How Can Brand Marketing Evolve Into Business Operations? Kuaishou Offers Clear Solutions

Although competition for traffic between platforms continues to intensify, Kuaishou has still delivered impressive operational results: in the third quarter of this year, the platform’s total revenue reached 35.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.2%. Among this, online marketing service revenue was 20.102 billion yuan, up 14.0% year-on-year, and operating profit reached 5.3 billion yuan, a remarkable 69.9% year-on-year growth.Even more impressive, Kuaishou achieved strong growth on both content and transaction fronts. On one hand, DAU rose to 416 million, with total user time and engagement depth increasing in tandem, driven by coordinated optimization in content supply, creator ecosystem, and precise recommendations. On the other hand, the general merchandise shelf share exceeded 32%, indicating that structural improvements in matching products with users are continuously releasing operational benefits.Traditionally, content platforms were considered suitable for branding, but quantifying final business results has always been challenging, with the refinement of process details even more difficult. After a year of development, at the recent Kuaishou Magnetic Engine Brand Marketing Conference, Kuaishou outlined its new 2026 approach to brand marketing: moving from mere “exposure” to full-scale business operations with measurable efficiency gains.Signal Linkage: Revealing Efficient Operational Chains.“

In the evolving content ecosystem, e-commerce ecosystem, and with new technologies, we now have a solid foundation to build marketing capabilities and a better environment for marketing,” summarized Zhang Mengbei, head of Kuaishou Magnetic Engine Marketing and Magnetic Star Business.Data shows that Kuaishou is one of the platforms most qualified to talk about marketing efficiency. For brand merchants, product listings increased 87% year-on-year, live-streaming duration grew 11%, live interaction rose 8%, and ARPU (average revenue per user) increased 17%. Given that most platforms no longer disclose detailed operational data, these figures are particularly valuable.So, how has Kuaishou achieved growth across multiple dimensions? One key term repeatedly mentioned at the conference was “signal linkage.” Signal linkage structures the two core questions of product seeding: “who to seed” and “through which path to seed.”In Kuaishou’s ecosystem, the user journey is far more multidimensional than commonly perceived:Short-path conversions: Users are instantly stimulated by short videos and convert through live streams.Long-path conversions: Users compare, explore review videos, and return to complete purchases in the mall.“

Search A → Buy B” conversions: Users initially seek product A but are naturally guided to a better-matching product B through content and product relevance.Behavior along these paths is converted into stable signals and continuously accumulated and updated throughout the user lifecycle. This means that every time a brand seeds content on Kuaishou, users return to search pages, product shelves, or content streams in various ways, creating a sustainable loop of reach and reconversion, forming a data-proven efficient seed-to-revenue chain.In other words, every seeding action is not one-off, but contributes to a compoundable user pool for the future. Exposure is only a means; building assets is the ultimate goal. This explains why more brands see Kuaishou as a primary operational platform—it not only increases brand visibility but also reactivates users at the right time and place for repeat transactions.A More Tangible Brand Marketing Methodology.Traditionally, brand marketing meant mainly “building awareness”. Platforms measured exposure, CPM, and CTR, evaluating reach and efficiency. The basic logic for over a decade was: amplify the voice first, business conversion is secondary.However, this shallow metric-based approach is visible but hard to optimize, builds awareness but not business, and leaves a quantification gap between brand and business.

After upgrading its marketing science strategy, Kuaishou links “brand marketing” directly with “brand business”. Brand marketing now:Directly contributes to GMV.Builds repeatable user assets.“We aim for 2026 brand marketing to deliver direct GMV along with long-term user assets,” said Liu Xiaowei, head of Kuaishou Magnetic Engine Brand Data Products.The first step is to link dispersed behavioral signals. After signal linkage, brand ad products like Pinju reach broader audiences, while marketing science and AI parse these seeding users, establishing accurate user–product–category–content relationships. Transaction platforms then leverage these signals for distribution and bidding, converting brand investments into operational factors with lasting impact.Put simply, it’s a “tagging and precision push” loop:Reach users through brand ads (breaking boundaries).Tag new users using AI and data analytics (understand who they are, their preferences).Push content or ads based on tags (signal activation).This quantifies brand advertising effects and directly promotes subsequent transactions.For example, during Double 11, Hanshu planned across multiple product lines and user groups:Defined GMV targets.Allocated budgets by user segment.Coordinated resources.The result: GMV exceeded expectations, and core product lines ranked first in the industry.

Cosmetics brand Juduo applied similar strategies, leveraging Kuaishou’s operational chain to synchronize seeding data and transaction signals, leading to high conversion and ROI across multiple SKUs.Brand Marketing as a Compoundable Growth Curve.Kuaishou has redefined brand marketing from “raising awareness” to measurable, optimizable, and sustainable brand business. Brands can now see both awareness and transaction growth in the same ecosystem, moving from “spending to buy attention” to “spending to drive business.”Consequently, in 2025, Kuaishou accelerated brand marketing growth:Brand contract ad spend grew for four consecutive quarters.Content retargeting advertisers increased 210% year-on-year.Good Resources + Good Ecosystem + Good Tools Drive Marketing Execution.Methodology alone isn’t enough; resources, ecosystem, and tools are essential. For example, during the Year of the Horse Spring Festival, Kuaishou provided brands with marketing resources enriched with festive engagement:Low-barrier interactive tools like red envelopes, card collection, and fortune codes to quickly reach new users.Follow-up engagement via coupons, sign-ins, and task incentives across live streams, short videos, and mall shelves.Even after the promotion, the operational chain continues with tools for follow-up, reservations, viewing tasks, and revisit tasks, helping brands convert new users into stable private pools, reducing future reach costs and increasing recall efficiency.Influencers also play an irreplaceable role.

Authentic, relatable content fosters trust. Influencers turn complex product features into tangible experiences, transforming seeding from one-time exposure to ongoing lifestyle interaction.For example, young Peking Opera performer Guo Xiaojing gained popularity with her contrasting “daytime opera, nighttime clubbing” persona. She creates content rooted in traditional art, integrating backstage makeup and immersive tutorials, naturally seeding products in a credible way.Brands still need the right influencer match to translate their message, which is the value of Kuaishou Magnetic Star. During the Spring Festival, Magnetic Star created four influencer matrices for different goals and over 1,000 top-tier influencers for varied scenarios, aligning content and audience for scalable brand growth and user assets.AI Deeply Reshapes Brand Operations.During the festival, Kuaishou integrates AI with traditional customs:Pre-campaign: Generate complete marketing plans from a single sentence.During campaign: Generate high-quality creatives, digital human Q&A, and embedded short plays to reduce costs and boost conversion.Post-campaign: AI analytics help brands optimize future campaigns.Ultimately, resources + ecosystem + tools drive Kuaishou’s marketing execution:Resources provide exposure.Ecosystem provides content and trust.Tools provide strategy, efficiency, and continuous optimization.Brands now see Kuaishou as a fully integrated operational platform, linking demand generation, transactions, and asset building. Marketing becomes a continuous, optimizable, and compounding operational chain, not a one-time budget expense.