Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Weibo First Quarter 2022 Earnings 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 would like to hand the conference over to Ms. Sandra Zhang from Weibo IR team. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Welcome to Weibo's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Gaofei Wang, and our Chief Financial Officer, Fei Cao. The conference call is also being broadcasted on the Internet and is also available through Weibo's IR website. Before the mentioned remarks, I would 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 statements of our beliefs and expectations. Forward-looking statements involve 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 statements 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 current as of the date hereof. Weibo assumes no obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. Additionally, I would like to remind you that our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP measures, which exclude 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 the 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 full operating results and outlook. Please refer to our press release for more information about our non-GAAP measures.
Following management's prepared 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 First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. On today's call, I'll share with you highlights in Weibo's user, product and monetization in the first quarter of 2022. On the user front, Weibo's MAUs reached 582 million and average DAUs reached 252 million in March 2022, adding approximately 51 million and 22 million users year-over-year respectively. In March, 95% of Weibo's MAUs came from mobile.
On monetization, the macro environment, industry policy and recent domestic COVID-19 resurgence had posed a short and medium impact on the production and operation of many companies to different degrees, causing most advertisers to defer or reduce their marketing budget since March. Nevertheless, thanks to the solid growth of our user scale and traffic, as well as our efforts in key industries such as gaming and apparel, we have further gained recognition among advertisers for our differentiated market solution that integrate well with our user product and content operation. In the first quarter, our total revenue reached $484.6 million, up 6% year-over-year, and our ad revenues reached $427.1 million, up 10% year-over-year. Ninety-four percent of our ad revenues came from mobile.
This quarter, our non-GAAP operating income reached $141.7 million. Next, let me share with you our progress made in product monetization in the first quarter.
在今年整体的市场环境下，今年我们产品运营的重心以提升效率为主，稳健拓展我们的用户规模，提升用户活跃度，进而提升我们的商业化效率。渠道方面，考虑到微博的用户规模和市场目前的格局，我们会更加关注用户获取成本和用户变现之间的平衡，重点提升用户获取的ROI。平台竞争力方面，我们将继续加强热点和社交的产品运营投入，深化与媒体、文娱、游戏、体育合作方的战略合作，保障热点以及IP的讨论供给，稳定微博在用户核心使用功能的竞争力。
On product front, we continue to focus on operating efficiency, driving steady user base expansion and engagement improvement so as to uplift our monetization efficiency. On channel front, considering our user scale and the competitive landscape, we will emphasize on balancing user acquisition costs and monetization, and improve ROI for user acquisition. On competition, we will continue to step up investment in operations of hot trends and social content, deepen strategic cooperation with partners from media, entertainment, gaming and sports verticals to encourage discussion around hot trends and IPs, and maintain our competitiveness in core user functions.
一季度受益于春节假期冬奥赛事，微博在热点和社交上有优势体现，带动用户规模和流量的快速增长。今年春节期间，各大卫视春晚通过话题、视频、直播等方式在微博保持活跃。整体晚会的话题阅读量超过两百亿，讨论量超过七千万，讨论量较去年成长46%。其中我们推出的全新的实况版式话题，以实况热聊的方式再次升级了用户边看边聊的跨屏体验。伴随着晚会播出，春晚嘉宾、KOL、用户在话题时光板中进行同屏的讨论，带动了春晚讨论氛围的提升。春晚话题的原创讨论量较去年提升了141%。
In the first quarter with the Spring Festival holiday and Winter Olympics, our user base and traffic grew robustly, demonstrating Weibo's advantages in hot trends and social attributes. During the Spring Festival, content related to the Spring Festival Gala of 25 television stations was distributed on Weibo via topics, videos, live streaming and etc. With Spring Festival Gala related topics, the viewership surpassed 20 billion and the discussion was more than 770 million, up 46% from last year. Moreover, we launched the live topics, an upgraded topic feature that allows users to discuss live while watching the Spring Festival Gala. While the Gala was on air, celebrities, KOLs, and users were able to join in the live discussion altogether, igniting the willingness of discussion around the event.
As a result, the discussion of the Gala related topics created by users increased by 145% from last year.
微博针对冬奥的运营更是吸引了广泛关注。从热门赛事到热点运动员，再到吉祥物冰墩墩、雪容融这样的IP热点。微博通过与冬运中心达成的战略合作，促进了冬奥运动员在微博的持续活跃，与央视、咪咕等媒体贡献传播矩阵，提升了赛事讨论和传播。北京冬奥会不仅流量超过了东京奥运会，冬奥运动员和他们的粉丝在微博也更加活跃，互动性更好。往年的数据显示，春节后，随着开学的复工，用户的规模和流量会迅速回落。但三月以来，由于社会热点事件以及我们在渠道优化、热点和社交运营上提升效率，我们的用户和流量依旧保持了较好的趋势。
Furthermore, our content operation of the Beijing Winter Olympics has attracted massive users to consume content on Weibo. From the Winter Olympics event to sports, campaigns and the IPs of the Bing Dwen Dwen and Xue Rong Rong. We worked with the Winter Sports Administrative Center to encourage athletes to open accounts and stay engaged on Weibo, and build a content distribution matrix with the state media and Migu, among other media, to enhance the dissemination and discussion of content around the Games. Not only did the traffic driven by the Beijing Winter Olympics surpass that of the Tokyo Olympic Games, but the athletes and their followers were also more engaged on Weibo.
Based on historical data, as people return to school and work after the Spring Festival, the user scale and traffic on Weibo will fall back to a certain extent. However, in March, we grew our users and traffic nicely, mainly attributable to more social events occurred and increased time spent online due to the disruption from COVID-19, coupled with our optimized channel strategy and improved operating efficiency of hot trends and social content.
在渠道方面，我们通过春节和冬奥的运营，有效提升了流量和用户活跃，而在渠道方面也更加优化，注重于提升效率。一方面减少了低ROI渠道的预算投入。另一方面，我们尝试将更多的预算倾斜至能带来用户访问提升、访问频次提升的渠道上，提升可变现流量和用户的长期留存，不断优化渠道的ROI。所以这个季度我们在产品上做了许多优化，更好地促进了用户与推荐内容的精准匹配，以集中优化了push的召回体验和产品优化，提升用户的消费频次。三月，来自渠道用户的平均消费量较去年四季度提升了40%。
On channel front, we further optimize our channel investment strategy with focus on efficiency as the content operation of Spring Festival and Winter Olympic Games help grow our user and increase user engagement. We cut the budget investment in low ROI channels and try to shift more budget to channels with potential of raising user visit frequency. Meanwhile, we improved our capabilities of serving products to clients, and increased the long-term retention of the monetizable traffic and users to continue to optimize channel ROI. Hence, in the first quarter, we optimized our products from several aspects, driving to precisely targeting users with the recommended content. We also focused on optimizing the push recall strategy. Improving the product experience will increase the frequency of user consumption. In March, the per capita consumption of channel users increased by 40% from the fourth quarter last year.
在社交活跃方面，我们继续加强产品的社交性，保持微博的核心用户群体的规模和活跃度为重点。关系流方面，三月关系流的刷屏次数较去年十二月保持增长。刷屏次数的提升，一方面得益于针对关系流的策略优化，有效地承接了热点带来用户的后续活跃。另一方面，我们在社交物料和个性化分发和体验上持续投入，提升用户在关系流消费体验和社交粘性。社区方面，我们重点完善社区的产品机制，更好地融合用户的核心消费场景，让用户更高效地发现兴趣社区的内容，建立用户之间的关系和互动。同时，产品能力加强联动，进一步拓展社区领域，丰富各领域内容，满足用户在社区社会性社交、周边社交的需求。三月，社区用户规模持续提升，环比十二月提升了双位数。社区的发帖人数、发帖量也快速增长。游戏、体育、动漫、校园等社区持续活跃。我们看到社区能有效提升用户的活跃度，促进用户的长期留存，这也让我们对微博在总体社交中获得新的定位和增长空间更有信心。
On social attributes, we continue to strengthen the social features of our user product by focusing on promoting scale and engagement of Weibo's core users. On relationship-based feeds, the number of feeds refreshment continues to improve from December. Benefiting from the optimization in content distribution of the relationship-based feeds, we effectively retain and engage users back to our platform by hot trends. Additionally, we continue to invest in social content enrichment, personalize the content distribution, and front-end product experience to improve the experience of user consumption and the social thickness of the relationship-based feeds. On community product, we focus on improving the product mechanism to better serve user consumption and to enable users to discover content, build relations, and interact with each other, with the communities.
At the same time, we strengthen the integration of products and operations to further expand community to more verticals, enrich vertical content, so as to better fulfill users' needs for social relations based on interest and location within the communities. In March, the number of users who use community products continued to increase, up by double digits from last December. The number of posters and posts in the community surged, and users in gaming, sport, animation, and campus continued to be engaged. We have seen that community can effectively increase user engagement and promote user intention in the long run, which boosts our confidence in Weibo's new positioning and growth potential in the market of social attributes.
在视频方面，视频号的规模和活跃仍是我们的重点，特别是针对能够提升平台流量以及社交性的领域和优质的视频号作者。我们今年在产品和运营上给予了重点的服务和扶持，提升这些作者的视频生产和互动积极性，保障他们的视频发布质量和规模，进而带动用户活跃。截至三月底，视频号开通规模超过三千万。这个季度，我们在产品上提供给视频作者更多的能促进社交互动的视频工具和玩法，提升了视频的创作性和互动性。同时，核心算法结合用户的消费特征，持续优化对优质视频作者和内容的推荐机制，给予更多的曝光机会。例如，关系流基于社交特性，优化视频号推荐。基于社交分发的优势，用户消费效率显著提升。而发现也基于热点性，推出视频热榜产品。带动视频消费的同时，也进一步强化发现热点与热门内容的消费经验。
On videos, we continue to focus on the scale and engagement of Video Accounts, especially on verticals that can drive more traffic and engagement, and also high-quality content creators. In 2022, we will provide more support on product and operations to these video content creators to encourage video generation and interaction with fans, and ensure the quantity and the quality of video content, which in turn drives user engagement. As of the end of March, the number of Video Accounts exceeded 30 million. In the first quarter, we provided video content creators with more editing tools and features to promote social interaction around video content to increase video generation and engagement. At the same time, we encourage user consumption in core information-based feed to continuously optimize the recommendation mechanism for high-quality video content creators and their content.
For example, for the relationship-based feed, we optimize the recommendation of Video Accounts based on user social relations, which significantly improve the distribution of video account and efficiency of user consumption. We also launched the Hot Video list in the discovery page, which not only stimulated video consumption, but also further strengthen the positioning of discovery page in the consumption of hot trends and popular content. On monetization, in 2022, we continue to focus on enhancing our potential and efficiency of traffic monetization and thus beefing up our overall monetization skill. Underpinned by the resilience of Weibo's brand plus performance ad offerings in key verticals. We are dedicated to expanding the marketing combo of brand plus performance ads with content operations to more industries and clients, aiming to strengthen our industry-based marketing capability as well as our marketing competitiveness.
再加上持续优化效果广告的能力，让我们从之前只能看中效果广告的游戏客户，获取到一部分新游戏发布的品牌预算。考虑到游戏板块的发布政策，我们在一季度针对于头部既有游戏的客户推出了节点营销产品和服务，更加紧密地配合客户对游戏大版本的更新、新角色的宣推等营销诉求。例如，我们与原神达成深度合作，从游戏节点、版本更新、代言人官宣到游戏品牌活动，原神所有的营销节点都在微博聚合。从公测至今，官微粉丝量已超过四百万，原神的总话题阅读量超过一百二十亿，话题讨论量超过六百万，近四百万超话粉丝长期活跃。客户社交资产在微博的不断沉淀，更会促进客户在微博加大营销节点的覆盖。
From an industry perspective, our ad revenue increased by 10% year-over-year in the first quarter, mainly benefiting from the Spring Festival and Winter Olympics, as well as our improved capability to fulfill customers brand first performance marketing needs in key industries. For example, during the Winter Olympics, we helped some Olympic sponsors to build hype in the market, featuring a combo of our ad offering such as topic, hot trends, launch screen ad, etc., to uplift their brand recognition. Leveraging hot trends of Olympic sports event and athlete endorsement. Our unique solution of hot trend marketing has earned wider recognition amongst most of the advertisers, especially the Chinese footwear and apparel brands during the two Olympic Games seasons.
As a result, we are pleased to see higher ad demand for the apparel vertical with ad revenue from this vertical growing very nicely year-over-year. Next, let me share our progress in the gaming vertical as well. Ad revenues from the gaming vertical sustained strong growth momentum with over 50% year-over-year growth in the first quarter. We primarily attribute the growth momentum to a differentiated ad playbook we developed for the gaming industry in the past two years. To elaborate, we have strengthened the synergies between sales, product and operation to amplify the distribution and discussion of new games, as well as facilitate the accumulation and activity of social assets. Coupled with our ongoing optimization in performance ad offering, we managed to capture incremental brand ad budget for new game release from a client who traditionally only value conversion results.
Considering the approval policy of the game license, we launched event based ad offering and service with top gaming clients in the first quarter to better align with client event pipeline and fulfill their marketing needs in connection with major version upgrade updates and new character promotion. A good example is the Genshin Impact. We worked closely with the game advertiser and aggregated all marketing events on Weibo, including version updates, brand ambassador official announcement, and branding events, etc. From the public test to now, the official account of Genshin Impact has accumulated over four million followers. The number of views and discussion around the major Genshin Impact topic exceeded 12 billion and 6 million respectively, with over four million long-term active fans of Genshin Impact Super Topic.
进入二季度，随着国内疫情变化和政策的调整，前两个月我们的流量和收入都表现出了良好的开局。但是三月之后，国内疫情的起伏开始影响到我们客户线下品牌活动的营销计划，也影响到微博的一部分渠道、市场推广活动。广告收入在三月受到一定影响。进入到二季度，随着更多地区的防疫措施加强，二季度的经济活动也受到了较大的影响，包括生产、物流、销售和客户的线下活动，这些影响会直接去作用于广告市场。
Undoubtedly, the first quarter has witnessed a pace in terms. In the first two months, we had pretty good start, both in terms of user traffic and financial performance. However, we have seen an inflection since March. Amidst geopolitical issues and the COVID-19 resurgence, multinational customers and offline customers start to cut back marketing spend. Some of our channel marketing campaigns were also negatively impacted. As a result, our ad revenue was also negatively impacted in March. Entering the second quarter with more regions setting up lockdown and prevention measures, various aspects of economic activities have been significantly disrupted, including production, logistics, and other offline activities, which directly weigh on the growth of the overall advertising market.
进入二季度，面临诸多市场不确定因素，我们致力于同客户一起积极面对，提升自身的竞争力，充分把握恢复后的市场机会。一方面，我们针对部分受疫情影响的客户和行业，给予了针对性的扶持政策和资源，让客户在疫情期间多使用微博的品效广告产品，增强客户对于社交媒体营销的信心，同时也能提升微博核心广告产品的利用率。另一方面，疫情期间也是我们优化产品结构，强化微博核心竞争力的机会。针对于品效广告产品线，优化产品，提升效率，加强内容营销服务，扩展客户场景，都是我们在二季度非常重要的工作，并且目前都逐步取得不错的进展，这对于我们强化广告市场竞争力至关重要。
For the second quarter, despite many market headwinds, we are dedicated to join together with our customers to navigate through the difficult times, and reinforcing our own competitive edge in the hope of capturing market opportunities post the normalization. For one thing, we offer targeted favorable policies and resources to support several customers and industries hit hard by the COVID-19, inviting customers to explore our brand plus performance ad offering so as to boost their confidence in the social media marketing, while raising the utilization rate of Weibo's core ad inventories at the same time. For another, we proactively take the window to further refine our product offering and reinforce our core competitiveness. Our major initiatives include optimizing our brand plus performance ad offerings to improve efficiency, beefing up our content marketing service, and expanding customer scenario, just to name a few.
We are making solid progress against all these initiatives as a critical move to further strengthen our competitiveness in the ad market. With that, let's turn the call over to Fei Cao for financial review.
Thank you, Gaofei, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Weibo's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Let's start with user metrics. In March 2022, Weibo's MAUs and average DAUs reached 582 million and 252 million respectively, representing a net addition of 51 million and 32 million users respectively on a year-over-year basis. We are delighted to achieve solid user growth momentum with disciplined marketing spend. Turning to financials. As a reminder, my prepared remarks will focus on non-GAAP results. All monetary amounts are in US dollar terms, and all the comparisons are on a year-on-year basis, unless otherwise noted. Now, let me walk you through our financial highlights for the first quarter of 2022. Weibo's first quarter 2022 net revenues were $484.6 million, an increase of 6%.
Operating income was $141.7 million, representing operating margin of 29%. Net income attributable to Weibo reached $132.9 million, representing a net margin of 27%. Diluted EPS was $0.56 compared to $0.57 last year. Now, let me give you more color on revenues. Weibo's advertising and marketing revenue for the first quarter 2022 reached $427.1 million, an increase of 10%. Mobile ad revenues were $401.9 million, contributing approximately 94% of total ad revenues. We had a solid start to 2022. Weibo delivered a relatively resilient ad growth in the first quarter, even though the overall advertising market was tapering off amid macro uncertainties, resurgence of COVID-19, and lockdown disruptions for the first quarter 2022.
Our leading verticals in terms of ad revenue contributions were FMCG, 3C products, and gaming. In terms of growth, the fastest-growing verticals were gaming and luxury among major ones. Despite regulatory and the macro challenges weighing on demand side, the relatively resilient performance of FMCG and 3C product sectors demonstrated that Weibo's brand plus performance ad offerings resonated greatly with customers in these sectors, and enabled them to build hype around major events, such as the Winter Olympic Games. For gaming sector, our cultivation in the content vertical as well as improvement of ad performance for the sector boded well for us to tap into higher ad wallet share of gaming sector on this side. E-commerce, entertainment, and education categories booked a descending trend due to sluggish consumption data and regulatory impact.
From ad product perspective, promoted feed continued to be the largest part, followed by social display ad, and search, and topic ad offering. Last but, as we entered mid-March and second quarter, the lingering nationwide Omicron outbreaks and subsequent restrictions and lockdown measures have significantly disrupted the advertising market. On demand side, industries with high offline exposures such as offline merchants and auto industry cut ad budget due to suspension of offline activities and disruption of production. The restriction and lockdown in major areas in China, especially Shanghai, has also negatively impacted consumption sectors such as FMCG and e-commerce, which suspended ad campaigns originally scheduled for the quarter and cut ad budget accordingly. Additionally, we also faced major sales and ad campaign execution challenges due to lockdown in Shanghai. As COVID-19 resurgence rapidly involves nationwide, and restriction and lockdown disrupt economic activities, including production, consumption, logistics, and offline activities.
Based on our current observation and our best estimate, we expect the potential impact on advertising business in the second quarter is material and even more severe than the COVID-19 impact on our business in 2020. Given the major areas impacted, duration of restriction and lockdown as well as the current macroeconomic condition, we are closely monitoring the evolving situation and will make relentless efforts to mitigate such headwinds, leveraging our diverse industry mix and broad sales network coverage nationwide, while doing our utmost to protect our employees, partners, and community. Despite near-term challenges ahead, we are encouraged to see our user and engagement metrics remain solid momentum, laying foundation for us to further tap into a wider demographics and increase monetization scale as business recovers. We remain confident in our long-term monetization opportunities that our unique value proposition and a diversified content ecosystem will unlock.
Ad revenues from Alibaba for the first quarter decreased 22% to $25.9 million, primarily attributable to its own conservative marketing strategies amid weak consumption and lockdowns, as mentioned earlier. Value-added service VAS revenues were $57.5 million in the first quarter, a decrease of 17%. The decrease of VAS revenues was mainly due to less revenue contribution from membership service and a decrease of live streaming revenues. Turning to costs and expenses. Total costs and expenses for the first quarter were $343.9 million, an increase of 7%. The increase was primarily due to, first, higher personnel-related costs. Second, step-up in content costs, mainly associated with Winter Olympic Games. Third, recognition of cultural business construction fee with the lapse of the exemption policy this year.
The increase was primarily offset by a decrease of sales and marketing expenses with disciplined channel investments and reduced offline events. Operating income in the first quarter was $141.7 million, an increase of 3%, representing operating margin of 29%, exceeding our expectations as we continued to effectively balance growth and margin performance amid uncertainties. Turning to income tax. Under GAAP measure, income tax expense for the first quarter was $11.7 million, compared to $14.9 million last year. Net income attributable to Weibo in the first quarter was $132.9 million, representing a net margin of 27% compared to 28% last year. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow item.
As of March 31, 2022, Weibo's cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled $3.3 billion, compared to $3.1 billion as of December 31, 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, cash provided by operating activities was $248.6 million. Capital expenditures totaled $8.5 million. Amortization and amortization expenses amounted to $15 million. With that, let me now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you.
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 answer roster. Once again, that's star one for questions. Your first question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citi. Please ask your question.
Hi, thank you.
Thanks for taking my question. My question is related to the COVID impact in the second quarter. If management can give a little bit more detail or the color in terms of the direction that we see in April and May, what kind of the magnitude of the decline that we are seeing for the online ad budgets? And what is our expectation for June and also, you know, into the second half of this year? Which industry vertical actually seeing a bigger scale back in terms of their spending the past few months? And then which industries vertical that you think will actually see a bigger rebound once this reopening is actually happening? Thank you.
进入三月中旬和二季度，我们大家也看到国内的疫情，以及很多区域的防疫措施的加强，对整个我们客户的这种线下的营销活动都带来比较大的影响。那这些因素毫无疑问会影响到我们广告的需求端。
Okay. Thank you for this question. First of all, I would like to talk to you about the situation since Q2 because of COVID. You can see that if we're talking about mid-March as well as the Q2 in China due to the COVID, we have been seeing the escalation of the control policies due to COVID here in China. This is impacting a lot of marketing campaigns offline of our customers as well as those ad budget as well.
从广告投放的目的来看的话，我们自身的效果广告，比如说我们信息流广告这部分呢，Q2的趋势其实还是比较稳健的，受到的疫情的影响比较小，当然价格方面会有一些下降。但是品牌广告方面，因为很多很重要的客户，包括代理商其实都集中在华东的地区。那上海这个疫情其实对于客户的预算决策，尤其是销售执行，目前来看还是带来了非常明显的影响。
Also talking about the different ads, for example, the performance ads, we can see that especially the information flow ads, this capture quite stable in terms of the volume. However, pricing-wise this has been a little bit reduced. Second of all, talking about those brand advertisements, so you can see that because majority of the agents are located in East China. I think that in terms of the budget and this has been impacted due to the COVID.
从三月份看，大家看到疫情，其实我们三月份的下半月，整个客户的预定就开始出现下降。那四月份的话，整个华东的因为物流的影响，包括很多客户的销售执行、活动执行都暂停了。所以说四月份其实我们的品牌的需求是下降比较多的。那五月份，五月份现在看呢，就是原计划，原来我们看到的五月份呢恢复是比较快的，五月份几乎恢复到了三月份的水平。那我们原来以为到六月份基本上就可以全部恢复了。但是我们会看到，随着北京的疫情又开始有一些波动，同时上海的这个目前看其实到六月一号才刚刚放开，所以我们现在对于六月份的这个计划还是有比较大的不确定性，就是没有我们之前在五月份的时候预估的那么乐观吧。所以说我们还是得重点关注一个，因为从效果广告来看的话呢，我们会看到市场里面发个财报的，其实效果广告确实影响比较小，但是品牌客户随着客户的复工之后，还需要在代理商啊，包括他的制作方啊，包括客户的营销活动的执行，还需要一个阶段去恢复，所以说它恢复会比效果广告会更慢一些。
You know, talking about the situation here, you know, since late March, we have been seeing a driving down trend in terms of the booking. Talking about April, because of the impact to the logistics as well as the execution of a lot of the projects in East China, we have been seeing a driven down trend of the brand advertisement. Talking about May, we used to believe that it will recover very soon, and actually it was recovered very well to the level of March. However, still also in after June originally we thought that it will be fully recovered. However, because of another you know COVID broke out in Beijing area, we've been seeing some kind of fluctuation of our performance there. Because Shanghai just resumed works and also all the kind of lifestyles since first of June.
There is a lot of uncertainty here in terms of Shanghai and also the performance in the second half. We are not going to be as optimistic as we used to be in May. You know, talking about the effectiveness or the performance ad, the impact to that particular category will be the minimized. Talking about the brand customers, because they have a whole process which is going to be followed if they want to you know resume the kind of budget and also resume their advertisements in terms of the budget allocation and then the marketing plans as well as the execution, etc. We expect that the brand customers are going to recover slower than the performance.
从行业来看的话，其实刚才Simon也讲过，受疫情影响最小的现在看是游戏行业，所以二季度应该还是也会保持着不错的增长。但是五月份受疫情影响，原计划五月份其实没有新的版号发布，那对游戏会有一定的负向影响，但是我们觉得整体来看的话还是会保持增长的。
Got it. Also talking about industrial verticals. First of all, we believe that the gaming industry has been least impacted and also in Q2 there is a kind of upward trend or going upwards. Also in May, of course, we had a little bit impact because of the unavailability of the gaming license, but still you know that particular impact could be controlled.
另外就是我们整个收入里面大概50%以上的品类，像FMCG、奢侈品和汽车这些行业，其实虽然二季度受影响，我们看四五月份受影响比较大，但我们会看随着疫情的恢复，只要疫情稍微好转，像五月份就会反弹得比较快。所以说我们认为这些行业从现在客户的计划来看的话，我们觉得疫情过去之后，当客户的营销活动可以正常开展之后，疫情的预算的恢复是比较快的，包括汽车，虽然因为北京车展取消影响了一部分预算。
Also because 50% of our businesses are focusing on FMCG luxury products as well as the automotive industry. You can see that these three verticals, they've been impacted heavily in April because of COVID. However, when there was a little bit recovery of the control and also containment of the COVID in May, we've seen a very quick and also robust rebound of these three verticals. That is to say that in the future, if the COVID could be better contained, we're going to see, for example, more marketing campaigns organized by the customers in those categories or those verticals. We're going to see a very good recovery and rebound of their budget to us.
Of course, that in Beijing, we've got cancellation of the auto show, and this does or did impact the budget allocation. However, this brought with us more opportunities to the future because you know, most of the OEMs are now moving their publish and also the launch event of their new models from offline to online. This is exactly the same that we experienced in 2020 in terms of the mobile and also the smartphone industry, right? A lot of, you know, people move up their campaign from offline to online. This is going to give us more confidence for us to see a very good increase of the budget, especially for the automotive industry.
另外就是我们会看到有些行业还是会受疫情的影响，可能会延伸到三季度或者更长的时间，比如线下的一些消费行业，像医美啊，这些O2O的客户。那毫无疑问，其实我们认为，即使上海的疫情过去，其实这种线下的消费还是会有一定的负向影响。然后另外就是手机行业，我们会看到今年大家可能报告手机的销量其实跌得还是比较多的，那这部分的话，二季度其实还是会受到一定的影响。但是手机行业，其实我们的客户同时来讲也是我们重点的渠道。那手机的销量下降虽然会影响我们的广告的投放的预算，但是同时在我们成本支出方面，其实也能节省下来不少的市场营销的费用。所以说这整体来看的话，对公司的利润的影响并不大。
Okay. I would like to say that, you know, talking about the other verticals, especially those offline activity oriented industries, for example, the aesthetic medicine and also O2O customers, they will also receive the impact after Q3 even. Even if now we've got a reopening of Shanghai, still there will be a little bit impact. Also talking about the mobile or smartphone industry, we also have experienced a driven down of the sales of this particular industry vertical. Of course, in Q2, there wasn't a big impact to the smartphone industry. However, we really believe that in the future this is going to be impacted negatively.
Of course, if we're talking about the smartphone, this is not only the customer that we have, but also this should be regarded as the channel for us to do the marketing and also ads. In terms of the expenses saving and fee saving, this actually has brought with us a positive impact. If we are talking about the offsetting of these two parts, we are not seeing a big impact to our profit margin.
从整体来看的话，一季度其实影响我们差不多大半个月，但是二季度现在看，我们原来会认为影响两个月，或者一个半月，但是现在看影响的时间可能会比较长，因为您看上海刚刚解封，北京很多区都还在居家办公，所以说还是会影响。而且品牌客户的投放，相对来讲这个链条比纯效果还是要更长的，它需要代理商和制作公司的合作和配合。所以说我们觉得二季度其实这个恢复比我们原来预想的会要慢一些，原来我们以为六月份就能全面恢复的。对，主要就这些。
Also lastly, I would like to say that, you know, in Q1 of this year, we had about one and a half months of the impact. Also in Q2, the impact would have been lasting for about one and a half months to two months. Also, I think that this particular impact is larger than our expectation because, you know, Shanghai just reopened itself on 1st of June, and also in Beijing, there are still certain areas that are having people working from home still. Also because, you know, talking about the brand customers, they're having a longer, you know, process to follow to restart and also reboot their business. Also this requires close collaboration between publishers and also agents. We really think that, you know, we are going to have a slower recovery of our business than our expectation in June and also the second half.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Management are taking my questions. I have a question regarding our cost control and the trend in operating expenses in 2022. On that front, how should we think about our margin outlook in the remainder of the year? Thank you.
Okay. First of all, talking about the cost control. First of all, we are having a stricter control and also a stricter policy in terms of the ROI and also keeping it quite conservative in terms of the placement among different channels and also the purchasing of the feeds, for example. You know, talking about Q1 however, still we had you know, stricter rules on the appraisal of ROI. Also if the channel, for example, could not provide with us the returns as required within three months or six months, we are going to cancel collaboration with that channel. As a result, we have been seeing a quite good performance in terms of margin in Q1.
Second of all, you know, especially in Q1, we are talking about the decreasing of the tax related to the cultural business construction fee by 1.5%. Second point is about the activity-related expenses. Due to the COVID, we could not organize a lot of activities as planned. This has, you know, saved some of the costs relating to the activities and also campaigns. However, those kind of activities are also profit-making. This did, you know, impact our revenue at the same time. Okay.
Okay. Maybe I can add some color on the margin. In terms of margin as a result of better monetization, larger business scale and higher operating leverage, we achieved a good profit margin in first quarter and last year. Historically, Weibo always maintain healthy margin level. Heading into the second half of 2022, as Gaofei mentioned earlier, we expect a negative impact on advertising business is material. Amid the difficult market environment and the combined effects of a number of other factors such as expiration of certain tax incentives, the cultural business construction fee will be reinstated and we have investments in some sports IP such as Beijing Winter Olympics and NBA. We do expect a decline in operating margin compared to last year.
The management has reached a consensus that the highest priority this year is to optimize our cost structure with more disciplined channel investment and other spending strategy. Weibo, as you know, Weibo has always maintained a conservative style. Our goal is improving operating efficiency with stricter ROI assessment to control our overall spending, and striving for higher operating leverage to mitigate the margin decline as much as possible and ultimately keep our healthy financial metrics. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Next question comes from Tian Hou from T.H. Capital. Please ask your question.
Uh,
这个五亿多了，也很多了嘛，对吧？那看看我们最终会到一个什么样的水平。那么这个在实际上在用户上更多的是一个存量上的一个竞争和争取。所以在今年呢，公司在获客上有什么样的一个计划？那么在获客之后呢，就是还有一个就是客户的这种活跃性的提高，如何通过更多的这种内容的运营，让客户的留存和活跃性进一步的提高，这就是关于客户的一个问题。谢谢曹辉总。那我翻译一下吧。It's about the user, so what is the eventual goal for the company to accomplish regarding the total number of the MAU, DAUs.
What's the company's plan in 2022 to acquire new users in China? How to use content operation to improve user retentions and user activity level on the platform. Thank you. JJ Yang.
第一个问题，其实我们在，在我们当年上市的时候，包括去年在香港二次路演的时候，我都回答过这个问题，就是如果微博不做任何视频类的业务，其实从我们上市的时候我们看到的经验值来讲，这种social media的平台大概可以做到social network平台用户的60%，因为在美国就是大约是这样一个比例，就是当年2013年的时候。那当然会看到我们的微博其实跟Twitter不一样，我们不管在图片方面还是视频方面，其实我们还是会做了更多相对来讲复杂的工作，包括一些更多的业务方面的拓展。那我们会看到，在视频方面来讲的话呢，这个市场其实比看到的社交媒体的领域会更纯粹的社交图文类的媒体领域会更大。所以这也是我们过去几年一直坚持在视频方面来讲的话，虽然面临着激烈的市场竞争，但是我们还是会加大很大投入的原因。我认为只有在这个市场里面获得一些之地，对于我们拓展我们用户的上限才会有更加直接的帮助。那目前视频的流量也占到我们整个微博流量的三分之一，那我也觉得这方面也是我们去未来去拓展我们用户规模上限的很重要的一个战略的布局。对，Paul。
I think this question has been answered, you know, previously while we were listing our company and also did the secondary road show in Hong Kong last year. We were saying that if we were not operating any video related content and also strategies, and then the social media or the upper limit of the social media will be only 60% of that of the social network. That was about 2013. However, time is different, right? We are now emphasizing a lot on the differentiation points between Weibo and also Twitter and also the other pure social media. We have been doing more complicated works and also more works as well in terms of our business operation or business development, especially we're talking about video.
You know, in terms of the video, the impact is actually going to be bigger than the social media and also the business driving forces are going to be more as well than the social media only. That's why that even if we've had a lot of headwinds as well as the market competition in the video content area, we're still trying to invest as many as possible. Even so, we believe that when we have a very key positioning and also important positioning in the video area, and then we are going to further uplift the upper limit of the number of users and also the others. Now in terms of the total traffic and data, the video part accounting for about one third of the total traffic now we have.
This is extremely very important for us to uplift further the upper limit. Okay.
另外，其实如果您看的话，这其实公司的商业价值其实跟DAU、MAU有一定的相关性，但是更相关的还是跟用户的活跃。我们在一季度其实流量也是达到了去年大概在文娱行业被整改之前的峰值的流量，就用户的活跃度方面，那这个其实跟公司的收入和粘性会更，和用户的粘性会更相关一些。那整个来看的话，也就是说我们核心还是把微博的特点，也就是社交媒体和我们的媒体热点这两个特点能够发挥得更好，比我们的所有的竞品能够做得更好。这是我们觉得我们整个流量增长的核心。那从一季度情况来看的话，其实文娱行业还没有完全恢复。去年我就说过，这个恢复可能至少要到下半年，那其实我们更多的还是靠在热点啊、社交啊、社区方面的这种投入，让我们更多的去补上了去年上半年受整个行业影响带来的下降，带来用户活跃度的下降。所以说我觉得从公司角度考虑更多的，其实我们平时来讲关注MAU、DAU并不是我们工作的主要，更多的还是看我们给用户的服务的粘性，用户在微博上面的活跃度，用户在微博上面的互动性，这些其实才是决定这个公司的这种生命力，包括能够长期存在的最核心的点。谢谢。
Also lastly, I would like to say that, you know, talking about the business value of a company, this does not only related to the DAU and also MAU number, but I think it's more relevant to the activity of the users. Especially, you know, in Q1, we've been saying that, you know, our total traffic has been reaching the kind of upper limit or the kind of a peak level before any reconciliation and also some ratification conducted to the entertainment industry, right? That because you know, activity was all about the stickiness of the users. Also we really believe that with a business model of Weibo combining social media together with the media, hot trends, for example, this is going to be our key strategy to be sustainable in the future.
In Q1, because of the rectification conducted to the entertainment industry, we already said that the entertainment industry will not be recovered until the second half, and this is still the case right now. That's why we've been doing a lot of other works.
For example, the launch of hot trends and super topics as well as the community, etc. Those businesses are now offsetting the declined activity that we experienced because of that change happened to the entertainment industry. As a result, we are saying that, you know, MAUs and also DAUs are important, but this is not the only thing that we are focusing, but we are focusing more on the provision of better quality services to users and also enhance the stickiness of users and enhance the activity of users and interactivity of the users as well. These strategies are going to be the long term strategy and also making us sustainable in the future.
All right. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I'll now hand the call back to Ms. Sandra Zhang for closing remarks.
Thanks operator, and thank you all for joining us. This concludes our conference call. We'll see you next quarter.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.