Papi Jiang, one of China’s top web celebrities in 2016, has created a lot of buzz for her funny short videos that have now earned her RMB 22 million (USD 3.4 million). A cosmetics company will pay the sum to expose its brand in a Papi Jiang video next month.
An auction was conducted both offline and online for the advertising spot with a starting price at RMB 217,000. Reports say that more than 500,000 people were watching the live video of the auction on Taobao’s live streaming platform.
The winner, Lily&Beauty, is a Shanghai-headquartered e-commerce company that was founded in 2010 and has been invested in by Alibaba. It is an online cosmetics distributor that opens online flagship stores for famous brands including Lancome, Avene and Biotherm on Tmall.
The bidder said the ad is totally worth the money because of the potential value brought by the influence of Papi Jiang and her partner Logic Talk Show, who basically planned the whole auction. When asked about the impact of SARFT’s suspension of Papi Jiang’s videos for swearing on Monday, the bidder said it might actually be a good thing because the warning by the government will draw more attention to Papi Jiang.
Papi Jiang addressed the government warning on her Weibo account on Monday saying she would mind her language and keep a good image for netizens as an influencer.
Finally, the money will be donated to the Central Academy of Drama, the university that she is studying at. At the same time, a content platform centering on Papi Jiang’s videos called Papitube will be launched to attract more content providers.
