Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

In the difficult winter of 2019, the excellent drama "Qingyu years" was born, bringing some spiritual comfort to young people in difficult situations. As a result, more than 100000 people scored as high as 8.0 in the show's Douban rating.

Even if it is criticized by People's Daily for the advance of on-demand, the reputation of the show itself is still stable and can be said to be quite rare.

But in terms of influence, the trend of the "on-demand problem" entangled in "Qingyu years" will definitely have a more far-reaching impact than the show itself.

The beginning and end of advanced VOD

The so-called advanced on-demand means that Tencent and iqiyi recently updated their paid viewing model by taking advantage of the popularity of "celebrating the remaining years". On the basis of VIP, users will be able to unlock six episodes of content ahead of time by paying 50 yuan at a time, or they can choose a single episode on demand of 3 yuan per episode.

Tengai, a value-added service other than its members, has naturally aroused complaints from many users. "what's the use of buying a member?" , "online disk to meet you", "money circle first" …...

On the evening of December 16, Wu Shengwei, a practising lawyer of Shanghai Zhengze Law firm, said in an article in Zhihu that he had complied with "public opinion" and prepared a lawsuit against iqiyi, which would be mailed to the Beijing Haidian District people's Court in the near future to formally sue iqiyi.

On December 17, under the controversy of the whole network, at the annual summit of "New Culture, Entertainment and New consumption", Tencent Video and iqiyi responded to the matter one after another.

Wang Juan, vice president of Tencent Video, said: "in order to meet the needs of users, we are constantly exploring the innovation of payment model to better meet the deep-seated needs of users." This time in the "Qingyu year" caused by the controversy, we also had some thinking, our members' notification and consumer psychology are still not considerate enough. In the future, we will further optimize and enhance the service experience of our members and bring you more high-quality content and intimate services. "

Dai Ying, vice president of iqiyi and general manager of the homemade drama development center, also said that the content of the video platform is becoming more and more yuan, and the needs of users are becoming more and more yuan. "our original intention is to meet users' needs for more yuan of content, but we may not have done a good job. In the future, we hope to take more account of users' psychology and do a good job in the design and notification of broadcast."

The responses of Tencent Video and iqiyi are very official, but they are not ambiguous. There are three main points:

First, it shows the original intention and makes it clear that the original intention of doing this is to better meet the content needs of users. To put it bluntly, the video platform does this to make money, but the purpose of making money is to have more money to invest in the production of high-quality content.

Second, clearly admit the mistake, admit that this is really not considerate to the user, did not take into account the psychology and feelings of the user.

Third, it shows that the corrected attitude shows that it will take more into account the psychology of users and provide higher quality content and more intimate service.

But when it comes to action, the practice of "Teng Love" is not as open as it is said.

On December 17, Tencent Video and iqiyi simultaneously made the following changes to the advanced on-demand rules: members can watch six episodes in advance, the rights and interests of six episodes remain unchanged, the setting of paying an additional 50 yuan to watch six episodes is invalidated, and the extra 3 yuan per episode is reserved.

In other words, the extra payment of advanced on-demand will still exist.

After changing the rules, some netizens said, "the price of 3 yuan is still acceptable." However, some netizens said that charging on the basis of VIP members is still unreasonable.

The fight between "Teng Ai" and some users is still difficult to resolve.

In such a stalemate, instead of blaming who is right and who is wrong, the platform and some users should calm down, carefully weigh each other's difficulties, and then try to find a feasible solution.

Not long ago, "I am too difficult" was selected as one of the "Top Ten buzzwords in Chinese Media in 2019", indicating that it is really difficult for everyone in 2019. In this event, the platform has the difficulties of the platform, and the users also have the difficulties of the users.

The profit pressure of the platform is very great.

In the first three quarters of 2019, iqiyi was the runner-up in losses of the China New economy Company, with a cumulative loss of 7.8 billion yuan, only a little lower than the money-burning car-building company. In terms of losses alone, "Youai Teng" is basically in step, with Tencent Video losing 8 billion yuan a year and Youku losing about 5 billion yuan.

Losses were not a big deal before. But this year is 2019, the Internet has entered a stock era, and the capital winter has become so cold that even Meituan, who has always ignored losses, has begun to try to tighten losses this year in order to make a profit as a whole.

In such an environment, even Baidu can do nothing to help iqiyi's losses; Ali and Tencent, behind Youku and Tencent Video, are still deep-pocketed, but in the stock era, they have to find ways to tighten their belts and live a hard life.

So now iqiyi, who has suffered huge losses, has entered a shutdown moment that endangers life and death; Tencent Video is better, but while the overall reform of Tencent continues, Tencent Video's management is under great pressure; by contrast, Youku, which relies on Ali, is much more leisurely.

Specifically, last month, Yang Xianghua, a member of iqiyi and president of the overseas business group, said to the public: "iqiyi is considering an increase in membership fees, and does not rule out the possibility that members will take the lead in raising prices, but there is no timetable."

Therefore, this "advance on demand" may not only be a first attempt by Tengai to make a profit, but also can be seen as a further test of the market reaction of the platform before the price increase of video members.

The result of the trial is more obvious, the reaction of many users is very intuitive, if you want to increase 50 yuan at once, you may be scolded; if you go up by more than ten or twenty, some users can accept it, and some users can't accept it.

Such a result should not exceed the expectations of Tencent Video and iqiyi.

Because as to how to raise the price, how much? With the technical support received by Tencent Video and iqiyi, it is easy to analyze this market data clearly.

It's really hard for users

In the course of the development of the Internet so far, the realization of content has always been a worldwide problem, especially in China.

Google's YouTube, which used to make most of its revenue from five-second ads, has recently been trying to push membership services; Netflix (NFLX), which used to be a pure member revenue model, has recently begun to expand its advertising business.

"Youai Teng" from the beginning is the "member + advertising" mode, users can choose to watch ads and then enjoy the video content, can also choose to buy members free of advertising. Now "Youai Teng" has made more and more tricks in the membership model, such as privileged content and advanced on-demand, but they all want to enhance their bargaining power with users.

PGC video platforms such as Youai Teng invest a lot of money to produce content, but it is difficult to capture users' consumer preferences and willingness to spend, so the natural risk cost is very high. Users want to see what play, like what play to a large extent depends on the mood, even the users themselves are sometimes uncertain.

In this case, although each platform strives to build clearer and more accurate user portraits with technology, the bargaining power of the platform is still weak.

However, the bargaining power of users is strong, which does not mean that the ability to pay is also strong. One of the core reasons for the cash difficulties in China's content sector may be the over-promotion of Chinese residents' ability to pay for content in the capital market.

What is our average salary? This question has always been a mystery.

According to the estimate of the salary network, the national average salary in 2019 is 7993.09 yuan, but the calculation result of the salary network comes from its own operation model developed and designed, which has not been published.

In contrast, Salary Calculator uses the relatively primitive sampling survey method, and the conclusion drawn from tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of samples in different cities is more credible.

In the Salary Calculator survey, the average salary in first-tier cities is no more than 7000 yuan, and the average salary of residents in second-tier cities, the main force of entertainment consumption, is more than 3000 to more than 4000 yuan.

Combined with the national disposable income of 28228 yuan disclosed by the China Bureau of Statistics in 2018, the average monthly disposable income of Chinese residents is about 2352 yuan. In terms of consumption expenditure, the per capita consumption expenditure of residents throughout the country in 2018 is 19853 yuan, with an average monthly consumption expenditure of 1654 yuan.

On this basis, it is estimated that the membership fee of the video platform is too high, which may really be unacceptable to most ordinary residents.

The contradiction exposed in the "lead-on-demand problem" is indeed very thorny-if the platform does not find a way to raise the price and the profit is insufficient, there may be a big problem; if the price is increased, most residents will not be able to accept the exorbitant member price of the member.

Therefore, the current complex situation very much tests the adaptability of the actual controllers of the major platforms, and how to grasp the balance between profits and users of the video platform may determine part of the future Internet content layout.

(official account of Liu Kuang / tr. by Phil Newell) ID:liukuang110

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