On April 10, 2026, Bilibili officially rolled out a "pause ad" feature on its mobile app, where users may encounter pop-up advertisements at the bottom of the video player when they manually pause a video. The announcement quickly propelled the phrase "Bilibili has changed" to the top of Weibo's trending searches.
Prior to this, Bilibili also announced the removal of the external link functionality for the "Shopping Cart" feature within its live streaming rooms. This change prevents users from directly clicking through to third-party platforms like Taobao or JD.com to complete purchases from a live stream. The simultaneous push for e-commerce restructuring and ad space expansion signals Bilibili's accelerating commercialization strategy, characterized by tightening control while increasing monetization efforts.
The rapid succession of these announcements, combined with ongoing controversies over member benefits and content creators' monetization struggles, highlights a swift transformation for the once "pure" video community. It is rapidly shifting from a platform driven by passion to one increasingly preoccupied with profitability.
The launch of pause ads represents a relatively cautious commercial experiment. These ads appear below the video player only when a user manually pauses playback. They are non-intrusive, do not obscure the main video content, and can be closed with a click. Bilibili has also granted content creators the authority to disable these ads for their own channels. In terms of ad intensity, Bilibili remains far less saturated than major long-form video platforms like iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video, and Mango TV, which often feature 120-second pre-roll ads.
However, the fundamental logic of a community-driven platform differs essentially from that of a traffic-centric platform. The latter are driven by Professional Generated Content (PGC), where users pay to watch shows and ads are seen as a straightforward toll. Bilibili, in contrast, thrives on a Professional User Generated Content (PUGC) ecosystem, sustained by creators, interactive comments, derivative works, and a unique community atmosphere. Users here are exceptionally sensitive to any commercial moves that disrupt their experience.
User dissatisfaction has been building. Over the past two years, Bilibili has steadily increased its internal ad density, progressively introducing splash screen ads, homepage feed ads, player frame ads, and creator-recommended ads. The introduction of pause ads marks the first time commercialization has extended into a user-initiated action scenario—pausing a video, once a purely user-controlled moment, now potentially becomes an opportunity for ad exposure.
More offensively to users is Bilibili's approach to managing the feature. While giving creators the power to toggle pause ads on or off, Bilibili directly links this setting to the creators' revenue from its incentive program. Disabling ads means a reduction in creator earnings. This design is widely interpreted by the community as the platform shifting the burden of commercialization, creating a conflict between creators and their audience.
Bilibili Chairman Chen Rui once vowed in 2016, "Bilibili might go bankrupt in the future, but it will never lose its original spirit." This promise is still frequently cited by community members and has become a benchmark against which every new commercial initiative is measured. Users have since adapted the statement to "Bilibili might lose its spirit, but it will never go bankrupt," a shift in tone from trust to sarcasm.
The removal of the Shopping Cart feature signals a strategic pivot in Bilibili's e-commerce approach. In October 2025, Bilibili fully enabled the Shopping Cart feature across its live streaming sections, allowing creators to add product links from platforms like Taobao and JD.com. Viewers could click these links to be redirected to complete their purchases, with Bilibili itself not involved in the transaction loop.
This "open-loop" e-commerce model has recently been reconsidered. By discontinuing external links in live streams, Bilibili prevents direct redirection to third-party e-commerce sites. The Shopping Cart's departure is seen by the market as a sign that Bilibili's e-commerce strategy is shifting from driving traffic externally to focusing on its own closed-loop transactions. Having already obtained a payment license and continuing to operate its self-run e-commerce service, Member Purchase, the removal of the Shopping Cart feature suggests Bilibili may be re-evaluating its e-commerce path, potentially allocating more resources towards building its own transaction ecosystem.
Bilibili is profitable, yet anxiety is growing. From a business perspective, the pressure to monetize is real. Full-year 2025 financial results showed Bilibili achieving its first annual net profit, with total revenue reaching 30.35 billion yuan, a 13% year-on-year increase, and net profit of 1.19 billion yuan. Advertising revenue grew 23% to 10.06 billion yuan, marking 12 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth and accounting for over 33% of total revenue. With its gaming segment struggling and value-added service growth slowing, advertising has become Bilibili's core growth engine.
However, the cost of this profitability is becoming apparent to users. Analysis indicates Bilibili's ad load rate is only around 6%, significantly lower than Douyin's 15%. This isn't because Bilibili is unwilling to increase it, but because the community's nature dictates a lower inherent tolerance for commercial content. As ad inventory approaches a critical limit, Bilibili is forced to continually seek new monetization touchpoints, each exploration further diluting the community atmosphere.
Simultaneously, fundamental issues with creator monetization remain unresolved. An AI content creator operating on both Bilibili and YouTube revealed that for comparable view counts, earnings on Bilibili are merely 1/120th of those on YouTube. While platform ad revenue grows year after year, mid-tier and smaller creators often rely solely on sponsored deals to get by, weakening the foundation of the community ecosystem.
During an earnings call, Chen Rui emphasized that future competitive strategies involve maintaining and strengthening high-quality content while ensuring creators receive greater commercial returns. However, for a platform with 366 million monthly active users and 113 million daily active users, finding a sustainable balance between growth and community integrity remains an elusive goal.
Whether Bilibili has "changed" or not, there is no going back. From pause ads to the Shopping Cart removal, and from membership disputes to questions about its core identity, the series of commercial moves Bilibili has made since the start of 2026 have squarely placed the question, "Is Bilibili still the same Bilibili?" on the table.
Strictly speaking, pause ads are not a revolutionary commercial feature; similar functionalities have long existed on overseas platforms like YouTube. Bilibili's challenge lies not in advertising itself, but in the structural conflict between its long-cultivated "community spirit" and its commercialization objectives. Every advancement of its commercial boundaries is scrutinized by users against Chen Rui's old promise, and the gap between that promise and reality continues to widen.
Caught between commercial pressures and community ethos, Bilibili can no longer return to its "pure" past. What users truly care about may not be the ads themselves, but whether the essence of the beloved "little broken site" still remains. When a founder's promise is repeatedly cited and sarcastically deconstructed by its community, what Bilibili risks losing is not just trust, but the feeling of "home" that was once considered its strongest moat.
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