AI Consumer Monetization Is Real — ByteDance's Doubao (350M MAU) announced three paid tiers (¥68/200/500 per month), launching late June. Strategy: free basics + paid productivity (PPT, video, data analysis). Driver: daily token consumption surged 1,000x in 22 months to 120 trillion. Seedance 2.5 extends AI video to native 30 seconds with 50 multimodal references. As a five-round ByteDance investor (A through E), Zhang's call: 350M MAU daring to charge = AI toC monetization moves from hypothesis to experiment; ¥68/mo ($9.3) prices on "time saved" not token cost — stronger willingness to pay; validates ENTRY 42 end-of-free + ENTRY 67 subscription ceiling. "Free basics + paid pro" will become China's AI-assistant standard template. Sources: BJNews / 36Kr / STCN / Pandaily.