This week, Alibaba’s 2024 11.11 Shopping Festival has begun, reflecting a strategic blend of AI-driven tools, subsidies, and ecosystem integration to boost consumer engagement and merchant support. Meanwhile, Taobao also saw new user registrations hit a four-year high, with 20.9 million new overlapping users between Taobao and WeChat and a path toward 1 billion active users.
In other news, Alibaba also introduced Marco MT, an AI-powered translation tool supporting 15 languages for e-commerce and general use.
The launch AI media solutions at Gitex Dubai this week, a leading technology event in the Middle East, highlights Alibaba’s continous focus and exploration on digital transformation.
Alibaba’s 2024 11.11 Shopping Festival Launches with User Incentives and Merchant Support
The 2024 11.11 Global Shopping Festival kicked off with RMB30 billion ($4.3 billion) in vouchers and subsidies across two shopping windows: Oct. 21-24 and Oct. 31-Nov. 11. Alibaba Group’s platforms, Taobao and Tmall, aim to boost consumer engagement through discounts, AI-powered tools, and enhanced benefits, including RMB20 billion in coupons for 88VIP members and RMB2 billion in livestream red packets.
Over 300,000 brands and numerous SMEs are participating, supported by RMB10 billion in traffic initiatives and RMB3 billion in marketing subsidies. New merchant tools, such as AI-powered content generation and the Tuihuobao return service, reduce operational and logistics costs.
The festival reflects gradually improving consumer confidence in China, with spending driven by younger consumers in lower-tier cities. Alibaba’s integration of WeChat Pay also streamlines payments, while incentives such as the RMB10 Billion Subsidy program offer up to 80% discounts on branded products. With a focus on high-quality growth, the 11.11 festival is positioned to benefit both consumers and merchants.
Dive deeper into more of the buzz about Tmall’s 2024 Double 11
Taobao Gains Momentum During 11.11, User Growth Hits New Heights
Meanwhile, Taobao experienced a surge in growth during the 11.11 Shopping Festival, with new user registrations reaching their highest point in nearly four years. QuestMobile reports that the overlap between WeChat and Taobao users increased by 20.9 million within a month, reflecting the impact of recent integrations. With 245 million WeChat-exclusive users, many active on various e-commerce platforms, this synergy positions Taobao to potentially surpass 1 billion monthly active users in the coming year.
Alibaba Unveils Marco MT: AI-Powered Translation Innovation with LLM
Alibaba International has launched Marco MT, a cutting-edge translation tool powered by Large Language Models (LLM). Designed to go beyond basic translation, Marco MT interprets nuances in context, delivering accurate product descriptions, seamless multilingual interactions, and precise document translation.
According to the FLORES benchmarking framework, Marco MT surpasses global peers in translation quality, achieving top BLEU scores: 51.60 for translations into English and 47.70 for general use. The tool’s performance benefits from Alibaba’s extensive e-commerce data, advanced MOE techniques, and the Qwen series of language models, ensuring high-quality multilingual capabilities without compromising dominant languages like Chinese and English.
Marco MT serves two primary use cases: cross-border e-commerce—offering automated translation of product listings, customer service messages, and search keywords—and general users with document translation needs. It currently supports 15 languages, including English, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and French, with plans to expand both languages and service quality.
Marco MT is now available for trial through the Aidge website, promising accessible, accurate, and scalable translation services for global users.
Curious about more AI tools Alibaba International provides to support merchants? Read more
Alibaba Cloud Unveils AI-powered Media Solutions and IoT Partnerships at Gitex in the Middle East
This week at Gitex in Dubai, a leading technology event in the Middle East, Alibaba Cloud introduced a series of AI-powered media solutions, including the Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Media Solution platform, which enhances media processing, real-time communications, and video production. Powered by Alibaba’s proprietary multimodal and large language models, its one-click video production feature can automate video creation, editing, and delivery, offering functions such as video analysis, script generation, and multi-language subtitles. This can tremendously streamline the video creation process, boosting efficiency and enabling smarter content production at scale for regional media organizations.
Alibaba Cloud also announced a partnership with Tuya Smart to launch the Tuya IoT platform on its marketplace, providing global developers with tools to innovate in IoT, AI, and smart home technologies.
“Alibaba Cloud is committed to continuously bringing cutting-edge AI and cloud solutions with our local partners to support customers in the Middle East to succeed in their digital transformation journey.” Said Eric Wan, General Manager of Middle East, Turkey & Africa, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
Explore more innovations on AI-powered media solutions by Alibaba Cloud
