Live streaming is reshaping the creator economy. In the United States, streaming services captured a record 41.4% share of TV viewing time in July.

TikTok’s live-streaming e-commerce market is growing at the speed of light. Last year, it reached $17 billion; they aim to triple that to $50 billion this year. 

In China, live-streaming e-commerce is even more advanced. The Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, is about five years ahead of its global counterpart in live streaming capabilities.

Enter MetaStars and Doustar, two companies that have partnered to bridge the U.S. and Chinese live-streaming sectors and transform how brands and influencers collaborate within them.

MetaStars brings its expertise to U.S. influencer marketing, while Doustar contributes its track record of success in China’s TikTok arena. 

MetaStars founder Delence A. Sheares Sr. and Doustar co-founder Eason Yan are leading the charge.

Delence, whose family has been in technology for 55 years and has executed large-scale projects with the likes of Floyd Mayweather and Jake Paul, brings extensive data center and metaverse platform experience to the partnership.

Eason’s Doustar has already made significant strides in China’s TikTok market in over a year. In the past three months, they’ve reached about 200 influencers and beat over 40,000 agencies to become the top 1%.

Together, they’re tackling the challenges that have long plagued the industry, from creator burnout to misaligned brand partnerships.

The partnership also addresses what Delence identifies as a “huge gap in the industry for influencers”—the lack of education.

“Right now, we see a consistent gap,” Delence explains. “You have influencers that go viral, and then they fall off. [Our goal] is to train them efficiently to identify the competencies when it comes to what makes something viral.”

Both founders have the ability to bridge cultural divides. “Most of the time, you either have someone in China or you have someone in the U.S., but you don’t have them working together to bridge the cultures,” Delence notes.

Their secret weapon? A data-oriented approach to campaign management, coupled with a strong emphasis on education. As official TikTok partners, they have access to advanced analytics tools that give them a competitive edge.

Delence and Eason discuss their vision for the partnership, their services, and how they plan to capitalize on the explosive growth of live-streaming e-commerce.

Live Streaming as a Common Ground

The partnership between MetaStars and Doustar emerged from an unexpected source: their shared legal representation. 

“We are both represented by the same law firm,” Delence shares. “So our law firm connected us; next thing you know, we are making the matching happen.”

This connection, facilitated by YK Law LLP, allowed the two companies to overcome geopolitical tensions. 

“We’ve been able to cut through all of the political bullshit that’s out there between [Beijing and Washington and] establish a strong relationship based on collective interests,” Delence tells us.

The decision to focus on live streaming management aligns with MetaStars’ existing expertise. 

“We’ve always been involved in some sort of management,” Delence says. “Even when it came to the metaverse, we started managing athletes inside of the metaverse. When it came to Roblox, we started managing influencers and tastemakers and gamers inside of Roblox.”

This management experience, combined with Doustar’s success in the Chinese market, led the partnership to concentrate on TikTok. Eason cites compelling statistics: “For 18 to 24-year-olds, they spend an average of 5 to 6 hours on TikTok daily.”

The partnership offers three primary services within their live streaming department:

1. Incubation and management of entertainment live streaming, transforming novices into professional streamers within one to three months.
2. E-commerce sales management, including training on product presentation and sales techniques.
3. Comprehensive branding, sales, and marketing services for established brands looking to enter the U.S. or global markets.

“We are the official partner (of Douyin) in China, and we became the official partner (of TikTok) here in July, which gives us an advantage,” Eason says. This status grants them access to powerful backend tools, allowing detailed analysis of streamer performance and direct payment from TikTok.

By leveraging their combined expertise in the U.S. and Chinese markets, MetaStars and Doustar aim to capitalize on TikTok’s growing influence in e-commerce. 

As Eason points out, the Chinese e-commerce market is almost equally split between Alibaba (Chinese Amazon) and Douyin (Chinese TikTok).

The partnership also sees potential for similar growth in the American market, where TikTok’s share of e-commerce sales is much smaller.

Brands, Influencers, and Live Streaming

The MetaStars-Doustar partnership aims to address a critical disconnect in the influencer marketplace. 

“You have many agencies that have many different influencers on the right-hand side, and on the left-hand side, you have millions of brands looking to connect to the influencers, but it’s hard to have a value proposition that’s a win-win for both,” Delence states.

The partnership’s approach starts with education. 

“We train influencers on how to utilize their influence, but in a grassroots and organic way, directly through live streaming,” Delence reveals. “We show brands how to scale their product while also scaling the conversation around it by immersing in the marketplace culture.”

Given the projected growth of the U.S. e-commerce market, this strategy is timely. Eason notes that TikTok’s e-commerce sales without live streaming hit $17 billion in 2023 and is en route to triple this year with the addition of live streaming sales.

Balancing creative freedom with brand requirements is crucial in this sector. 

“It’s all about the brand and influencer stories,” Delence claims. “We have an innate ability to bridge the gap between the creator’s personality and the brand story.”

The partnership aims to create a symbiotic relationship where influencers can express themselves authentically while accurately representing brands. 

“You don’t have an influencer who feels like they can’t be themselves and that they’re put in a box,” Delence explains. “But on the other side, you don’t have the pitfalls of a brand feeling that you partner them with an influencer that doesn’t represent their brand story.”

Training, Measuring, and Achieving Success in Live Streaming

The MetaStars-Doustar partnership strongly focuses on influencer training and campaign effectiveness. 

“We started from the educational standpoint with our t-tech and h-tech, and we’re bringing awareness from a vocational and post-secondary educational initiative to these curriculums to incubate creators,” Delence says.

Their training program covers various topics, including audience communication, live stream preparation, content improvement, and analytics understanding. Delence stresses that it’s mandatory, adding that the two companies don’t believe in mediocrity.

Eason also highlights the importance of this rigorous training, citing past challenges: “[In the U.S.], we sent out 100 samples, 95 of them were gone, and nobody returned us any video contents. That could never happen in China because those creators would get blocked or banned forever from those agencies or the seller.”

The partnership employs a data-heavy approach to measuring campaign effectiveness. 

“We have a full-time team sitting in China for our media-buying in the U.S.,” Eason explains. “We use the same group to manage and incubate the signed influencers and invest into these talents, such as purchasing TikTok traffic  to allow accurate targeting of the market to realize sales of our live-streamers.”

Their strategy involves creating specific tags for each live stream, considering age, location, device usage, and content engagement time. “We’re never going to buy what I call general traffic,” Eason adds.

Delence supplements this by emphasizing the importance of analytics: “We measure the success of a campaign by looking at the analytics, gauging the spend over return. Gauging also the level of in-depth virality.”

The partnership’s approach has yielded results. “We received 7-to-1 ROAS [Return on Ad Spend] for three months for content spend and 4.5-to-1 for live streaming in Southeast Asia.”

Demonstrating the potential of their streaming strategy, Delence shares a recent success story – Young Wayne, a prominent figure in the NBA 2K video game series who provides MetaStars-Doustar with a unique opportunity to expand into e-sports.

Delence elaborates: “Young Wayne’s character is inside the game hosting the blacktop. Therefore, this has allowed us to venture into some of the largest networks for e-sports, take these live streams of e-sports tournaments, and stream them through the creator economy through TikTok, which has never been done before.”

Education First

Education emerges as the cornerstone of success for brands and creators venturing into live streaming as a marketing tool. 

“Educate yourself,” Delence insists. “It starts with education.” 

He stresses the importance of understanding trends and their cyclical nature, advising, “You have to educate yourself on what’s trending and what has trended in the past because things happen in cycles.”

Delence urges brands to “educate themselves on their vision, the brand story, and how they want to convey that to their target audience.” He recommends self-reflection for influencers: “What brands align greatly with my narrative? What brands line great with my personality?”

Eason concurs, adding that learning from past mistakes is crucial in developing a better sense.

When asked about desired industry changes, Delence reiterated the need for “a greater framework of education.” 

“We’re trying to get away from the ‘microwave’ influencer mentality,” he explains. Instead, MetaStars-Doustar seeks influencers with long-term dedication.

“Although we engage with short-form content, we’re looking for influencers dedicated to the long run, educating themselves to make a career,” Delence adds.

Eason expresses satisfaction with the current market dynamics but aligns with Delence’s vision for improvement.