Research Report on Industry of Virtual Humans in China in 2022

2022 China Virtual Human Industry Development Research Report (2022年中国虚拟人行业发展研究报告) is a proprietary market research publication from iiMedia Research (艾媒咨询) produced in the “industry development research report” style typical of commercial consultancies. In the way it is cited in news coverage, the report is structured around three content blocks: a market sizing and forecast model for the virtual idol–driven segment of the broader virtual human economy; a set of consumer survey results intended to quantify awareness, discovery channels, attitudes, and service satisfaction; and an analyst interpretation section that translates those findings into commercialization logic, scenario expansion paths, and expected near-term industry trends.

The report’s quantitative backbone, as reflected in news citations, is a multi-year scale-and-forecast treatment of China’s virtual idol industry spanning 2017 through 2023, presented as a time series plus projections to show sustained growth rather than a one-off spike. The headline framing distinguishes between an “overall market size” and a smaller “core market size,” both described as being “driven by” (or “brought about by”) virtual idols. The most repeated numbers attribute 2021 outcomes of 107.49 billion yuan for the overall market and 6.22 billion yuan for the core market, with 2022 forecasts of 186.61 billion yuan overall and 12.08 billion yuan core; the repeated pairing of overall vs core suggests the report is explicitly separating direct monetization close to the virtual idol value chain (core) from a broader, spillover market value influenced by virtual idols (overall), even when downstream attribution is indirect.

On the demand side, the report’s narrative positioning is that entertainment-led adoption is both the visibility engine and the commercialization testbed for virtual humans, with virtual idols and virtual livestream hosts treated as the most legible “front-stage” category. News summaries commonly restate that rising entertainment consumption and the operational appeal of virtual presenters (repeatable performance, controllable risk, always-on availability, consistent brand image) support adoption in content distribution contexts, including livestreaming and other pan-entertainment channels. This demand block is typically linked to the claim that the “metaverse” upsurge accelerated industry upgrading, meaning the report frames metaverse discourse less as a precise technical standard and more as a market catalyst that raises expectations for persistent digital identities, richer interaction, and more frequent deployment across online scenes.

On the supply side, the report’s “why now” logic is repeatedly described as technology iteration reducing friction across the production-and-operation pipeline. News citations attribute the report’s explanation to improvements in AI-enabled interaction and the enabling stack that makes virtual humans cheaper to produce and easier to operate at scale, including real-time rendering, 3D asset creation, and motion capture. In practice, this technological framing implies a pipeline view of the industry: creation (character design and modeling), driving (animation/mocap/real-time control), interaction (speech and language-driven behavior), and operations (content planning, continuous streaming or deployment, multi-platform distribution, and performance optimization). The recurring emphasis in citations is not a single breakthrough, but cumulative iteration that makes deployment more standardized and repeatable.

The consumer research component is cited in a fairly granular way, particularly around awareness, channels, and satisfaction. News reports commonly quote that 87.8% of surveyed respondents “have some understanding” of virtual humans, and that 59.5% learned about virtual humans via e-commerce platforms, indicating the report treats commerce platforms not only as transaction environments but also as major discovery surfaces for virtual characters. Another frequently repeated attitudinal figure is that 74.3% of respondents see virtual human images as highly “malleable” (high plasticity), which the report’s analyst interpretation, as summarized in coverage, links to product design flexibility and the ability to adapt appearance and persona to audience or brand needs. Service satisfaction is also reported as strongly positive, often summarized as “nearly 80% satisfied,” and in some coverage broken down into approximately 79.5% satisfied, 16.5% average, and 1.0% dissatisfied, which implies the report includes a categorical distribution rather than a single top-line satisfaction score.

The analyst interpretation block, as reflected in the way it is discussed in news, focuses on the industry’s movement from C-end entertainment visibility to B-end service penetration. The cited trend language emphasizes expansion into marketing and enterprise scenarios and, more broadly, into public-facing service industries such as government services, banking, and real estate, with “service-oriented virtual humans” described as an emergent development direction. The commercialization logic described in coverage stresses cost-reduction and efficiency gains (standardized front-end service, scalable content production, and continuous operation), alongside the strategic value of building a diversified IP matrix so that organizations can deploy multiple virtual characters for different audiences, channels, and use cases. The same trend summaries often note that major internet platforms and content ecosystems were becoming increasingly active in the space, with examples in news discussion sometimes referencing NetEase and Tencent as representative large incumbents entering or scaling efforts, used to support the report’s thesis that competitive intensity and capital attention were rising.

One practical implication of how the report is cited is that its “contents” in public view skew toward the reusable quantitative anchors (market sizing/forecast figures and survey percentages) and the repeatable narrative scaffolding (tech iteration + entertainment pull + metaverse catalyst + B-end expansion). That pattern suggests the full publication likely contains additional segmentation detail, methodological notes for the survey and market model, and case-style scenario write-ups that are not consistently reproduced in news summaries, even when those summaries borrow the report’s headline numbers and trend language.