Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Phoenix New Media's third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now I'd like to hand the conference over to Ms. Muzi Guo from Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Welcome to Phoenix New Media's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm joined here today by our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Shuang Liu, and our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Edward Lu. On today's call, management will first provide a review of the quarterly results and then conduct a Q&A session. The third quarter 2022 financial results and webcast of this conference call are available on our website at ir.ifeng.com. A replay of the call will be available on the website in a few hours. Before we move on to the prepared remarks, let's refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which applies to this call as we will make forward-looking statements. Finally, please know that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in RMB. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Shuang Liu, our Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, Muzi Guo. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. The third quarter of 2022 remained a challenging one for our ad business due to weak advertising demand caused by the macroeconomic environment and COVID outbreaks. While we were seizing our monetization opportunities, we continued to build our brand differentiations through content production and distribution, and elevate our media influence in various industries and communities, especially through industry summits and forums. Moreover, we made significant updates to our products to better connect our users to our content. During this quarter, we continued to demonstrate our media expertise and deliver in-depth news to our users across all platforms.
We covered major national and foreign news stories such as the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the tension in the Taiwan Strait, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II of the U.K., and assassination of the former prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe. We stay at the top of the game of running hot topics. Take the heightened tension in the Taiwan Strait as an example. We were the fastest news app sending push notifications on more than 75% of the key updates of the event, leading to high user reach and click-through rates. Once the push notification is opened and read, our users are then directed to other related highlights and contextualized contents.
Besides Pelosi's live flight tracker, we were also one of the first media live streaming her landing at Taiwan airport, following up by live interviews of field experts in military affairs and international relations, who provided their professional opinions and shared their interpretation of the situation. Our hot topics keep users up to date throughout the twists and turns of the events. Besides a 10% increase in the click-through rate and 20% increase in the average time spent year-over-year for our news app, our news accounts on third-party platforms also gained substantial popularity. We gained 3 million new followers during the quarter, Weixin official accounts. Weixin video accounts, Douyin and Kuaishou, with 65 articles generating over 100,000 reads and over 100 videos generating over 1 million views. We continue to build our media influence and new partnerships through events.
In July, we held the first ever Phoenix Women's Forum, raising women's voices and promoting gender equality and presented the Women of Influence Awards, where we celebrated the most accomplished women role models. Also, in September, we collaborated with Phoenix TV and held the Phoenix Greater Bay Area Economic Forum. Over 50 senior officials, including John Lee Ka-chiu, Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and experts and entrepreneurs gathered together to exchange ideas and look for solutions and opportunities for the economic development of the Greater Bay Area and China as a whole. Both events generated substantial publicity with nearly 100 media outlets covering the events. The hashtag topics and the media clips of the events were widely reposted on social platforms. Our original video series, Phoenix Global Observer, 全球观察团, has consistently proven its commercial value.
The series is collaborating with journalists and influencers located in 14 countries over five continents and employs domestic and overseas social media as main distribution channels, with an accumulated 20 million followers across all channels. As Chinese brands continue their efforts to grow their business and brand overseas, global insight became an effective marketing solution for them to increase their international exposure. During the quarter, we collaborated with one of the major electric vehicle brands and fueled their new models to rolling out the production line in Indonesia, showcasing their innovative technology and product development. With our global resources for creators and distribution channels, we're becoming a reliable partner for Chinese brands to build strong, resilient, and truly global brands. We also refine our other original content products, such as the micro-documentary series, The Journey. The series is presented in an authentic storytelling style and makes a strong personal connection.
The four episodes released in the quarter were viewed by nearly 40 million users across the Internet and widely shared on social media platforms. From a palliative care doctors' daily work, caring for people living with serious illness, to a young man from a remote village changing his life through education, the series tells stories about affection, courage, resilience, dedication, and wisdom, all of which are greatly valued by our general audience and by which brands would also like to be endorsed. This type of content products not only enhance our content offering, but also create long-term value. Moving on to our news app product, we roll out several upgrades to improve our interactive features. Specifically, we focus on increasing user engagement by improving the comment feature, by allowing users to collect badges through leaving intriguing comments. Users are more motivated to leave their opinions under the articles.
Comments can also be quoted by other users and displayed as dialogue, which stimulates more discussion and debates. As a result, we have seen the number of comments increase by 31%. Also, we refine our algorithm to improve the distribution of video content. Upon analyzing users' viewing history, personal preferences and engagement, we are able to refine their profile based on their interests, standpoints, level of education, and so on. Distribute videos personalized to each user profile. Aside from delivering information, we increase the supply of the content that fulfill our users' interests and needs for entertainment. The click-through rate of video content has increased by 30% year-over-year. With these joint efforts, the average time spent per user increased by 20%. Our next day and thirty-day retention increased by 43% and 44%, respectively.
Next, I'd like to move on to our progress in revenue diversification. We continue to develop our online reading segment during the quarter. We collaborated with online reading platforms to monetize our premium IP content and further expanded our IP library of premium content to lay the groundwork for developing growth drivers of new revenue. For our real estate vertical, although there have been numerous stimulus policies for resale homes, new home sales and thus marketing campaigns remain stagnant. Our team vigorously promoted innovative solutions to our clients and further optimize their cost bases. Meanwhile, we focused on growing our B2B influence through industry collaborations and content offerings. We formed the first ESG alliance with the top five ESG data platforms.
Together, we are going to refine the ESG rating system for real estate developers, complement the company profiles, and drive healthy and sustainable growth for the industry. As for e-commerce, product sales in the health and wellness category continue to grow as we added a collection of imported food supplements to our product selection. Our customer service has extended to WeChat groups where new product information and coupons are regularly shared with our loyal repeat customers, and their needs are properly attended to, which substantially increase the rate of repurchase. Phoenix Artworks, our digital collection platform, launched last quarter, released a collection featuring the virtual character, Jiuli, a famous landmark in celebration of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.
Combining Jiuli's oriental style modern girl image and the Forbidden City, Taipei 101, Tokyo Tower, and so on, the collection send holiday wishes to people all over the world. Going forward, as virtual characters emerge as a new trend in digital marketing, Jiuli will complement our innovative marketing solutions and feature events to assist our advertising clients reach more younger audiences. In summary, despite the macro headwinds, we remain committed to strengthening our brand influence through breaking news coverage and organizing events, while continue to rearrange our content offerings and upgrade our products. At the same time, we're working to align resources to profit, sharpening focus on clear set of priorities. Going forward, we will certainly remain prudent in evaluating business initiatives, aligning our business with shifting industry dynamics, and elevating our brand influences through consistent delivery of content with high value.
With that, I will now pass the call on to our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Edward Lu, to provide a closer look into our quarterly financials.
Thank you, Sean, and hello, everyone. I will now walk you through our financial performance for the third quarter of 2022. All figures mentioned will be in RMB. Our total revenues were CNY 194.8 million as compared to CNY 244.6 million in the same period of last year. To elaborate, net advertising revenues were CNY 172.4 million, compared to CNY 216.6 million in the same period of last year. The decrease was mainly due to the reduction in advertising spending of advertisers in certain industries, the intensified industry-wide competition, and the negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak in certain regions in China in the third quarter. Paid services revenues were CNY 22.4 million, compared to CNY 28 million in the same period of last year.
The decrease was mainly due to the reduction in the content spending of certain customers. Loss from operations in the third quarter of 2022 was CNY 36.5 million, compared to CNY 206.3 million in the same period of last year. This is mainly because the company recognized CNY 114.4 million of allowance for credit losses in the third quarter of 2021, relating to the entire amount of accounts receivable and the notes receivable from Evergrande Group, and it did not recognize such loss in the third quarter of 2022. In addition, the decrease was also attributable to the strict cost control measures implemented. Net income attributable to ifeng was CNY 24.3 million, compared to net loss of CNY 134 million in the same period of last year. Moving on to our balance sheet.
As of September 30, 2022, the company's cash and cash equivalents, term deposits, short-term investments and restricted cash were RMB 1.13 billion, or approximately $139.4 million. Finally, I'd like to provide our business outlook for the fourth quarter of 2022. We are forecasting total revenues to be between RMB 203.2 million and RMB 223.2 million. For net advertising revenues, we are forecasting between RMB 187.8 million and RMB 202.8 million. For paid service revenues, we are forecasting between RMB 15.4 million and RMB 20.4 million. This forecast reflects our current and preliminary view, which are subject to change and substantial uncertainties. In summary, our top line came under increased pressure this quarter due to the current macro headwinds.
While we remain dedicated to expanding our media presence and diversifying our revenue stream, we are working to align resources to profit, sharpening focus on a clear set of priorities. As such, we believe that our continuous endeavors will sustain us through this adversity and prepare us to achieve a better margin recovery in the future. This concludes the prepared portion of our call. We are now ready for questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Once again, it's star one one for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Shiru Jiang from 86Research. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Good morning, management. Thank you for taking my question. I have one question regarding your ad business. During the recent quarters, we've seen a slowdown in ad amount while advertisers are cautious with their spending. I'm wondering what sets the company apart from other platforms that can help you stay competitive in the market? Thank you.
Morning, Shiru. This is Edward speaking. Thank you for the question. Actually, we do face a lot of challenges. For brand advertising, the value of premium and the differentiated content and the media endorsement is irreplaceable. These are our key strength, and we never stop trying to increase our competitiveness in this area. First of all, breaking news coverage and curation of hot topics have always been our key strength. This bring us high user traffic and especially high user engagement, which is essential to effective marketing. News and information often carry significant implications of the development of the society and international dynamic. Brands seek to be associated with these topics to elevate the exposure to a greater audience base.
Our advantage also lies in creating content that resonates with users. Through our content, advertisers establish connections with their target customers and associate their brands with universal values such as courage, resilience, persistence, and love. The mini-documentary we mentioned earlier, The Journey, is an excellent example of this type of content marketing. It conveys values shared by our audience and brands alike. We are committed to provide comprehensive marketing solutions to our key account clients. We are tailoring to middle to small-sized advertisers with creative and combining content marketing solutions, which are in general higher in gross margin. Our brand differentiation also help us to reach new market. For example, a growing number of Chinese enterprises are extending their business overseas.
As they tap into a foreign market, they often need a complete different marketing strategy to build their brands abroad. With our contracted things journalists and KOLs all over the world, and our global network of resources and allies, we can promote Chinese brands and the culture more effectively from a global perspective. We are also able to carry out marketing execution overseas under the pandemic. Actually, very few media has this kind of ability in the market. Another important shift in advertisers' demand is that they now spend a large portion of their budget on social media and emphasize on precision marketing instead of spending you know all of their budgets on mainstream media marketing campaigns. In light of these changes I have mentioned above, we must break through the barriers of media.
We have accumulated a large user base over 130 million on third-party platforms, including Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili, et cetera. The development and monetization of this account has become one of our strategic priorities. We have laid out a detailed action plan for our operation on third-party platforms. Our team structure and resources are also aligned to the monetization target for this account. I believe with this effort, we will stay competitive and continue to bring unique values to our clients. I hope I have answered your question.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Right. Thank you for your question. Our next question comes from the line of Alice Tang from First Shanghai. Please ask your question, Alice.
Good morning, management. Thank you for taking my question. My question is regarding the balance sheet cash item. Can you give us an update on how the cash will be used since the company still have a fair amount of cash? Thank you.
Hi, Alice. Thank you for the question. Yes, you are right. Currently, we still have more than CNY 1 billion in cash. With such sufficient reserves, we are now in a very strong position to face the ever-changing macro environment. At this point, it's very crucial for us to manage our existing capital cautiously. We have set a very strict goal to bring down cash burn by focusing on returning to profitability and facilitating a faster turnaround of our accounts receivable. The business is only sustainable if it can generate healthy cash flows from operations. Another way to reach that goal is to optimize our cost structure and increase operating efficiency. Our cost management efforts during the first half of the year have paid off.
During this quarter, our sales and marketing expenses decreased by 22% year-over-year, and our G&A expenses also decreased substantially. Overall, we will continue to manage our operation and cash position with caution while striving to achieve profit and positive operating cash flow. Thank you, Alice.
Thank you, Edward.
Right. Thank you. Now that was our final question, so I'll hand back to management team for closing remarks.
Thank you. We have come to the end of our Q&A session and our conference call. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. Thank you for joining us today on this call. Have a nice day. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.