In the early development stage of Taobao, Alibaba was He Tuber in urgent need of cooperation with a large number of channels and worked together to acquire users, so it adopted an open mind towards various Taobao cooperation channels.

However, as the scale of Taobao users has developed to a certain stage, the effect of rebate channels in attracting new users has weakened, and on the contrary, it has eroded the profits of old Taobao users. Therefore, Alibaba first took advantage of rebate channels and began to adjust rebate channel policies, resulting in the bonus period of rebate channels. The tide receded quickly, and some remaining players began to transform.

Ali’s second attack was on vertical content shopping guide websites. In addition, the reason why the capital market was optimistic about this type of model at the time was because of its potential to evolve from a vertical category to a comprehensive e-commerce platform. Therefore, Ali naturally could not tolerate Mogujie and Mogujie. The existence of platforms like Meilishuo eventually led to Meilishuo and Mogujie transforming from traffic channels to self-operated e-commerce.

Alibaba’s third move, starting from October 2013, was to target shopping guide websites such as Zhe800. By limiting traffic weights and not counting sellers’ sales weights, this channel gradually led to the decline of these channels.

Although Alibaba is open, it is only partially open based on its own security; that is to say, in terms of traffic strategy, Alibaba pursues a traffic grassland strategy rather than a traffic forest. This strategic positioning has created Alibaba’s e-commerce empire, but it is also one of the fundamental reasons why it cannot seize the opportunities of decentralized traffic.

Alibaba is eager for traffic, but is still unwilling to help traffic channels grow.

If you want to marry a wife but don't want to buy a house, what is said to be successful is ruined.

The same mentality also appeared in JD.com. Liu Qiangdong once stopped promoting in the CPS channel, but later found that nearly 10% of the sales gap could not be filled, and the competitive CPS only resumed after it climbed rapidly.

This kind of short-term abnormal cooperation will not last long; therefore, after Ali’s policy adjustment, various channels can only either settle for mediocrity and become a channel that cannot grow without getting fat, or they can only seek transformation.

This also shows that if the business model is grafted on the basis of the platform ecology, if it cannot bring incremental growth to the platform, or does not meet the strategic direction and interest needs of the platform itself, it will not be successful in the long term.

The Pinduoduo team, when working on Alibaba’s e-commerce agent operation project in the early days, was never able to achieve the ideal goal Huang Zheng had in mind. The fundamental reason is this - because the e-commerce agent operation is grabbing the business of Alibaba’s mother, and can only eat the leftovers of the platform. .

From 2015 to 2017, Taobao customers ushered in the second wave of growth peak, mainly promoting single product coupons in QQ groups and WeChat groups. A large number of channels used group control robots and red envelope fission to quickly attract groups and violently issue coupons. Issue orders and promote through such high-conversion coupons.

For the first time in the private community, there are truly differentiated interests; and for the first time, due to the growth in promotion scale, private traffic channels have begun to generate a large number of tool service providers and industrial division of labor.

For example, on the tool side, there are group control tools and order issuing software that solve distribution efficiency problems, such as Benefit Pig, Huli, Lalan Taoke Assistant, Collection Group, etc.;

On the product selection and content side, we provide alliances for collection groups, provide DaTaoke and Haodianku for collection sites, and act as investment leaders for upstream product investment and traffic integration. These will serve as private domain tools in the subsequent WeChat private domain ecosystem. The birth of service providers laid the foundation.

At the same time, the emergence of private domain traffic supply chain, tools, and operational division of labor has also further lowered the threshold for Taobao's participation, and the number of Taobao's users has continued to grow during this stage.

The CPS industry is certainly not a one-man show for the Taobao Alliance. After 2010, JD.com, Suning, Dangdang, Vipshop, Pinduoduo, and even the belated Meituan E-commerce have launched their own CPS alliance platforms with many models. Similar to the Taobao Alliance, a CPS registration portal is built for merchants in the e-commerce platform, and the traffic side connects various institutions to promote customers and investment promotion team leaders, and subordinate CPS distribution promoters.

The proportion of CPS in various e-commerce scales is relatively similar. Because Taobao Alliance developed earlier and is backed by the Alibaba platform, it has a scale of 100 billion and is still the benchmark in the CPS industry. However, in recent years, because Alibaba itself has been impacted by the strength of new e-commerce companies, the Taobao alliance has also declined. Especially after 2020, the Taobao Alliance is also working hard to make various efforts. However, the general trend is that new CPS traffic is still pouring into WeChat private domain, Douyin Selected Alliance, etc.

Taobao Alliance's share in the traditional e-commerce CPS field is still greater than that of other e-commerce platforms combined. Due to the characteristics of JD.com’s self-operated platform, competitive products have never been able to meet channel requirements in terms of commissions, so they can only start with POP merchants. However, POP merchants want to make profits when they enter JD.com, and they do not receive the same traffic support as self-operated products, so they are naturally unwilling to promote them like they do on the Alibaba platform.