Drawing: Yang Jia
As the most popular application for Internet users today, the development of the Internet video industry can be described as a "long history". From long videos to short videos, the popularity continues unabated, and it has given birth to multiple online video platforms.
However, in the "Chu River and Han Realm" of the short video and long video industries, market competition has made video platforms also look for new outlets and growth points in the track, and the emergence of the concept of "medium video" has become a hot topic in the industry. Topic of discussion.
The video is long or short, but will there be a "medium"?
And will the players who work hard on the "China Video" track find their own outlet?
●Nanfang Daily reporter Ye Dan
"Long and short" videos are losing money
In the "financial report season" where the third quarter financial reports are intensively announced, the financial reports of the two video platforms seem to be particularly concerned.
As a representative of the long video field, iQiyi had a net loss of 1.7 billion yuan in the third quarter. In addition to the 1.3 billion and 1.4 billion losses in the previous two quarters, iQiyi has already lost a total of 4.4 billion this year.
As one of the short video platforms, the financial report of Station B showed that the net loss in the third quarter reached 2.686 billion yuan.
The two video platforms of "one long and one short" had no choice but to hand over their loss-making transcripts.
It is not difficult to find from the financial reports of the two video platforms that content is still the biggest "black hole" of losses.
In the conference call after the financial report, Gong Yu, the founder, director and CEO of iQiyi, said that the biggest problem in the long video industry today is that there is a serious shortage of content supply. Take iQiyi as an example. The number of movies online is less than half of the same period in 2019, and traditional TV dramas may only be one-third of previous years. At the same time, the quality of new online dramas has also been compromised.
Another very cruel reality is that short videos are frantically competing for user time.
The lack of high-quality content of iQiyi directly led to a decline in the month-on-month ratio of paid members and also led to a decline in revenue.
For station B, which has "too much" short video content, it also encounters "troubles."
According to the financial report of Station B, in the third quarter, the operating cost of Station B was 4.19 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of nearly 70%.
Among them, the revenue share for content creation bloggers (UP owners) reached 2.16 billion yuan, an increase of 83% year-on-year, which exceeded the total cost of self-made content at station B and copyrighted content purchased externally.
On one side is a long video platform lacking content, and on the other is a short video platform overflowing with content. The end result is that the content is losing money.
Is China Video a new future?
Compared with short videos and long videos, they have encountered difficulties one after another on the original track, and naturally set their sights on more possibilities, while the concept of "medium video" has surfaced.
According to data, as early as August last year, Watermelon Video first proposed to define the content form of "Chinese Video", which meant video content that was 1 minute to 30 minutes long in real time.
According to a reporter from the Nanfang Daily, platforms including Watermelon Video, iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Douyu have successively launched support plans for China Video, and if it is defined broadly in terms of duration, there are still some on the China Video track. Including competitors such as Station B and Youku.
Ren Lifeng, president of Watermelon Video, said in an interview that the space of China Video is bigger than expected.
What gives it such confidence comes from a set of data. In the past year, the consumption of Chinese video content on the TV side has shown an increasing trend.
According to data from Watermelon Video, the proportion of viewing time on TV in China Video has increased from 21% in the third quarter of 2020 to 35% in the second quarter of 2021.
In the past month, the popular science content of the well-known creator "Mr. Li Yongle" has been viewed on TV over 50% of the total broadcast volume.
According to incomplete statistics, in the past month alone, in the smart TV product "Fresh Time", there were 1539 creators with more than 10 million content views, and 8925 with more than 1 million.
According to a reporter from Nanfang Daily, the reason why Ren Lifeng sees the potential of "big screen" and "Chinese video" for CP is that the big screen is also a way to increase revenue for Watermelon Video itself.
Previous data showed that Douyin contributed 60% of the revenue to ByteDance, while the advertising revenue of Watermelon Video accounted for less than 3%.
Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li once compared the advertising value of various screens and believed that the larger the screen, the greater the advertising value. It can be seen that the "big screen" powered by Watermelon Video has greater revenue potential. For considerable.
In addition, according to the data disclosed by station B, the number of monthly active users on the TV side of station B has surpassed that of the PC side. At the same time, TV users are mainly distributed in the third, fourth and fifth tier cities, and the overlap rate with the user group of the APP side of station B is less than 20%.
How to pass the Chinese video content level?
As the most commonly used Internet application today, the development of the online video industry is inseparable from the principle of "content is king".
From long video drama content to short video personal content production, video content is the key to the success or failure of the video format, and whether China Video can become another main track in the video field in the future also depends on whether it is suitable. In addition to measures such as watermelon video’s restoration of the video cartoons, the content creators are more dependent on the content.
The creator "Glutton Daxin", who has more than 1.6 million fans on the watermelon video, said in an interview with a reporter from the Nanfang Daily that for creators in the food field, China Video is a more suitable video format, and the platform has also given it. Greater support.
According to the reporter on the watermelon video platform, the food content created by "Glutton Daxin" is generally within 10 minutes, and it has accumulated more than 17 million fans' likes.
According to industry insiders, the content layout of the Chinese video platform needs to be significantly different from that of the short video platform in order to have a foothold. Compared with the short video platform’s concentrated funny, life video content, popular science, knowledge, and skills Other fields are the directions where China Video Platform can make breakthroughs.
Liu Long, the creator of "Aaron Going to Travel", which focuses on tourism content, told a reporter from Nanfang Daily that with the rise of China Video, the content he created will also be adjusted in terms of duration and production. .
In addition, the development of the big screen trend also provides new requirements and directions for video creators in China.
Liu Long said that the combination of "Chinese video + large screen" can provide more sufficient time and space, give video content like tourism, increase the elements of humanities and dialogue exchanges, and enhance the affinity of video content.
In an interview with Nanfang Daily, the creators of "Pop Science" based on popular science content, Zhu Peng and Li Guangsen also stated that they had not realized the proportion of Chinese video on broadcast channels such as TV screens before. This also puts forward new requirements for the creation of video content in the future.
"In the production of traditional animation and explanations, it may be necessary to study and improve according to the characteristics of the large screen."