Competition

The contested ground

Weibo competes for three different things, against three different sets of rivals, and its own filings separate them. For user traffic and engagement it names Tencent and ByteDance as direct media rivals, plus a list of messaging and multimedia apps — Weixin/WeChat, Douyin/TikTok, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku [1]. For advertising and marketing spending it names a shorter, harder list: Tencent, ByteDance, Kuaishou, Baidu, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili and iQiyi, plus vertical-media specialists "such as Autohome" [2]. For value-added services — membership, game-related services and social commerce — it competes with "platforms which provide similar services to users" without naming them [3].

The evidence base for this tab is five Weibo annual reports (FY2021 through FY2025), the 2014 IPO prospectus, sixteen Weibo earnings calls, the quarterly result releases, and the filings and calls of four named rivals that are in this corpus: Bilibili, iQIYI, Autohome and Hello Group. Two of the largest rivals Weibo names — Tencent and Kuaishou — have no filings or transcripts staged here, and ByteDance, Xiaohongshu and Douyin are private and file nothing. Every peer comparison below is therefore drawn from the four filers, and the arena structure and industry-level economics belong to Industry; the raw source shelf is on Competitors.

Sources: FY2025 Form 20-F, Competition [4] and advertising risk factor [5]; FY2021 Form 20-F, Competition, for the Momo reference [6]; corpus inventory for document availability.

The rival roster, 2014 to FY2025

The list of companies Weibo names has turned over almost completely since the IPO. The 2014 prospectus described a portal-era field: Sohu, NetEase, Tencent and Phoenix New Media as direct media rivals, WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, Douban, Momo and renren.com among the social apps, Qihoo 360 as an entry point, and Twitter and Facebook as possible global entrants [7]. Its advertising competitors were "Sohu, Netease, Tencent, Baidu and Youku Tudou" [8]. By FY2025 only Tencent and Baidu survive on that advertising list; the additions are ByteDance, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili and iQiyi [9].

The recent edits are small but directional. Momo and Qzone left the messaging list after FY2021 [10], QQ Mobile left after FY2023 [11], NetEase left the named news rivals in FY2024 [12], Meituan left the vertical-media clause in the same year, leaving Autohome alone in that clause [13], and Xigua Video left the multimedia list in FY2025 [14]. Autohome is the only company Weibo has named individually as a vertical rival in every year since FY2021 [15] [16].

Sources: 2014 IPO prospectus, Competition [17] [18]; Form 20-F Competition sections and advertising risk factors for FY2021 [19] [20], FY2022 [21] [22], FY2023 [23] [24], FY2024 [25] and FY2025 [26] [27].

Rival numbers, as each company reports them

Weibo reports in U.S. dollars; Bilibili, iQIYI, Autohome and Hello Group all report in renminbi and translate their FY2025 figures at RMB6.9931 to US$1.00, the H.10 rate at December 31, 2025 [28]. The FY2023 and FY2024 renminbi columns below are left unconverted, because no single documented rate applies across all three years. Growth rates and margins are therefore the only strictly like-for-like columns.

Note: the FY2023 to FY2025 columns are in each issuer's own reporting unit; the final column restates FY2025 in U.S. dollars, using each peer's own convenience translation and Weibo's reported figure unchanged. Sources: Weibo FY2025 Form 20-F, Results of Operations [29]; Bilibili FY2025 Form 20-F [30]; iQIYI FY2025 Form 20-F [31]; Hello Group FY2025 Form 20-F [32]; Autohome FY2025 Form 20-F [33].

The advertising lines diverge more sharply than the totals. Bilibili's advertising revenue rose from RMB6,412.0 million in 2023 to RMB8,189.2 million in 2024 and RMB10,058.4 million in 2025 [34] — a 22.8% gain in the most recent year [35]. iQIYI states its own trajectory in its risk factors: online advertising revenue rose 16.7% in 2023, then fell 8.2% in 2024 and 9.1% in 2025 [36]. Autohome's media services revenue — the line that sits closest to Weibo's auto-vertical brand budgets — fell 18.6% in 2024 and a further 24.3% in 2025 [37] [38]. Hello Group is not on the chart: from the first quarter of 2025 it folded live video into value-added services and mobile marketing into "other services", so it no longer discloses a comparable advertising line [39].

Sources: derived from reported revenue lines — Weibo FY2025 Form 20-F Revenues [40] and FY2023 Form 20-F Revenues [41]; Bilibili FY2025 [42] and FY2024 [43] [44]; iQIYI FY2025 risk factor [45]; Autohome FY2025 [46].

The currency split matters when reading that chart. Weibo's reported figures are in dollars while the peers' are in renminbi, and Weibo has quantified the gap: first-quarter 2026 advertising revenue grew 9% as reported and about 3% in renminbi terms [47], and the release attributes the increase "mainly" to "favorable foreign exchange impact on the reported numbers" [48]. In the other direction, the FY2024 filing attributes part of that year's ex-Alibaba decline to renminbi depreciation [49]. The direction of the gap has changed sign across the period.

Margins are currency-neutral, and they order the five companies differently from growth. Weibo runs the highest operating margin of the group in all three years while its revenue is flat; Bilibili crossed from a 22.5% operating loss in 2023 to a 3.7% operating profit in 2025 while growing; iQIYI's margin compressed from 9.4% to 0.9%.

Sources: Weibo FY2025 Form 20-F, Results of Operations [50]; Bilibili FY2025 Form 20-F [51]; iQIYI FY2025 Form 20-F [52]; Autohome FY2025 Form 20-F [53]; Hello Group FY2025 Form 20-F [54].

One structural caveat on comparability: Weibo tells the SEC it has "only one operating segment", because information given to its chief operating decision maker about its two business lines stops at the revenue level and no operating costs or assets are allocated to them [55]. Segment-level margin comparisons against Bilibili's four lines or Autohome's three are therefore not available from the filings.

The advertiser base: fewer buyers, larger tickets

The clearest quantitative record of competitive pressure sits in Weibo's own advertiser counts. The number of advertisers on the platform fell from 2.4 million in 2019 to 0.4 million in 2025, while average spend per advertiser excluding Alibaba rose from $593 to $3,385. Management attributes both movements to the same cause in every filing — the churn of the smallest buyers: "the churn of individual customers with relatively lower advertising budgets" in the FY2021 filing [56], "the churn of advertisers with relatively lower advertising budgets" by FY2025 [57].

Sources: FY2021 Form 20-F Revenues for 2019 and 2020 [58]; FY2022 Form 20-F Revenues for 2021 and 2022 [59]; FY2023 Form 20-F for 2023 [60]; FY2025 Form 20-F for 2024 and 2025 [61].

Sources: same Form 20-F Revenues discussions [62] [63] [64] [65]; Weibo notes these operating metrics are calculated from internal data that has not been independently verified.

Alongside that, one relationship has grown rather than shrunk. Advertising revenue from Alibaba rose 49% in 2025 to $173.8 million while revenue from all other advertising customers fell 4% to $1,327.8 million [66] [67]. Weibo describes that spending as highly correlated to Alibaba's own marketing strategies, "which fluctuates from time to time" [68]. Revenue billed to SINA, the controlling shareholder, moved the other way — $45.3 million in 2023, $25.0 million in 2024, $14.3 million in 2025 [69].

How management's own attribution moved

The dollar decline in ex-Alibaba advertising revenue is roughly similar in 2023, 2024 and 2025, but the stated cause is not. Across four filings the explanation shifts from the pandemic to the exchange rate to competition, and in the FY2025 filing competition stands alone.

Sources: FY2022 Form 20-F Revenues [70]; FY2023 Form 20-F Revenues [71]; FY2025 Form 20-F Revenues for both 2024 and 2025 [72].

The calls add texture the filings do not. In the fourth-quarter 2024 call, management explained the decline in cosmetics and personal-care spending by "big sales from multinational brands and heightened competition among ad platforms in content" [73]. In the first-quarter 2025 call it said "the budget allocated by Tencent and NetEase has been reduced", naming two rivals as advertising customers whose game budgets were shrinking [74]. And in the third-quarter 2025 call it described client feedback that "the bidding for the commercial traffic has become increasingly intense, which pushed their cost upward", alongside a tax change that caps the deductibility of feed advertising spend [75].

User scale: the direction of travel

Weibo's monthly active users peaked at 598 million in December 2023 and were 567 million in December 2025; average daily active users peaked at 260 million in December 2024 and were 252 million a year later. By March 2026 the figures were 562 million and 254 million, with management attributing the sequential monthly decline to "ongoing rationalization of channel investment" and the information-feed rework rather than to disengagement [76].

Sources: Form 20-F user risk factors — FY2021 [77], FY2022 [78], FY2023 [79], FY2024 [80], FY2025 [81].

Bilibili reports the same kind of metric on a different basis — an annual average rather than a December snapshot — so the two series are not directly comparable in level. The direction is comparable. Bilibili's average daily active users rose from 104 million in 2024 to 112 million in 2025 and monthly actives from 341 million to 368 million, both up 8%, with average daily time per user rising from 102 to 108 minutes [82] [83].

Sources: Bilibili FY2025 Form 20-F, users [84] and FY2024 Form 20-F, users [85]; the 2023 figures are the FY2024 report's stated bases for its 6% and 4% growth rates and are therefore approximate.

Autohome and Hello Group publish no comparable platform-wide active-user series in these filings, and iQIYI reports membership rather than users. Cross-platform share of user time is not disclosed by any of the five companies.

What the rivals say

None of the four rivals with filings in this corpus names Weibo as a competitor. Bilibili's advertising competition disclosure refers only to "alternative platforms" [86]; iQIYI's names "micro drama platforms, internet social platforms and short video platforms" as categories [87]; and Autohome's names BitAuto, Dongchedi, Xcar, PCauto, "the automotive channels of major internet portals, such as Sina and Sohu", and "companies engaged in social media business, such as ByteDance and Tencent" [88]. Autohome names SINA, Weibo's controlling shareholder, but not Weibo. The only mentions of Weibo anywhere in the peer documents are regulatory citations in Hello Group's filings to a 2016 notice governing audio and video transmission on "Weibo, WeChat and other internet social networking platforms".

Where rivals do speak to the same budgets Weibo chases, the tone is expansionary. Bilibili's third-quarter 2025 call set out an account-team goal to "achieve over a 90% repurchase rate and keep increasing our share of their spending on Bilibili" [89]. In the first quarter of 2026 — the same quarter in which Weibo's advertising revenue grew about 3% in renminbi terms [90] — Bilibili reported advertising revenue of RMB2.6 billion, up 30% year over year, which it called its "13th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth" [91]. Both companies identify AI advertisers as a new budget pool: Bilibili says "the AI sector is bringing incremental ad budget" [92], and Weibo's first-quarter 2026 growth was "driven by the Internet-based software deployment and AI-related investments" together with local lifestyle and automotive [93].

On the auto vertical the two sides describe the same customer stress from opposite positions. Autohome attributes its 24.3% media-services decline to "reduced advertising spending by ICE automakers amid shrinking sales volumes in the ICE segment" [94], and claims a structural position Weibo does not contest in its own filings: "we are actually the only Internet company with very large scale of the social media deployment in the auto sector" [95]. Weibo, for its part, recorded double-digit growth in the automobile vertical in the first quarter of 2026 [96] while telling analysts that its automotive key accounts "have been experiencing double-digit decrease" in their own sales, that handset makers were absorbing higher memory costs, and that e-commerce advertisers faced a "stressful profitability situation" [97].

Hello Group's record points somewhere else entirely. Its mainland China revenue fell from RMB11,204.0 million in 2023 to RMB8,367.1 million in 2025 while overseas revenue rose from RMB798.3 million to RMB2,000.0 million, taking the overseas share from 6.7% to 19.3% [98]. On the domestic social-entertainment ground it shares with Weibo's value-added services, it is contracting.

Value-added services: a different set of rivals, at different scale

Weibo's value-added services revenue was $255.6 million in 2025, essentially flat against $256.0 million in 2024 after a 13% gain that year [99], then fell 11% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 on weaker game-related revenue [100]. The comparable lines at the two nearest peers are several times larger: Bilibili's value-added services were RMB11,928.3 million, or $1,705.7 million, in 2025 [101], and Hello Group's combined value-added services were RMB10,213.7 million, or about $1,460.5 million [102]. iQIYI's membership services, the subscription line Weibo's membership offering sits nearest to, were RMB16,807.3 million, or $2,403.4 million [103]. Bilibili also discloses 25.3 million premium members as of December 31, 2025, up 12% [104]; Weibo discloses no membership subscriber count.

Sources: Weibo FY2025 Form 20-F Revenues [105]; Bilibili FY2025 Form 20-F [106]; Hello Group FY2025 Form 20-F [107]; iQIYI FY2025 Form 20-F [108]; peer figures use each filing's own convenience translation at RMB6.9931 to US$1.00 [109]. Lines are defined differently by each issuer and are not a like-for-like product comparison.

Switching: what the filings actually disclose

Nothing in this corpus creates a contractual barrier to an advertiser moving budget between these platforms. Weibo states plainly that "as is common in the industry, our advertising and marketing customers do not have long-term commitments with us" [110]. Bilibili uses almost identical language [111] and discloses, in its revenue-recognition note, that "substantially all of the contracts have an original expected duration of one year or less" [112]. iQIYI goes further and quantifies the consequence: "most of our advertising customers are not bound by long-term contracts, they may lessen or discontinue advertising arrangements with us easily without incurring material liabilities" [113].

What does create friction is the channel. Weibo transacts business either directly with customers or through third-party advertising agencies [114], and the agency route carried $942.3 million of its $1,501.6 million of FY2025 advertising revenue [115]. Its top ten agencies contributed 37%, 35% and 32% of total revenues in 2023, 2024 and 2025, with no single customer or agency at 10% or more [116]. iQIYI describes the same structure and its stickiness: agencies "typically have good relationships and maintain long periods of cooperation with the brand advertising customers they represent", so contracts are signed with the agency even where the platform has direct contact with the advertiser [117]. Autohome sits at the opposite end of the concentration spectrum: 96 automakers used its media services in 2025, against 101 in 2024 and 96 in 2023, and its top five automaker customers alone contributed 24.1% of media services revenues [118].

Sources: Weibo FY2025 Form 20-F risk factor [119] and concentration note [120]; Bilibili FY2025 Form 20-F risk factor [121] and revenue note [122]; iQIYI FY2025 Form 20-F risk factor [123]; Autohome FY2025 Form 20-F risk factor [124]; Hello Group FY2025 Form 20-F [125].

Two facts sit in tension in that table and are worth holding together. Contractually, an advertiser can leave Weibo at the end of a campaign at no cost. Behaviourally, the buyers who left were the small ones: the advertiser count fell by two million between 2019 and 2025 while spend per remaining advertiser rose more than fivefold, and total advertising revenue in dollars ended 2025 about 2% below its 2023 level [126] [127].

Gaps in the record

Sources: corpus inventory and peer staging manifests; Weibo FY2025 Form 20-F Competition for the rival naming [128] [129].