compared to traditional advertising in terms of its marketing efficiency. In the long run, we believe that excluding the pandemic's impact, you know, we would be able to actually get a lot of commercialization and market opportunities in the long run with our high quality content centric marketing solution.
对，这整，这基本上是我们整体对这个Q3和下半年的一些展望吧，希望对你有帮助，谢谢。
All right. That's all for our guidance regarding, you know, going into Q3 and also the second half. I hope that has been helpful to you.
There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and- answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Jing Jing for any closing remarks.
Thank you all once again for joining us today. If you have any questions, please contact our IR team directly or TPG Investor Relations. Thank you.
Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.