China News Service, Beijing, April 3 (Reporter Gao Kai) In November last year, iQiyi members announced a multi-end unified pricing adjustment. This is the first price increase since iQiyi's membership system was implemented in 2011.
On April 3, Tencent Video also officially announced a new membership price standard, which will be officially implemented from 0:00 on April 10. This is the first price increase for Tencent Video in many years.
In response to this round of head video platform member price increases, some netizens said that their wallets feel distressed, but there are also many users who say that companies need to survive, which is understandable.
With the rapid development of the country, the increase in the cost of human and material resources drives the continuous increase of my country's overall price. The follow-up increase of consumer products may be a manifestation of a better economic cycle and an increase in consumption levels.
Take the consumption field that everyone is more familiar with as an example. At the beginning of last year, the price increase of Hey Tea brought the consumption of head tea into the "30 yuan era". Although there was some discussion at the time, the actual price increase was also the source. Because of the increase in raw material costs.
Now that the food delivery platform is opened, similar products with a price of about 30 yuan are very common, which shows the user's acceptance of consumption upgrades.
Back to the field of online video, the old membership price system has been maintained for nearly 10 years. After experiencing price increases and inflation, the prices of Tencent Video and iQiyi after the price increase are actually no more than the price of a cup of ordinary milk tea. Comprehensive video platform From the perspective of tens of billions of high input costs and relatively high consumption frequency of video content, the daily amortized consumption cost increased by users is also relatively low and must be in line with the law of economic development.
Looking at the essence through the phenomenon, I believe that after understanding the current development of the video industry, users will have a more correct and rational understanding of the price increase.
The industry knows that increasing the price of video membership subscription is too high.
IQiyi’s 2020 Q3 financial report shows that iQiyi’s operating loss for the quarter was 1.2 billion yuan, a 68.4% year-on-year decrease. This is the quarter’s financial report with the lowest quarterly loss in the past 10 years.
The latest financial report data released this year also shows that iQiyi's full-year net loss in 2020 will be 7 billion yuan.
The loss is not only a pain for the iQiyi family. The domestic streaming media platforms, except Mango SuperMedia, which relies on Hunan Broadcasting and Television to achieve profitability, are still at a loss, including Tencent Video and Youku.
The industry generally believes that the main reasons for the loss of domestic video platforms are high content costs and low membership prices.
Video platforms with content as their main product are costly in order to provide more categories and better content, and it is difficult to change in the short term.
What's more, domestic video platforms have made high-quality self-made content as their own strategic choice. This is also the content consumption choice users most need, and it is the foundation of the platform.
As a result, content investment cannot be saved.
Compared with the huge investment in content costs, the expenses that domestic users spend on content, such as the most basic membership fees, seem to be a drop in the bucket.
Gong Yu, CEO of iQiyi, has repeatedly stated that the membership fees of domestic video platforms are too low. The increase in membership fees of iQiyi last year was the first time for a domestic video platform in many years.
In November last year, Tencent executives also stated at the financial report meeting that the current video subscription price is low, and they hope that there will be an opportunity to make adjustments in the future.
Compared with foreign countries, the user subscription fees of domestic streaming media platforms are also low.
On October 29, 2020, Netflix announced another increase in the monthly fee in the United States. The basic entry-level package is still 8.99 US dollars per month, or about 58.73 yuan; the standard package has been raised from 12.99 US dollars to 13.99 US dollars, and the premium package has been raised from 15.99 US dollars. To 17.99 US dollars, approximately RMB 91.51 and 117.68 yuan respectively.
The price of the Netflix entry-level package is 2.4 times the price of the iQiyi Gold VIP monthly card after the price increase.
Tencent Video, iQiyi and other platforms have experienced rapid growth in membership increments. With the current growth rate stabilizing, increasing the ARPU value (average revenue per user) to further increase the overall membership income has become a common platform The choice is also an inevitable trend in the development of the industry.
At this time, whether it is to increase the membership subscription fee or to perform hierarchical operations on members, it is beneficial to the long-term development of the industry.
Nowadays, the payment habit of video users has been developed, and video platforms such as Tencent Video and iQiyi have also ushered in a new stage of development. Member price increases are not only an inevitable choice for the platform to seek long-term development, but also for the continuous output of high-quality content. Collect firewood to add salaries.
As the payment of video content enters a new stage of development, the platform will also have more capital invested in content production, and then feed back upstream content producers to create more high-quality content to meet the diverse viewing needs and high-quality content of users. The level of aesthetic demand has promoted the formation of a healthier and more healthy business operation model in the video industry.
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