WeChat reveals infringer demographics, unveils RPM improvements
WeChat has issued a report outlining its anti-counterfeiting efforts and unveiling improvements to its Weixin Brand Protection Platform.
In its latest report the company revealed that 186 brand owners from 18 countries have registered on the platform – with 126,013 valid infringement clues submitted by users through the programme in 2017. Additionally, WeChat took action against 72,000 accounts for selling counterfeit goods last year, with the rate of successful appeals from reported infringers less than 1%.
In addition to these statistics, the company announced an upgrade to its brand protection programme, which moved from an invitation-only beta stage to accepting applications to join from any brand. It has also created bilingual instruction pages and created a single interface through the system so that brands can manage their identity across the various Weixin platforms.
The report also contained some useful intelligence for those fighting infringement through its platforms.
Specifically, it revealed that:
- “overseas purchasing agent”, “counter”, “factory overruns” and “high-quality imitation” were the most commonly used keywords by infringing accounts (with “overseas purchasing agent” used in 23,088 instances);
- in terms of received infringement notifications, the most frequently infringed sectors were footwear, bags, watches and garments;
- geographically, user accounts from Guangdong (26.04%), Fujian (10.67%) and Heilongjiang (9.88%) were most often the focus of infringement complaints; and
- 64% of infringers used female nicknames and profile photos.