What are the five video giants fighting this year?

Over the past few years, the development and competitive landscape of video websites have not been separated from “content competition”, in other words “content self-control”. 2014 is known as the "first year of self-control" and accurately reflects the current status of this industry. Several major video sites, whether they are competing for core resources, investing large sums of money, or alliances of strategic partners, and choices of cooperation methods, no matter how dazzling the means, the aim is still to revolve around the “winning of content”.

This state has suddenly changed since entering 2015, and industry competition has entered a diversified era.

Iqiyi: Content + Technology

On January 14, iQiyi announced that it has reached an "Iqiyi-Intel" strategic alliance with Intel. In the second half of 2014, all kinds of cooperation between iqiyi and “artistic youth” Huace Film and Television was daunting. Suddenly in 2015, it began to join hands with the “technical man”—the technology giant Intel.

iQiyi CTO Tang Xing and Intel China Research Institute Dean Wu Gansha said that both parties will play an advantage in the distribution of content distribution networks (CDN), big data analysis, and other areas, through joint research, focusing on video storage, transcoding Technical challenges in the areas of distribution, cloud computing, and performance optimization of big data analytics.

Just a few days before the two sides formed a strategic alliance, iQiyi just released "Videoin"'s patented dynamic video ad placement technology, and received the first order of JDB.

“We applied for a lot of patents for this technology. Once it matures, for example, it will not need to build a blue shed when shooting a movie. It can use a ruler to measure the size of good shots, and advertisers can The finished picture is based on the size of the placement of advertising, and no traces can be found." Iqiyi Marketing Department staff told reporters.

Once this technology was introduced, Jordobao, who was keenly aware of the ad market, immediately saw the opportunity. In the iQiIi homemade drama "Waste Chai Brothers 2", he chose 10 scenes suitable for implantation.

At present, the main source of income for the video industry is still a variety of display advertising, the form is nothing more than a patch ad and an in-stream advertisement, which is not essentially different from the television advertising form. Implantable ads need to be completed within the filming period. For advertisers who have not seen a film, they need to bet on whether the content is successful. Videoin, on the other hand, is a kind of post-implantation advertising, which can greatly reduce the risk of advertisers placing, and at the same time reduce the interruption of user's viewing and reduce the degree of aversion.

"In addition to the Videoin technology, we have also released products such as Video Tracking, Magnetic Swatches, and so on, all of which are centered on this type of commercial technology product, which can help advertisers better select and deliver. In the first quarter of 2015, we More than a dozen models will be released one after another. This year, the development of iqiyi will focus on the two main lines of content and technology. In the future, our development direction will be to become a 'technology company with media genes'." The personnel said.

It is reported that iQIYI's technical staff accounted for more than 50% of the total number, and reached strategic cooperation with many institutions such as Dolby Company, Nvidia, China University of Science and Technology, and will be in the iQIYIYI Cloud, "IQIYI Brain", etc. The party continues to advance the technological process. It can be seen that in 2015, iQiyi is no longer limited to competition in the content field, but also extended to the field of business technology to help better realize high-quality video content.

Youku Tudou: Build Ecosystem

The Youku Potato Group, which has always been known for its content, began testing the water hardware field. From January 8th to January 15th, Youku Route Po initiated the first round of public beta. Within one hour after the start of beta testing, the registration page generated 50,000 clicks. As of January 14, the number of applicants was nearly 30,000 and the degree of attention was 400,000.

Youku's big selling point is to “sell” users' idle uplink bandwidth to Youku. While users benefit, Youku’s input costs on bandwidth resources will be lower than those purchased from telecom operators, which can serve two purposes. If iQIYI's "Videoin" product is open source, then the idea of ​​Youku RouteB is to save money.

At the same time, there are two other hardware products released in the same period as Youku RouteB – Youku 4K Ultra HD set-top box and Potato Pie 15.6Pad, which are expected to be sold in the first quarter of this year. It is reported that in the future Youku potatoes will also do more expansion in entertainment terminals, such as the development of speakers, 3D equipment.

At the end of 2014, Youku Tudou Group announced the establishment of a new BU business unit - Cloud Entertainment, which became the fourth new section alongside Youku, Tudou and Heyi. Yao Jian, Chief Technology Officer of Youku Tudou and President of Cloud Entertainment, said, “We are already in the era of multiple screens. Youku Tuo hopes to focus on the video and more layouts to become a concentric and multi-dimensional structure. Concentric is the video content, and diversity is centered around the circle. Expanded business."

In Youku Tudou's four business segments, Youku, Tudou and Heyi Pictures can be seen as content-driven troikas. The new business unit will extend the content of entertainment content to a wider range. Yao Jian said, “We want to strengthen the interaction between the screen and the screen, so that the connection is infinite, so that consumers in the Youku potatoes multi-screen culture and entertainment ecosystem, get more high-quality entertainment experience.”

By January 2015, the total length of videos for Youku Tudou has reached 8,000 years, and has grown at a rate of 4 years per day. After the end of Youku Full Video Night on January 16, youku Weiming, the president of Youku, said in an interview that there are three main directions for the development in 2015:

The first is to continuously explore the video + e-commerce model, continue to optimize the process, so that the audience has the opportunity to open up the products and network operators in the drama; second, it is extended to more advertising innovation models, explore video advertising, e-commerce, content marketing The model is to enrich the existing revenue system; the last is to make a fuss about the diversity of content. “For us, in 2015, we must constantly build a cultural core. We will make a fuss about the diversity of content. This is the most important thing.”

Sohu Video: The Innovation of Technology and Humanities

Sohu throws out a new self-definition at the beginning of 2015: technology companies + content companies + entertainment marketing companies.

Sohu's continued entertainment properties from the portal era are well known to all advertisers. Sohu Entertainment Company is now the predecessor of Sohu Video. Its use of star resources and the spread of topics related to entertainment events are among the best in the industry.

As a high-level player who produces and uses content, Sohu Video’s "Three-style of Content Marketing" put forward in this year's "Same-screen-resonance" strategy has given rise to a bright spot. "Mobile is interactive" and "Barrage economy" and "Deeply dig into this matter", the theory is easy to understand, which helps firmly grasp the fans and basically conforms to the 2015 marketing trend.

According to Sohu Video, “B2B and O2O are clouds in the future, and communication with BraintoBrain is king.” To this end, it will strive to tap the user’s preferences for cultural content from a humanistic perspective in its future operations. Actively practice human-oriented effective marketing.

On the other hand, in line with the trend of big data in the video industry, Sohu also launched an accurate delivery system based on its own cloud matrix multi-platform, integrating data, platforms, people, products and other dimensions into one, forming a "video content, portal content, "Search behavior" and other multiple terminal behavior data aggregation.

On the product, the “Sheng Ren Huan” mobile interactive interactive advertising product can activate the user's memory conversion; the “Perfect Storm”-based subdivided crowd search solution can effectively realize the marketing value of the American drama and the national drama. . On the system, relying on real-time cloud computing, the system realizes intelligent exchange distribution of video advertising resources, forming a full-flow intelligent purchase system based on bidding, traffic, and frequency, and fully satisfying advertisers' customized traffic purchasing needs.

Tencent Video: Mobile + Interactive Fan Economy

At the 2015 Tencent Advertising Promotion Conference, Tencent's Vice President Sun Zhonghuai stated that Tencent Video will promote the overall layout through the active cooperation with the licensees and hardware manufacturers, and create the entire industry chain ecosystem of the video industry.

In 2014, Tencent’s video performed well on mobile. According to the latest data released by iResearch in November 2014, Tencent's video mobile terminal has an average daily coverage of 39.98 million people, ranking second in the industry.

"Compared with other video websites, Tencent's video users are more sticky. We have used celebrity strategies and vigorously tapped the fan economy. These soft strategies have achieved remarkable results. In 2014, Tencent Video planned a Christmas with its favorite star. In the event, 1.8 million people use the mobile star theme every day, and there are 5 million users downloading the special skin of the star. This is like the skin in QQ, and there is a huge profitable space in the future, said Tencent Marketing staff.

In addition to exploiting the star effect and tapping into the fan economy, Tencent Video also constantly attempts to innovate in advertising marketing.

Tencent’s National Planning Center’s General Manager Weng Shiya said that currently Tencent’s video is applying artificial intelligence technology to advertising marketing. “The data can be self-learning in the process of precipitation and have the wisdom to surpass the human brain and make data calculation better.” Integrate with advertising delivery strategies and experience, and finally through multiple launches, a brand sample will be precipitated, which will bring greater value to brand operations.”

In the future, the mobile terminal will become the next main battlefield for the video industry. With the surge in the number of users, grabbing this "cake" has become a top priority for development. If you can make a move to move this card, Tencent video in the field come from behind it is also unknown.

Mango TV: More than just broadcasting

From 2015 onwards, Mango TV, which joined the video site, has become more and more business-oriented. In the current year, Mango TV, which has the full license advantage, will exert its efforts on the main lines of video and Internet TV services.

At the beginning of the new year, Mango TV's New Year's Eve multi-camera interactive live broadcast. Shortly after New Year's Day, Mango TV made new moves. Internet TV's online and offline brand flagship dual stores opened at the same time. The offline brand experience store is located in the fan building of Hunan Radio and Television, and the mango TVinside online store has chosen to settle in Jingdong Mall.

In the mango TV experience store, more than 30 kinds of family products such as mango TVinside set-top boxes and all-in-one machines are displayed and sold. Users of the experience store site can experience the contents and services of Mango TV Internet TV for free; Mango TVinside Jingdong official flagship store mainly covers three parts of set-top boxes, all-in-one machines and VIP services.

The head of Mango TV and Joyce Sunshine President Zhang Ruobo emphasized at the opening of the flagship store that the online and offline flagship stores are not aimed at profit, but “use their own advantages to display products and sell diversions to provide services to terminal manufacturers.”

“We hope that the number of OTT users will enter the top three of the licensees in 2015, and the number of users may not be the largest, but if they are high-quality users, the percentage of paying users will also be about 10%.” Vice President of Happy Sunshine, Mango TV Internet TV Division Manager Cheng Hongrong said.

In addition, at the just-concluded Hollywood two awards ceremony, Mango TV not only became the only Chinese media to set up an interview area on the red carpet of the awards ceremony, but also swept the People's Choice Award and the Golden Globe Award's exclusive live broadcast rights in China. For the industry and the public, the solemn presentation of the Hollywood Awards not only presents an audio-visual feast for the audience, but also is a successful model for overseas cooperation in the network audio-visual industry.