Why is TikTok encouraging merchants to create self-incubated content? and the true cost of this
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Recently, merchants in the TikTok Shop in the Beauty Zone can clearly feel a change: the platform is encouraging merchants to participate more in content production at different levels, which is the so-called "self-incubation".
Many businesses have begun to shift their budgets from cooperating with experts to building their own content teams. This trend is not accidental, nor is it just a phased slogan of the platform.
An unavoidable reality: KOC’s supply structure has changed
Let’s look at the supply side first.
In the past year, the number of merchants and KOC in the United States has grown rapidly at the same time. As a result, a large number of KOCs received sample cooperation invitations from different merchants at the same time.
However, KOC’s creative ability and energy did not increase linearly.
In actual cooperation, many KOCs face a realistic choice: either cooperate as much as possible and spread the energy; or reduce the investment in a single piece of content to ensure that there is no problem with the fulfillment rate.
Everyone has seen the result - the content of casually photographed and process-based products has obviously increased, and the quality of the content has been rapidly reduced.
For low-quality content, the platform is the first to feel the pressure.
From a platform perspective, this problem is not just “the merchant’s GMV efficiency becomes lower”.
TikTok is essentially a content platform. When a large number of low-completion and low-expression density videos enter the recommendation pool, it affects not only conversions, but also the overall viewing experience of non-e-commerce users.
Once content becomes task-like, algorithms quickly sense it. This is why platforms have begun to emphasize content quality and merchants’ own content capabilities at multiple levels.
At this stage, allowing some Chinese merchants to directly participate in content production is "raising the lower limit of content" to a certain extent.
But this is more like a phased adjustment rather than a long-term direction.
Need to look at it over time.
TikTok Shop’s long-term goal is still to be a global content e-commerce platform. From the perspective of employment structure, local ecology, policy environment, etc., it is impossible for it to rely on Chinese teams to produce content for a long time.
A more realistic path is: The platform uses a phased mechanism to repair content quality problems while giving local creators more time to complete screening and differentiation.
From this perspective, the current “self-incubation encouragement” is more like a transition strategy.
Why are businesses willing to invest heavily in self-incubation?
From a business perspective, this choice is not difficult to understand.
In the short term, by transferring the commission originally given to the experts to the own content team: the profit margin is more controllable, the content rhythm is more stable, and at the same time, the team's content capabilities can be cultivated.
In the current environment, this is a relatively rational decision.
But problems often arise over longer periods.
Many businesses underestimate the hidden costs of self-incubation
The cost of a content team is not just manpower. It also includes long-term issues such as trial and error, management, churn, and style instability.
More importantly, it is difficult to accumulate real “expert assets” through self-incubation.
Content can be copied, but influence, trust, and user stickiness are difficult to fully internalize within the brand.
When growth enters the next stage of the platform, relying solely on internal content teams will often feel obvious bottlenecks.
Now TikTok has actually entered the stage of refined operation by experts.
Compared with 2023 and 2024, the stage where GMV can be stably determined by simply spreading a large number of samples has passed.
What is more critical now is: which experts are truly suitable for long-term cooperation, whether the content tonality is consistent with the brand, and whether the cooperative relationship continues to deepen.
Judging from the projects I have been exposed to recently, stable growth often comes from the continued cooperation of a small number of highly matched experts, rather than a large amount of one-time content.
a more realistic personal judgment
In the short term, self-incubation is here to stay and still valuable. But it is more suitable as a supplement to content capabilities rather than a complete replacement of the master system.
When the platform returns to a more mature content ecosystem, what really widens the gap is still the depth of the brand’s understanding of the relationship with the influencers and the ability to manage the long-term consistency of the content.
This is probably why more and more businesses are beginning to re-examine a problem: self-incubation solves the problem of efficiency, while cooperation with experts solves the problem of growth structure.
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