On November 9th, Weibo released its financial report for the third quarter of 2023. The total revenue of Weibo in the third quarter was 442.2 million US dollars, approximately 3.207 billion RMB. Excluding exchange rate factors, the total revenue increased by 2% year-on-year. Among them, advertising revenue reached 389.3 million US dollars, and excluding exchange rate factors, advertising revenue increased by 3% year-on-year. The adjusted net profit of Weibo in the third quarter was 137 million US dollars, an increase of 17% year-on-year, excluding exchange rate factors.
As of the end of the third quarter, the monthly active users of Weibo reached 605 million, a net increase of about 21 million year-on-year, and the daily active users reached 260 million, a net increase of about 8 million year-on-year.
In terms of content ecology, in social hotspots and areas with large user groups such as literature, art, ACGN, and sports, Weibo has stabilized its IP ecological advantages and continued to acquire users from the market. The focus of traffic in the field of literature and art has shifted from individual celebrities to literary works themselves, and Weibo and excellent IPs coexist and promote each other, forming a benign literary and art ecology.
Weibo has prioritized the recovery and growth of traffic in vertical fields such as digital, automotive, gaming, healthcare, beauty, sports, and tourism as its focus for product operations this year. It has strengthened the ecological development of vertical content, prioritized traffic in vertical fields, and increased the proportion of vertical content in platform traffic. At the same time, it has supported high-quality creators in vertical fields through the Golden Orange V certification system to increase their activity.
In the third quarter, the overall traffic in the vertical field achieved significant growth, with daily average vertical hot search traffic increasing by 29% month on month, and the proportion of content hot searches in the vertical field exceeded 20%. In the first three quarters of this year, the scale of vertical field creators increased by 21% year-on-year, and the traffic increased by 12% year-on-year. Especially after the launch of the Golden Orange V certification system, the platform focused on addressing the commercial monetization ability of Golden Orange V bloggers, in addition to tilting traffic. In the third quarter, the proportion of Golden Orange V bloggers' revenue in the advertising revenue of micro task platforms significantly increased, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 50% in blogger revenue, which also promoted the increase of blogger activity.
The growth of vertical traffic has also helped Weibo maintain its core competitiveness in the advertising market. In the third quarter, the commercialization of vertical fields significantly accelerated, and some industries performed well. Hot IP content related to literature and sports has emerged endlessly on Weibo, driving the food and beverage industry and the film and television cultural entertainment industry to achieve double-digit year-on-year growth in the third quarter. The digital vertical field has formed a complementary relationship between content and commerce, and Weibo has become a must-have marketing platform in the industry, with revenue increasing by over 50% year-on-year in the third quarter. The medical and health industry is on a steady growth track, with industry advertising revenue maintaining a double-digit year-on-year growth this quarter, and the number and richness of industry customers are increasing; With the normalization of the release of new game titles in the second half of the year, Weibo has increased the coverage of new games and optimized the effects of advertising product technology on game customers. In the third quarter, the revenue of the game industry has increased by two digits compared to the second quarter.
Next, Weibo will continue to increase its investment in vertical operations, achieving a win-win situation with commercial marketing value while increasing user activity.