(Yicai Global) Jan. 11 -- As the year 2018 has started in earnest, China's internet market has come up with a new buzzword and product to drive web traffic: online quiz show on live streaming platforms. As China's online market operates in a highly competitive environment, internet firms constantly search for web traffic-generating content to lure the world's largest number of users.

Each player in the market is also under pressure to retain the users after splashing millions of dollars on online programs. The first entrant in the online quiz show business is an app backed by Wang Sicong, son of Chinese business magnate Wang Jianlin, founder of Dalian Wanda Group Co. It streams the quiz show at a designated time each day, with 12 questions. Each question should be answered within 10 seconds. If all answers are correct, the respondents can share the bonus offered at each show.

However, just a few days later, major live streaming sites including huajiao.com, Toutiao's ixigua.com and Inke rushed to follow suit, investing millions of yuan to grab an audience share. The bonus amount on several major platforms has reached nearly CNY10 million over the past few days, available data show.

Wang Sicong recently posted a message on a social media platform, saying many business magnates such as Zhang Yiming, Zhou Hongyi and Feng Yousheng invested in online quiz show content. Inke founder Feng made a statement to announce he invested money in such shows starting late last month and is about to invest CNY1 billion more.

At the beginning of the online quiz 'war,' all major platforms modestly offered under CNY100,000 as bonus for each show. On Jan 6, the quiz show program jointly launched by Zhou Hongyi's Qihoo 360 and huajiao.com raised bonus for a single show to CNY1.02 million. Since then, the bonus amount of live streaming quiz shows suddenly jumped to multimillion-yuan level.

The result was gratifying. Wang Sicong's quiz show hit the highest rating score ranking fourth in the iOS free apps list in a matter of days.

Behind all these initiative lies high costs of driving user traffic and gradually declining user numbers. However, this new model of getting internet advertising via online quiz show genre seems to work for the time being. Attracting users through bonuses sponsored by ad insertion of advertising has convinced big investors, Zhu Yue, executive director of CIC CareerFrog, told Yicai Global.

Effectively placing appropriate ads in the quiz content leads consumers to actively search for the relevant content at a higher level and this will also be what the advertisers are most willing to see as benefit, Zhu added.

On Jan. 9, huajiao.com's online quiz show got the first ever live streaming quiz ad sponsor, Meituan, which provided CNY1 million bonus to viewers, attracting 4 million audience to participate, which has also become the first commercial ad in the area of live streaming quiz show. There was four ad placements in the Meituan-sponsored special quiz show, involving Meituan's take-out and travel businesses, Yicai Global found.

Inke also announced a sponsorship cooperation with Qudian's Dabaiqizhe that invested CNY1 billion to support the program, making it the first online quiz show platform to receive more than CNY1 billion in ads revenue.

Knowledge contest quiz shows are in line with a wide range of popular fun with lower market education costs, easy to acquire traffic channels, efficient and rapid and ensures higher user activity, a source from Inke told Yicai Global.