Alibaba’s Taobao, Tmall platforms work with Douyin to attract new users ahead of midyear shopping festival

Alibaba Group Holding’s Taobao and Tmall Group is working with ByteDance-owned Douyin to attract users from the Chinese short video platform, as the e-commerce giant spends hundreds of billions of yuan for its promotions in the mainland’s annual midyear shopping festival.

The domestic e-commerce unit of Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post, recently joined hands with Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to help merchants on the Taobao and Tmall platforms acquire customers from the short video app’s users, according to information provided by the group on Monday.

The so-called “Star Cube Plan”, jointly launched by Alibaba-affiliated digital marketing platform Alimama and Douyin’s digital marketing tool Xingtu, aims to help the merchants achieve “marketing on Douyin, transaction on Taobao”, according to Taobao and Tmall Group.

The merchants will be able to post advertisements on Douyin, and monitor how users are directed to, browse and make purchases on their Taobao and Tmall stores after seeing the ads.

The move marks the latest in a series of efforts by the domestic e-commerce unit to seek new growth by attracting customers from other platforms through external cooperation, as the top player in China’s online shopping market is grappling with heightened competition with newer rivals including PDD Holdings and even Douyin itself.

The company has so far reached such deals with more than 200 online platforms including those of Shenzhen-based tech giant Tencent Holdings, it said.

Last September, Alibaba and Tencent announced a deal to place ads on WeChat’s short-video sharing platform Channels, which can be linked to shops and live-streaming rooms on Taobao and Tmall. That followed similar previous collaborations with blogging features and mini-programmes on the ubiquitous social media app.