Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Weibo Corporation Q4 and Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. Now I'd like to hand the call over to the management team of Weibo Corporation. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you operator, and welcome to Weibo's Q4 and Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Gaof ei Wang, and our Chief Financial Officer, Fei C ao. The conference call is also being broadcast on the internet and is available through Weibo's IR website. Before the management remarks, I'd like to read you the safe harbor statement in connection with today's conference call. During today's conference call, we may make forward-looking statements that are not historical facts, including statement of our beliefs and expectations. Forward-looking statements involving inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Weibo assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statement in this conference call and elsewhere.
Further information regarding this and other risks is included in Weibo's annual report on Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC. All the information provided in this press release is accurate as of the date hereof. Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. Additionally, I'd like to remind you that our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP measures, which excludes stock-based compensation and certain other expenses. We use non-GAAP financial measures to gain a better understanding of Weibo's comparative operating performance and future prospects. Our non-GAAP financials exclude certain expenses, gains and losses, and other items that are not expected to result in future cash payment, or are non-recurring in nature, or are not indicative of our core operating result and outlook. Please refer to our press release for more information about our non-GAAP measures.
Knowing management remarks, we will open the lines for a brief Q&A session. With this, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Gaofei Wang.
Thank you. Hello everyone, and welcome to Weibo's Q4 2021 earnings conference call.
On today's call, I'll share with you highlights in Weibo's user product monetization, review the progress made in 2021, and elaborate on our strategies for 2022.
Let me start with our Q4 financial results. In the Q4 , we achieved solid revenue growth on both annual and quarterly basis, mainly attributable to our enhanced sales capability on key advertising industries, as well as our efforts to further improve our monetization efficiency despite macro and industry headwinds on the advertising business. Our total revenue reached $616.3 million in the Q4 , an increase of 20% year-over-year.
Advertising and marketing revenues reached $550.8 million, an increase of 21% year-over-year, with 94% of our ad revenue coming from mobile. In the Q4 , non-GAAP operating income reached $219.8 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 36%. For full year 2021, Weibo's total revenues reached $2.26 billion, an increase of 34% year-over-year. Advertising and marketing revenues were $1.98 billion, an increase of 33% year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating income reached $829.9 million, an increase of 43% year-over-year, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 37%.
On user front, Weibo's MAU reached 573 million, and average DAUs reached 249 million in December 2021, an increase of 10% and 11% year-over-year respectively 95% of Weibo's MAUs came from mobile.
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As we review 2021, Weibo navigates through industry changes and delivers solid results on user growth, product, and monetization, leveraging our core positioning as a social media platform and differentiating market competitiveness. On product front, we sharpen our edge in core functions like hot trend and social attributes. Coupled with effective channel investment, we achieve double-digit % growth of our user base year-over-year, exceeding the peak level we achieved during COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. On monetization, our revenues reached $2.26 billion, up 34% year-over-year, representing a strong rebound from 2020. We further increased Weibo's share of wallet in the advertising market this year, mainly attributable to traffic growth and efficiency improvement, stronger sales capability in key verticals as well as more competitive ad product metrics.
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Next, let me share with you our progress made in product and monetization in the Q4 and lay out our key initiatives for 2022.
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In the Q4 of 2021, on product operation, we focused on improving Weibo's monetization efficiency by strengthening our competitiveness in core features such as hot trend and social attributes. Coupled with effective channel investment, we delivered solid user growth and deepened user engagement, which in turn improved monetization efficiency.
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On channel investment. In the Q4 , we continue to leverage Weibo's advantage in user acquisition cost and kept focusing on improving user frequency. While maintaining the number of users acquired, our channel strategy has turned toward channels that could effectively drive user frequency and scale of targeted users. Consequently, the number of users acquired from channel collaboration with smartphone manufacturers and operators continue to grow. Meanwhile, we further improve our product offerings to better serve users acquired through channel. On the one hand, we optimize the content quality and distribution capability of interest-based video feed to improve users' experience and frequency to consume content.
On the other hand, we enhanced our capability to accurately identify channel users' interest and characteristics and tailor product strategies to gradually lead users to shift toward community-based products such as Super Topic, while enhancing users' content consumption, aiming to cultivate their mindset of using Weibo and thus improve their willingness to proactively visit us and increase onboard frequency.
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Turning to social attributes. In Q4, we continue to enhance social functions of our products, aiming to sustain the scale and engagement of our core users. On relationship-based feed, we further enhance capability of discovering and distributing high-quality social content and effectively promoted user consumption and interaction in the relationship-based feed by product tactics, such as in emphasizing exposure of social posts with high engagement in the top spot of the relationship-based feed, especially among users with low and medium user frequency. Meanwhile, we continue to optimize content structure of relationship-based feed and enhance social attributes through increasing content exposure from high-quality video accounts and Super Topics by optimizing the distribution mechanism in the relationship-based feed. As a result, the number of engagements per thousand impressions delivered grew double-digit percentage compared with that of December 2020.
On community-based product, it has become an increasingly vital part within Weibo's ecosystem. Upon ensuring compliance of entertainment business operations, we have largely enriched the content verticals of Super Topics with emphasis on gaming, sports, and campus verticals, and upgrading product framework leading to the consumption of community-based content by a broader user group and enrichment of more verticals. At this stage, the post generated from Super Topic has reached nearly 20% of our total posts on a daily basis. In December 2021, we saw the number of users who consume community-based contents in sports, gaming, and campus verticals achieved notable growth year-over-year. This achievement gives us confidence that our investment in this product will further enhance users' social stickiness and engagement on Weibo and create growth opportunity for us in the new area.
On video front, we continue to focus on expanding the scale of video accounts and improving their engagement, as well as facilitating video content creation and consumption, so as to deepen user engagement. As of December 2021, there were over 25 million video accounts, and the number of video accounts uploading videos on a monthly basis increased multiple times on an annual basis. On operation and user engagement, we focus on original video content creators who can better drive user engagement and interaction and incentivize them to generate content through traffic and operational resources support, especially for those in the key content verticals. On product side, we continue to enhance video product, pre-production functions and motivate top KOLs to create content through providing them with more interactive features.
Meanwhile, as the number of video accounts increases, we continue to improve content quality and distribution accuracy of the recommended video feed, further improving recommendation efficiency, user engagement, and video ad inventories. On live streaming, we kept improving product features and user experience of joint mic live streaming in multiple scenarios and further integrated joint mic live streaming with key IPs and events in core verticals such as entertainment, sports, and gaming in order to further cultivate users' consumption behavior. In December 2021, the DAUs of Weibo's live streaming grew more than double year-over-year. Let me briefly lay out our strategy for 2022 on the product and operational front. We will strive to further grow Weibo's user base and engagement from the following three aspects. First, on channel investment.
In view of Weibo's current user scale and the competitive landscape, we will put more emphasis on keeping the balance between user acquisition costs and the monetization per user and improving ROI of users acquired through channels. Thus, to keep the total user acquisition costs within a reasonable range in 2022.
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Second, on Weibo's core competitiveness, we will continue to beef up our operational efforts around hot trends and social attributes, aiming to further solidify Weibo's competitive moat in our core features. To elaborate, for one thing, we'll strengthen our strategic cooperation with partners in the media, entertainment, gaming and sports sectors, advocating media and IP holders to lead topic discussion and facilitate the build out of social assets, so as to enrich the supply of discussion materials around trending topics and IPs on our platform. For another, as another key initiative in 2022, we will upgrade product functionalities for Super Topics through expanding content verticals for interest-based communities, aiming to attract broader user base, especially younger generation, to consume content and engage in community product and capturing incremental market share from users' time spent.
For instance, let me share some achievements we've made during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games that just concluded. The Games attracted great attention and engagement from the general public. Leveraging strategic cooperation with Winter Sports Administrative Center, we invited all Chinese national teams and athletes to join Weibo and share moments and interact with Weibo's users, making Weibo go-to platform for social interaction among Chinese athletes. During the Games, there are 176 athlete-related Super Topics being initiated and over 2,500 posts generated from athletes worldwide, and nearly 45 million new followers accumulated for these athletes. Meanwhile, we also strengthened cooperation with partners such as Daily Media and Meitu on Olympic-related trending topics.
As a result, we are pleased to see the overall traffic of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games on Weibo platform surpassed the Tokyo Olympic Games, with the total number of topic views and discussions around Winter Olympic Games reached over 450 billion and nearly 300 million times respectively, giving us confidence that Weibo's unique value proposition has enabled us to further reinforce our competitive moat on the product front.
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Third, on company ecosystem. In 2021, we elevated the monetization capabilities for top content creators with emphasis on ad monetization and e-commerce model, leading to nearly 50% growth in the number of top content creators who monetize within Weibo's ecosystem. Looking forward to 2022, we will further optimize the monetization model and enhance monetization efficiency for top content creators to drive higher earnings for them, which would entice more quality content generation and drive user engagement in return.
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Finally, on the video front, we will continue to leverage our video account program to improve the video production experience and enthusiasm for Weibo's core content creators and thus accelerating the visualization trend among content creators. Meanwhile, we will focus on operation and content generation of key verticals such as TV series and variety shows, gaming and sports, in the hope of cultivating users' mindset for choosing Weibo for differentiated video consumption experience, so as to deepen user engagement.
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On the monetization front. Our ad revenues continued to book solid growth in Q4, up 21% year-over-year, despite external factors such as macro environment and industry policies. The relative resilience in our advertising business was mainly attributable to two things. First, we were benefited from a relatively balanced industry mix with limited risk exposure to those sectors hit hard amid regulatory crackdown last year, such as education and online finance. Secondly, our integrated brand plus performance ad offerings resonates greatly with customers with branding needs and position us well in the marketing competition, which not only enable us to secure our wallet share in key industries, but also tap into other industries and acquire incremental clients and budgets.
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From industry perspective, despite a softer demand side amid challenges from macro environment and industry policies, our traditionally strong industries such as beauty and personal care, food and beverage, 3C products and automobiles, continue to deliver solid growth in the Q4 , underpinned by our optimization in marketing strategies and service capabilities. Meanwhile, our strategic focus on sectors such as luxury and apparel also paid off, contributing decent growth this quarter. We have showcased Weibo's differentiated value proposition to the market, featuring the synergies between our product, user product, and content operation. For instance, we leverage trending topics of Olympic Games to build hype for ANTA, a domestic apparel brand, and we also seamlessly incorporated luxury brand shows to our live streaming product. Such ad offerings improve our clients' ad performance, leading to notably higher ad wallet share in these industries.
From ad product perspective, we focus on optimizing and innovating our ad formats to offer clients a diversified product portfolio while further strengthening the synergies between ad product and content operation so as to empower clients to accumulate social assets and better reach targeted audience on Weibo.
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Heading into 2022. On the monetization front, underpinned by uptick in traffic, we will step up our efforts in ad product optimization and sales execution to further enhance our monetization skill, efficiency, as well as market competitiveness. First, on ad product. Leveraging Weibo's differentiation and advantages will strengthen the innovation of content-based ad product. Launching more ad product with competitive edge, such as app opening ad and hot trend products, and thus driving ad demand. Additionally, we will further optimize ad, our ad placement capabilities for our performance ad offerings, uplifting the conversion efficiency and clients' ad placement experience in order to maximize the monetization efficiency of Weibo's information feed. Second, from an industry perspective, leveraging the resilience of Weibo's integrated brand plus performance ad offerings in key verticals.
We are dedicated to sustaining steady revenue growth in these industries while extending the marketing combo of integrated brand plus performance ad with content operation to more industries and clients, aiming to attract incremental clients and add wallet, as well as reinforce Weibo's competitiveness in the end market. For instance, we plan to further upgrade our e-commerce product solution, namely Weibo Mini Shop, to enable clients to improve conversions through the closed-loop solution on our platform. Finally, on sales execution, we'll continue to optimize Weibo's sales structure and improve synergies with the operational team and staff to formulate industry-specific monetization strategies, which would more closely support Weibo's marketing system and improve its overall monetization efficiency. With that, let me turn the call over to Fei Cao for a financial review.
Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's Q4 and Fiscal Year 2021 earnings conference call. As a reminder, my prepared remarks will focus on non-GAAP results. All monetary amounts are in U.S. dollar terms, and all the comparisons on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Weibo had another solid quarter to finish 2021, with annual revenues surpassing the $2 billion mark, up 34% for the year, despite macro and industry headwinds. On top of top-line momentum, we also delivered a decent operating leverage and a strong operating cash flow, generating $829.2 million in operating income and $778.9 million in free cash flow. Starting with user metrics.
In December 2021, Weibo's MAUs and average DAUs reached 573 million and 249 million respectively, representing a net addition of 52 million and 25 million users on a year-on-year basis. In 2021, we have achieved a solid growth of user community, leveraging our strength in serving public conversation and effective channel investment. Heading into 2022, we will focus on integrating our product roadmap to reinforce our differentiation in serving real-time public conversation, while navigating through the new regulatory landscape and making Weibo the go-to platform to find out and discuss what's happening. Meanwhile, we will beef up our investments in key content verticals such as sports and online gaming, positioning as well to tap into a broader user community and improve users' frequency and engagement.
Now, let me walk you through our financial highlights for the Q4 and Fiscal Year 2021. Weibo's Q4 2021 net revenues were $616.3 million, an increase of 20%. Operating income was $219.8 million, representing operating margins of 36%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached $195.5 million, representing a net margin of 32%. Diluted EPS was $0.83 compared to $0.92 in 2020. For full year 2021, total revenues reached $2.26 billion, an increase of 34%. Operating income was $829.2 million, an increase of 43%, representing operating margin of 37%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached $718.5 million, representing a net margin of 32%.
Diluted EPS was 3.08 compared to 2.38 in 2020. Let me give you more color on our Q4 and the full year 2021 revenue growth. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenues for the Q4 2021 were $515.8 million, an increase of 21%. Mobile ad revenues reached $516.1 million, representing 94% of our total ad revenues, up from 91% last year. Full year 2021 advertising and marketing revenues reached $1.98 billion, an increase of 33%, with mobile ad revenues contributing 93% of total ad revenues, up from 90% in 2020. Let's start with Q4 performance.
Weibo closed the year on a solid note, sustaining double-digit growth, even though the overall advertising market was tapering off amid macro and regulatory headwinds. In terms of revenue contribution, our top three verticals were FMCG, e-commerce, and 3C products. In terms of growth, luxury was the fastest-growing vertical among major ones. These consumption sectors, including consumer staples and the discretionary, demonstrated relative resilience against a tough market environment, speaking to Weibo's unique value proposition in serving their integrated branding plus performance marketing needs during the e-commerce peak season. From ad product perspective, promoted feed continued to be the largest part, followed by social display ad and search and topic ad offerings.
With tightening oversight on several ad offerings, such as launch screen ad, our team strived to serve our customers within our ecosystem and mitigate the impact by facilitating them to switch to desirable alternatives, leveraging a full spectrum of social ad products we offer. Moving on to full year 2021 performance. In 2021, Weibo demonstrated a strong recovery momentum, delivering over 30% year-over-year growth in revenues, underpinned ad demand rebound, traffic uptick, and ongoing ad optimization. We are also delighted to see stronger sales execution upon the integration between our KA and SME segment, which enable them to successfully focus on customers industry specific needs by industry. Our largest three verticals were FMCG, e-commerce, and 3C products.
Weibo has gradually become the cornerstone of many advertisers in these consumption sectors by empowering them to leverage KOL influence and connect with Generation Z users and thus fulfilling their integrated branding plus performance needs in 2021. Sectors like FMCG, 3C, gaming, and luxury outperformed, whereas education, entertainment, and real estate sectors underperformed, mainly due to macro and regulatory headwinds. The ad product promoted feed was the largest, followed by social display ad and topics and search. Our full-funnel social marketing product delivered competitive ROI and resonated greatly with brands and merchants, with Weibo's differentiated ad offerings such as search and topics leading the growth. Overall speaking, in 2021, from a demand perspective, we navigated through a traditional landscape and increased our ad share from customers with resilience in the challenging environment from a supply perspective.
The growth of ad revenues was primarily driven by traffic and sales through rate, demonstrating higher monetization efficiency and stronger sales capability. Ad revenues from Alibaba for Q4 decreased 24% to $45.5 million, correlating with its conservative marketing strategies in 2021. Full year ad revenues from Alibaba decreased 8% to $139.6 million, broadly consistent with our expectations. The decrease is offset by inventories sold to other e-commerce platforms and brand advertisers with integrated brand plus performance marketing demands. Before turning to VAS segment, let me give some color on the trends entering 2022. Currently, we expect to see softness in the overall advertising market in light of macro and regulatory uncertainties weighing on spending sentiment.
That said, we believe the headwinds could be transient rather than structural, with advertising industry rebase and the secular growth driver reassert themselves. In 2022, our team will beef up execution and work relentlessly to fulfill customers' differentiated marketing needs against a tough environment in the hope of further uplifting our monetization scale and ad efficiency. Value-added service VAS revenues were $65.5 million in the Q1 , an increase of 9%. The increase was primarily attributable to full quarter revenue booked from the interactive entertainment company consolidated in November 2020, while partially offset by the decrease of revenues from live streaming business.
Full year 2021 VAS revenue was $276.3 million, an increase of 36%, mainly resulted from incremental revenues derived from the interactive entertainment company consolidated in November 2020 and other online gaming revenues, while partially offset by the decrease of revenues from live streaming business. Turning to costs and expenses. Total costs and expenses for the Q1 was $396.5 million, an increase of 28%. The increase was primarily due to higher personnel-related costs, as well as step up in ad costs, mainly associated with seasonal ad campaigns execution. Full year costs and expenses totaled $1.33 billion compared to $1.11 billion for 2020.
Operating income in the Q1 was $219.8 million, an increase of 8%, representing operating margin of 36% compared to 40% last year. Operating income for full year 2021 was $829.2 million, representing operating margin of 37% compared to 34% in 2020. We continued to balance well between investment for growth and the margin performance. Turning to income tax. Under GAAP measure, income tax expense for the Q1 was $45.6 million compared to a benefit of $25.3 million last year.
The increase of income tax expenses primarily resulted from tax benefits booked in the Q1 of last year due to preferential tax treatment of our subsidiary as a Key Software Enterprise, namely KSE, which left in 2021 as a super deduction true up for eligible R&D expenses in the Q4 of 2020. Full year income tax expenses were $138.8 million, compared to $61.3 million in 2020. The increase mainly resulted from, first, higher profits in 2021 versus 2020. Second, tax benefits booked in 2020 due to preferential tax treatment of our subsidiary as a KSE, which left in 2021. Third, tax liability recognized in 2021 related to uncertain tax positions.
Net income attributable to Weibo in the Q1 was $195.5 million, compared to $212.7 million last year. Net margin was 32% compared to 41% the same period last year. Net income for full year 2021 was $718.5 million, representing a net margin of 32% flat versus 2020. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow item. As of December 31st, 2021, Weibo's cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled $3.1 billion compared to $3.5 billion as of December 31st, 2020. The decrease primarily resulted from investment activities we made and was partially offset by cash provided by operating activities and proceeds from our global offering. In the Q1 , cash provided by operating activities was $249.7 million.
Capital expenditures totaled $11.3 million, and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to $14.8 million. On full-year basis, cash provided by operating activities was $814 million. Capital expenditures totaled $35.1 million, and depreciation and amortization expenses amounted to $55 million. We delivered approximately $778.9 million free cash flow in 2021, an increase of 10% year-over-year, representing our capability of delivering high profitability and generating strong operating cash flow. Lastly, on December 8, 2021, we successfully listed on the main board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the stock code 9898 through our global offering of 11 million + 8 ordinary shares.
As a newly listed company on Hong Kong Stock Exchange, we need to comply with regulations and follow the common practice adopted by public companies in the Hong Kong market. Therefore, we will no longer provide financial guidance on net revenue growth going forward. That said, we remain committed to delivering sustainable growth of our revenue with decent profitability and free cash flow generation and driving shareholder value in the long run. With that, let me now turn the call to the operator for the Q&A session.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to withdraw your request, please press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the question and announce the roster. Once again, it's star one for questions. Our first question comes from Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thank you.
I understand company no longer provide the official guidance after Hong Kong listing. Can management provide some colors or the directions as the latest sentiments by the advertiser? You know, if you know January or February that you are seeing is it more the same as the Q4 ? Thank you.
Um, uh,
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All right. Thank you very much for your question. So first of all, I have to say that in Q1, we have seen a very good growth in terms of the advertisement placement in terms of the industries of FMCG, the 3C products and automotives and luxury products as well. Also, due to the external environment and also headwinds as well as the regulatory headwinds.
Some of the industries really experience some kind of you know, negative growth. For example, in Q4 of last year, we've been having a lot of regulatory activities over the live streaming e-commerce. You know, originally, they planned to place some of the advertisements during the Spring Festival period in Q1 of this year, but actually they stopped doing so because of the headwinds of the regulation. Last year in Q1, actually, these types of advertising revenue accounted for about 5% of our total revenue. Next vertical is about the education. You can see that, you know, last year in Q1, they had the budget for the placement of the advertising. Actually, this was heavily impacted.
Apart from these two verticals that are heavily impacted, for the other verticals, I think that we are all positively, you know, enjoying a double-digit growth. Apart from that, we also had some of the, you know, a little bit headwind on the gaming industry as well as the e-commerce. Still, overall speaking, I think the developments are pretty much good.
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Okay。
All right. Thank you. Next question comes from Miranda Cheung from Bank of America. Please ask your question.
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Thank you for taking my question. Can management elaborate on the verticalization strategy for 2022? Which verticals will you focus to expand? Specifically, Weibo had gained strong traction in Olympics campaign. What kind of strategy will company take for the sports vertical, going forward this year? What kind of strategy will company take for the online game vertical? Is there any impact from the tightening online game regulation development? Thank you. [Foreign language].
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First of all, let me share some color in terms of the vertical of entertainment and also culture. In this particular vertical of entertainment, you know, it used to be a very important part for our accumulation of the traffic. But since the second half of last year, we've been seeing some kind of a remodeling and also reshuffling of this entertainment industry. This did bring a negative impact to our business and performance in Q3 and Q4 in last year, specifically on the traffic part, and also in 2022 of course, we've been seeing a very good transformation of this entertainment industry that was previously generated in terms of the idol based economy to pretty much the focus on the product itself and also the production of the works.
You can see that this is the part one, but still, you know, talking about the traffic, this is still in the process of being recovered. And of course, now in terms of the hot trend and also the hot search, we've been seeing that all those, you know, listed topics on the hot trend are all pretty much based on the product or based on the works. In the second half of this year of 2022, we are going to see the traffic volume, which is going to be recovered to the stage before the regulation on the entertainment industry.
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Second part, as you have mentioned something about the sports industry and actually now for the vertical of sport, this is also a very important, as important as the entertainment, as one big part of the mass public consumption. As you can see that last year talking about the Tokyo Olympics, because of very much a big focus, we've gained a very good growth in terms of the traffic and also the number of users using Weibo. For this year's Winter Olympics in Beijing, we've been seeing that in terms of traffic and also the number of users, this is almost reaching the status of the Tokyo Olympics. This is, to be honest with you, out of our expectation.
In 2022, this is a big year for all the sports events. For example, in the second half of the year, we're going to have Asian Games and also at the end of 2022, the World Cup as well, so that we are going to focus on the investment, on the content, so that we're going to gain a very good growth in terms of the traffic and also the number of users as well on this one. Last year in the Tokyo Olympics, we've been finding that some of the sponsors and also the sponsors of the athletes, et cetera, we've been gaining around 40+ more customers placing their ads with us so that this is another kind of a very good growth. Previously we had quite conservative expectations on the performance during the Winter Olympics period.
We really believe that in the future, in terms of the budget of those advertisers, we're going to have a big room for further improvement. This is a very important year in terms of the sports verticals.
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Also, third of all, in terms of the vertical of gaming. Now our focus is on the operation of the esports tournaments. You can see that this has been showing a very good results and performance driven in the Q4 of last year during the S11 and League of Legends, you know, tournament series. Another focus is on the investment to the esports teams. This is going to further provide excellent, you know, content as well as the services to attract the young users. Third thing is that, you know, this year we're going to dedicate ourselves continuously to the tournaments and esports games as well. Of course, all those esports' events are pretty much based on the mature and also the existing games.
We don't think that whether or not the licenses are granted to the new games and you know, whether or not the new games are pretty much, you know, launched in a massive way or less massive way in this year will have a big impact on the traffic volume. But of course it is going to a little bit, you know, impact the budget gaining abilities for us. Because the percentage of the revenue contribution from the gaming sector is actually a little bit small to our total revenue so we've been seeing not big impact in Q1 of this year. Of course, as long as we are going to focus on the attractions of the new users and also paying attention to the activities of the users and time spent with Weibo of those young users, we're going to have a very big room for further improvement.
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All right. Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I'll turn the call back to the management team for closing remarks.
Okay, thanks operator, this is the end of our conference call this quarter. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next quarter.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.