Let's answer a question first: why have companies become calm about short videos, livestreaming, and paid traffic this year? It is not that these channels have stopped working, but that companies have finally done the math clearly—every wave of traffic dividend chased over the past three years has seen its marginal cost drop to zero, while what the investment bought was almost all "consumables": stop updating and the traffic stops, stop spending and the customers stop, and the customer data does not even belong to you. Calmness is the signal that companies are returning from "marketing impulse" to "operational rationality."
From what standpoint are we looking at this matter?
Let's be clear about where we stand. HOLYPro is not a short-video player, nor have we gone deep into livestreaming and paid traffic. We provide enterprise digital services—website development, content middle platforms, AI applications, and digital platforms.
But this actually gives us a good vantage point as an observer. We deal with enterprises every day. Where their marketing budgets shift, and whether they are impulsive or restrained toward new channels, are directly reflected in their digitalization needs. Every choice a client makes is a sample for our observation. So this article is not an outsider's commentary on traffic, but a review from the perspective of a service provider.
Three years, three impulses
Straighten out the timeline, and the marketing moves of enterprises over the past few years form a very clear migration line:
A few years ago: the short-video boom. Platforms lacked content and supply was insufficient, so enterprises found that “open an account and post casually, and you get organic traffic.” During that period, almost every boss was asking, “Should we also create an account?” The criterion was “whether to do it,” not “whether to do it well.”
Later: the livestreaming boom. After organic traffic for short videos peaked, livestreaming showed its advantage in conversion efficiency—it enabled real-time interaction, trust building, and direct transactions. Enterprises began hiring livestream hosts and building self-media operations teams, turning marketing into a high-cost department.
Even later: the paid-traffic boom. Organic traffic became completely impossible to compete for, so enterprises turned to spending money to buy exposure—feed ads, Qianchuan, and various paid placements. At this point, the logic was no longer “whether the content is good,” but “whether the budget is enough.”
This year: cooling down. The ROI of paid traffic no longer adds up, teams are kept but produce nothing, and if an account stops updating, it goes to zero. Many enterprises choose to stop, disband their teams, and pull back their budgets.
Behind every wave of hype lies the same thing.
On the surface, they look like three different waves, but at bottom they are the same thing: chasing traffic dividends.
The driving force was never “this channel is better,” but “the last one stopped working.” As the short-video dividend faded, businesses rushed into livestreaming; after natural traffic in livestreaming was exhausted by competition, businesses rushed into paid traffic. Every migration happened when marginal returns from the previous medium were diminishing and the new medium still offered a dividend.
The essence of a dividend is scarcity. Whoever enters first gets the bargain; those who flood in later face increasingly higher costs. So the peak of “heat” is often exactly the starting point of the dividend dropping to zero.
Calmness is not retreat; it is settling accounts.
I prefer to see this year's calm as a good thing—it is a rational exit after companies have done the math, not an industry decline.
Paid traffic is the last stop of the traffic dividend.When companies move from "creating content" to "buying traffic," it means the organic dividend has already fallen to zero. And the endpoint of buying traffic is traffic costs approaching or even exceeding the true value of the transaction. For businesses with low frequency, high ticket prices, and long decision cycles, paid traffic is basically a loss-making model—the more you spend, the more you lose.
Business owners' understanding is maturing.From "everyone else is doing it, so I should too" to "how many customers does this actually bring me, and how much did it cost?" This is a return from marketing impulse to business rationality.
The Overlooked Core Contradiction: Consumables vs Assets
Hidden within these three years of impulse is a contradiction that is rarely pointed out.
Short videos, livestreaming, paid traffic — all are traffic consumables. What they share: stop, and it stops — stop posting and there's no traffic, stop spending and there are no customers, and customer data settles on someone else's platform, not your own.
Another kind of thing is an asset: the official website, the content library, digital platforms, the customers' own data. What they share: continuous accumulation, compounding returns, wholly owned by the enterprise, dependent on no single platform's boom cycle.
When an enterprise calmly comes to a halt, that is in fact the easiest moment to rediscover the value of assets — because once the excitement fades, only what stays in your hands is real.
What we do: turn inputs into assets
This is exactly what HOLYPro has always been doing. We are not in the traffic business; we are in the asset business.
An official website is a company's truly owned digital storefront. It does not depend on any platform's recommendation algorithm, so customers can find it, understand it, and get in touch at any time.
A content middle platform is a content asset that can grow sustainably. Articles, cases, and product information are entered once and reused across multiple devices and languages. The more they accumulate, the more valuable they become, and they will not be wiped out because a platform changes its rules.
AI customer service is an asset-based service capability available 24/7. With omnichannel access and instant response, the capability is retained in the system and will not disappear when the operations team is removed.
A digital platform makes content accessible to AI. A corporate website is no longer just a page for people to view, but a service open to AI reading and citation—this is the infrastructure for the next stage.
When we look at enterprise digitalization, it has never been about helping companies chase the next wave of traffic, but about helping them turn every investment into something that truly belongs to them.
Advice for businesses: where should the money go?
If you do only one thing, first build a website and digital content foundation that truly belongs to you.
It's not about chasing trends; it's about laying a foundation. Traffic ebbs, but what stands on a solid foundation compounds. When the next wave of channel dividends arrives, companies with assets are leveraging it, while companies without assets are left holding the bag.
This isn't something you need to redo every year, nor do you need to chase platforms. Get it right once, and you benefit for the long term.
One last line: traffic is rented, assets are your own. That is the plainest lesson the past three years of impulsive corporate marketing has taught.