At Bilibili’s annual Ad Talk conference for marketing partners, the platform laid out a series of data points that help explain why advertisers are paying closer attention.
In 2025, users spent an average of 112 minutes per day on Bilibili, up six minutes year on year. That figure roughly equals the length of a feature film watched daily. The number of creators with more than 100,000 followers rose more than 20% from a year earlier. The platform’s average user age now stands at 26, while new users average 23.
More than 220 million users watched consumer-related content on Bilibili last year, and average income per creator rose 22% year on year.
Bilibili is also preparing to release its annual list of top 100 creators. According to COO Li Ni, about one-third of this year’s honorees will be new faces. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence-generated content, or AIGC, and new formats like video podcasts are accelerating that turnover. In the third quarter of 2025, watch time for AI-related content jumped nearly 50%, while video podcast users surpassed 65 million.
Today, Bilibili has about 117 million daily active users and 376 million monthly active users. With the average user now firmly in their mid-20s, the audience has entered a life stage marked by greater spending autonomy.
Put differently, this is the moment for Bilibili to deliver on a promise it has made to advertisers for years: the consumption potential of young people.
“We often say Bilibili is the first stop for consumption enlightenment for 300 million young people,” said Lai Fu, general manager of the platform’s marketing center. “Today, the average user is 26. Whether they are creators or viewers, they have grown from students into working adults who have gone through renting, buying homes, and starting families.”
When users start thinking about furnishing a new home, 83% say they open Bilibili first to visualize what their future home could look like, Lai said. Among users with first-time car purchase intent, the audience has grown by more than 150%.
That behavioral shift is translating into revenue. Advertising income has continued to rise alongside consumer content viewership. By the third quarter of last year, Bilibili’s ad revenue had grown more than 20% year on year for 11 consecutive quarters, significantly outpacing the broader market. Platform data also shows average creator income rose 22% year on year, partially easing concerns about the long-term viability of content creation as a career.
Each year, Ad Talk serves as a bellwether for Bilibili’s advertising strategy, and its tone has shifted repeatedly over time.
In 2020, the spotlight was on top creators showcasing production capabilities. In 2021, Bilibili emphasized its original variety shows, dramas, and animation slate, signaling where brand integrations could fit. In 2022, the focus moved to vertical video and outbound links to e-commerce platforms. The following two years leaned toward industry-specific advertising playbooks, with last year highlighting progress in commercialization infrastructure.
When AI reshapes the playbook
This year, the focus within the AI sector has shifted decisively toward tools, particularly how the technology can improve advertising efficiency.
Across China’s major internet platforms, AI has become a shared mandate. Tencent has launched AIM+, while Alibaba has rolled out full-site promotion capabilities, both designed to let AI handle targeting, bidding, creative optimization, and consumer matching to improve return on investment.
Now, Bilibili is following suit.
At the conference, the platform introduced B-Data, an AI-powered marketing data and strategy center. According to Zhang Yi, general manager of Bilibili’s commercial products and operations strategy center, the system helps brands identify breakout content, uncover latent demand, optimize sentiment monitoring, model audience assets, and allocate budgets using AI.
In practice, that includes pre-campaign audience definition, scenario matching, and budget allocation; real-time tracking to identify which creatives resonate most; and post-campaign reports linking audience performance directly to business outcomes.
Like other major platforms, Bilibili is also pushing fully automated ad placement. “Clients can launch with one click,” Zhang said. “There’s no need to create plans, choose units, or set bids.”
Peak traffic on Bilibili typically arrives around 11 p.m, a pattern that has long forced media buyers to work late nights. “So we introduced automated ads and let them drive themselves,” said Li Yongbao, general manager of the platform’s commercial operations center. “AI is like a gold-medal pitcher that never rests, responding at a second-by-second level.”
That shift is reshaping the role of ad optimizers. Even the notoriously difficult cold start phase can now be handled by AI. Automated ads manage the full lifecycle from launch through growth and eventual decline. According to Li, automated ads now account for more than 65% of placements, reducing manual operations by 85% while boosting scale by 90%.
Tencent vice president Jiang Jie previously told 36Kr that ad optimizers may eventually stop managing bids altogether and instead focus on creative work.
Even creative tasks are increasingly being absorbed by AI. Li said Bilibili’s AIGC tools aim to become “the most Bilibili-flavored creative assistant, one that truly understands Bilibili users.” In 2025, AI-generated titles that tracked trending memes lifted click-through rates by 15%. The platform has also rolled out text-to-image, image-to-image, short-video remixing, and virtual avatar live streaming tools.
Two additional shifts stood out. Bilibili plans to open more search traffic to advertisers and further experiment with ads inside the video playback page.
Search, Zhang said, consistently attracts high-intent users. Unlike platforms that rely on opaque black-box bidding, Bilibili will operate search advertising through a more transparent system, allowing advertisers to choose keywords, audiences, pricing, and content.
The second change centers on in-player ads. “Users spend about 120 minutes a day on Bilibili,” Zhang said. “Unlike infinite scrolling, the playback page is our largest and most valuable scenario.” This year, the platform will actively explore monetization within that space.
Bilibili has long resisted pre-roll ads. Currently, in non-fullscreen playback, a banner appears below the video, while the top recommendation slot beneath the description is sometimes occupied by promoted content. Going forward, that recommendation slot will be formally opened to advertisers.
Another subtle but meaningful shift involves commerce. A platform long known for favoring outbound traffic is now embracing closed-loop transactions.
“In the past, we guided users to external apps, but that also meant losing users,” Li said. Bilibili has built an internal commerce loop based on mini-programs, allowing transactions to be completed without leaving the platform. Compared with outbound links, closed-loop conversions improved cost efficiency by ten basis points, while overall transaction efficiency rose 150% year on year.
Bilibili remains one of the few major platforms to consistently support an open-loop strategy, with advertising partnerships spanning Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo. But as more transactions move on-platform, that long-held neutrality may gradually shift.
Monetizing mindshare among young consumers
For years, mid- and long-form video platforms have struggled to match short video rivals in advertising scale. Bilibili once pushed hard into vertical video, but its differentiation remains rooted in longer content.
“In an era where people swipe every three seconds, Bilibili continues to invest in mid- and long-form video,” Lai said. “Good content is what builds brand image and consumer mindshare. That kind of trust can’t be formed by a few short clips or static images.”
Compared with platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat Channels, and Xiaohongshu, Bilibili’s emphasis on what it calls deep mindshare has often sounded understated.
Li Ni framed it differently at Ad Talk. “The brands people trust when they are young often stay with them for life,” she said. “That influence ultimately delivers better results and better transactions.”
During the 2025 Singles’ Day shopping festival, Bilibili posted an average new customer rate of 55% across industries. Gross merchandise value for products priced above RMB 1,000 (USD 140) rose 63% year-on-year.
As users move from campus life into the workforce, their spending power is rising and their resistance to advertising is easing. The consumer mindshare cultivated years earlier is now ready to be monetized.
Platform data shows that in 2025, 24% of videos on Bilibili’s weekly “must-watch” charts were branded collaborations between companies and creators. The rankings are entirely user-voted.
Looking ahead, Bilibili’s mid- and long-form ecosystem still depends on a steady supply of professional content. According to 36Kr, the platform is planning seven gala events, 40 domestically produced animation titles, six music initiatives, three brand-led projects, 113 documentaries, and multiple podcast programs in 2026.
Since launching its video podcast initiative in 2025, Bilibili’s video podcast audience has surpassed 67 million. A growing roster of public figures, journalists, opinion leaders, and creators have joined as hosts. The platform has also introduced a support program to bring traditional radio hosts onto Bilibili, encouraging them to produce video podcasts and music radio content.
Bilibili believes this semi-professional, personality-driven format offers significant room for brand integrations and could become one of its most commercially flexible content pillars yet.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Wang Yuchan for 36Kr.