Caption ｜ visual China

The long video platform is “saving itself” through a round of member price increases.

Last week (April 9), Tencent video announced that it would raise the price of its members on April 20 (from 20 yuan to 25 yuan for a consecutive month, an increase of 25%; from 218 yuan to 238 yuan for a consecutive year; and from 253 yuan to 258 yuan for an annual card). The long video platform may usher in a new round of member price rise.

Coincidentally, the last round of price rise of long video platform also began with Tencent Video - on April 10, 2021, after the price rise of Tencent video members, iqiyi, mango TV and Migu video successively increased the price of members.

In this regard, Yuan Shuai, the relevant person in charge of the China Cultural Management Association, believes that “domestic video platforms need to buy a large number of copyrights every year. The high procurement cost makes the realization environment of the platform worse and worse. In order to survive, raising the price is an inevitable choice.”

Aiyouteng faces severe “internal and external troubles”

Tiktok has been stride forward singing militant songs in Kwai Tun three times since December 2018.

Data source: 2021 China Network Audio Visual Development Research Report

Tiktok, Kwai, B station and other short and medium video platform rise in the process of user growth of over 25%, higher than 17% of traditional video industry, Questmobile statistics show. In addition, according to the 2021 Research Report on China’s online audio-visual development, as of December 2020, the number of online audio-visual users in China was 944 million, including 873 million users of short video, which exceeded 169 million users of comprehensive video (covering long video).

Kwai Kwai tiktok is a new force that represents the new generation of tiktok. It is remolding the user’s mind and constantly increasing user stickiness. On the one hand, the flow of loud voice, fast hand flow and low threshold of content consumption are more suitable for fragmentation time. Users are willing to sacrifice some physical examination for a more convenient way of entertainment. On the other hand, users indulge in the cool feeling of instant feedback, which leads to the extremely high penetration and interactivity of short video users, but gradually lose patience with long narration and complete episodes.

In addition, short videos also have two abilities to accelerate the plundering of users - one is social currency. If you want to stop using it, it means that you will lose a lot of common topics between friends and colleagues, which means that you may be “disconnected”; The other is data intelligence. The algorithm makes the learning ability of the platform continuously improve. When users enjoy the convenience of the wave of mobile Internet, their data track has also become an “Achilles heel” that individuals can’t escape.

The impact on the growth of long video members has been reflected in the financial reports of Tencent and iqiyi in 2021: by the end of 2021, the number of paid members of Tencent video was 124 million, a decrease of 5 million compared with the third quarter, and the growth rate changed from positive to negative; The total number of iqiyi members in 2021q4 is 97 million (less than 100 million for the first time since 2019q2), a year-on-year decrease of 4.7 million (101.7 million in 2020q4), falling back to the level three years ago - “aiteng” is still so, and the survival situation of other platforms can be imagined.

More importantly, when the attention economy is deconstructed by short video, the direction of traffic migration represents great business potential.

According to the data of quest mobile, in the market share distribution of typical Internet media advertising in China from 2019 to 2023, the share of online video advertising began to be gradually squeezed by e-commerce and short video, reducing from 5.8% in 2019 to 4.3% in 2022; The proportion of short video streaming advertising increased from 24.6% in the first half of 2020 to 30.8% in the first half of 2021. The annual video advertising budget of “insight into China” also increased by 50% in 2021.

A brand dealer said to huolf, “First of all, the brand should understand and accept different accounting mechanisms before investing in long video implantation, but short video is different from long video and live broadcast. Second, after the short video live broadcast is completed, each individual short video is a highlight moment and can expand the traffic exposure, because users like to watch wonderful moments, and the exposure times of the package brand of the product will be much higher than the original brand implantation of long video.”

Even when the growth rate of short video users slows down, their competition for user duration is more radical.

Tiktok, Kwai, and B stand at tiktok’s advantage of traffic and cost of content, and have begun to tilt their resources to hatch homemade drama, short plays, net plays, variety shows (low cost, low threshold and high returns) - in 2021, the voice was officially entered into the mini drama track. The Kwai is planning to invest billions of traffic to create 1000 fine drama. Station B also continues to increase the variety content.

This will not only blur the business boundary of long video, but also further occupy its commercial space. After all, whether short videos erode the advertising share or expand the content boundary, they are the inevitable result of the competition for user time.

As for tiktok’s counterattack, Iqiyi pushed “along with the engraving”, Tencent was very slight, youkwai helped “look at it quickly”, and now it has been beaten and quickly beaten to find north.

To sum up, aiyouteng is facing severe “domestic and foreign troubles”: the growth rate of domestic members continues to slow down, and it is urgent to reduce costs and increase efficiency; External short video competition intensifies, and the advertising business is also being eroded. In particular, in 2021, after the idol draft, beauty drama and “advance on demand” were stopped one after another, in the face of rising costs and profit difficulties, improving arppu (average income of paying users) has become the most direct way for aiyouteng to increase its income.

After a general rise in 2021, Kechang video members are still unable to curb the decline - Taking the financial reports of Tencent and iqiyi in 2021 as an example, the advertising revenue of Tencent News, video and music media is 3.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 25%, mainly due to the decrease of advertising revenue of Tencent video and other services; The net loss attributable to iqiyi in 2021 was 6.2 billion yuan, which has been unable to turn around for 11 consecutive years.

As for why aiyouteng increases the price of “blunt knife meat cutting” round of wheelset members, there may be two considerations: on the one hand, although users have continuous emotional changes in this process, the price mechanism is essentially determined by the relationship between supply and demand, and the platform should balance the cost structure