Deep Sound Original · The author | Zu Yang
Today, the "C position" of the volkswagen living room has been firmly occupied by OTT.
According to the 2021 OTT Commercialization White Paper, the activation scale of OTT by 2020 will reach 295 million, and the number of users accessing the Internet through OTT in first-tier cities will increase by more than 400%. Advertisers' investment intentions in OTT are also increasing, and the research report on the value of OTT marketing released by Seconds Hand shows that the advertising delivery of OTT in 2021 increased by 109% compared with 2018, and the share of advertising traffic on the OTT side gradually increased from 11% to 20% in the digital advertising traffic pattern (PC, Mobile, and OTT).
With the rapid development of the industry and the increase in the recognition of advertisers, OTT has created a new way of life while also releasing its own greater market value.
Although most advertisers still focus on exposure advertising, but now that the entire industry has entered the fast lane, large-screen marketing is bound to expand more possibilities. Advertisers can use more innovative models to connect the user's mind, and players who enter the OTT game also need to give more innovative reference samples.
Hardware + content, bring new increments
As one of the earliest players in China to enter the OTT, the innovative way of play found by Xiaomi Marketing is "making content".
In November 2021, Xiaomi's TV Internet business established a content center and announced the creation of the first independent content label in the large-screen industry: Shengcang Pictures. Its core positioning is to deeply cultivate the upstream industry, based on the incubation of high-quality film and television comprehensive IP, realize the sustainable creation ability of IP, and complete the construction of a large-scale content ecology that integrates film and television comprehensive copyright content, self-made content, and derivative content.
Better content, more exclusive content, means more traffic and stronger user stickiness. As Xiaomi TV enters the upstream content, the next action is undoubtedly to dig deep into good IP. Since its establishment in November, Shengcang Pictures has participated in a number of film and television projects, and cooperated with the network's high-quality content platform for distribution, feeding back the upstream ecology, helping creators create high-quality content, and exploring new models of OTT content cooperation.
On January 25, co-produced by Shengcang Pictures and jointly broadcast by Xiaomi TV and Douyin, the first domestic popular variety show of the mother and baby category "Hey! "Hot Mom" is officially launched. This is a reality show featuring talent competitions such as the whole star lineup leading the team, preferring talent hot mom singing and dancing, and it is also the first attempt of Xiaomi's TV Internet business to enter the variety IP track. In particular, this variety show adopts the "large-screen tracking, small-screen interaction" play, in which Douyin is not only a platform for audition, but also a marketing position after the broadcast of the program, and the program has thus formed a new social × OTT Xintai network variety show model.
It is not easy to do the incubation of high-quality content IP, and the theme, distribution, and market environment are all factors that affect the content to become a blockbuster. Xiaomi OTT takes intelligent terminal hardware as the entry point, and innovation can also start from the hardware level, why does it now choose hardware and content "two hands"?
To answer this question, we need to look at it from the perspective of the industry, Xiaomi itself and advertisers.
First of all, based on the characteristics of the industry, OTT and content are inseparable.
The big screen itself is a natural carrier of video content, and the habit of users watching drama variety shows on the big screen has been consistent since the traditional TV era. Although the mobile terminal occupies the mass leisure and entertainment life to a certain extent, from the perspective of the "2021 OTT Commercialization White Paper", the use time of long video content is now shifting to the large screen end, and in the survey of the user's long video media usage preferences, the users who use smart TVs to watch TV series and variety shows account for 87.9% and 82.4% respectively, which are higher than the mobile terminal. Station B chairman and CEO Chen Rui and other executives said on the third quarter of last year's earnings call that the monthly active users of the TV side of Station B have surpassed the PC side and become the second-ranked device of MAU, and the playback time of the TV side is also longer than that of other terminals.
GroupM Think Tank "2021 OTT Commercialization White Paper"
And as far as the current brand marketing is concerned, the user's acceptance of brand advertising in episodes, variety shows and other content has also been very high, such as the Vipshop that appears in various episodes, brushing the sense of existence with "star same style"; Snowflake Beer has been titled "This is Street Dance" for three consecutive years, and because of its strong exposure and deep binding with the hot IP, it has gained a double growth in reputation and recognition.
Secondly, based on its own point of view, xiaomi's Internet TV business has a clear advantage in entering the content track.
Nowadays, the scale and awareness of OTT marketing have forced players in the industry to constantly innovate themselves. When other players are innovating in exposure and the technical gap is not large, taking the lead in jumping out of the inherent mode and making long video content is bound to allow Xiaomi to grasp the key to victory.
In addition, from the perspective of advertisers, "content" marketing has always had its necessity.
Nowadays, the growth of the Internet dividend has peaked, the mobile terminal traffic is anxious, and the advertiser mentality shows a "pendulum effect", which requires both sales conversion and brand equity. Only doing traffic trading is bound to be difficult to meet expectations, which requires advertisers to make changes at the strategic end, play a marketing combination fist with diversified content, methods and gameplay, and use content marketing to do the necessary brand in-depth education.
And high-quality long video content is definitely a good choice. Usually long video content will be the "birthplace of the national hit", which can attract huge traffic and attention, which is an irreplaceable advantage for other content. A series and a variety show are updated in a long cycle, forming a "bait" that attracts the audience's long-term attention, and the depth and time period that the brand can carry when cooperating with it are extended. In addition, if you choose more vertical circle content, advertisers can also reach the target group more accurately.
This is like the process of funnel penetration, one is that the mouth of the funnel is large enough to absorb enough traffic; the second is that the slower and less the loss in the process of conversion, the better.
It is easier said than done, and the title merchant Huishan Dairy is in the "Hey! The gameplay in "Hot Mom" is a typical example.
From the perspective of program positioning, the audience groups of 30+ hot moms and dairy brands have a high degree of overlap themselves, which also means that the brand has selected this variety show and has accurately radiated the young tide mom group that pursues the quality of life.
In the program, Huishan Dairy deeply binds IP content through IP authorization, column packaging, column implantation and other gameplay. Through customized native interactive gameplay, creative small theater that takes into account the selling points of the product, and simple and clear oral tips, it establishes an emotional link with consumers while effectively outputting brand values.
Huishan milk powder is deeply implanted
In addition to the program, because of the addition of Douyin, the variety show will cover a huge traffic pool, with open-screen advertisements as the golden entrance in the station, and the combination of Multiple Forms such as TopView, information flow advertisements, and customized home pages forms a linkage, which deeply penetrates the fragmented social scenes of the mobile terminal. At the same time, Xiaomi TV has also opened up hard exposure paths such as boot, focus map, and patch, which is equivalent to creating an exclusive super brand day on the big screen.
Further, Huishan Dairy actually took this opportunity to do a complete integrated marketing. Online, Xiaomi TV will enhance the influence of variety shows through more targeted content operations; in the process of program promotion, the entire byte-based traffic matrix such as Douyin, Watermelon, and Today's Headlines will be fully opened, and the thickness of the traffic pool and content pool will deepen; while offline, Huishan Dairy and "Hey! "Hot Mom" also selected several key cities to do outdoor advertising, penetrating a wider range of people, and maximizing the brand voice.
Is it feasible for hardware manufacturers to do content?
The experience of streaming platforms has shown that high-quality content can form a positive flywheel, which can drive the potential growth of the entire platform. However, when hardware manufacturers do content, they will inevitably be questioned about their content production and operation capabilities.
Whether it is feasible for hardware manufacturers to do content, there are actually typical cases abroad. For example, apple's Apple TV+ has been online for more than two years, and its content has covered multiple genres such as original comedy, drama, thriller, documentary and children's program. Tim Cook has also publicly stated more than once that the launch of Apple TV+ is to enrich users' content choices, so that hardware users can establish a deeper connection with the platform through content.
Another example is Roku starting with a hardware TV box, and then cooperating with a number of TV manufacturers to embed TV box hardware modules, aggregating many streaming media content from large-screen terminals, setting up free Roku channels and acquiring Quibi to attack original content self-made content. As a result, Roku has become a dark horse in the overseas streaming media war, and has driven the rise in market value and stock price.
In China, Xiaomi's TV Internet business has enough confidence in the content track.
First of all, the hardware advantage is the premise of presenting long video content. From the perspective of equipment volume, Xiaomi TV has ranked first in the shipment of Chinese mainland for three consecutive years, and has become the first entrance to China's home scene traffic.
Not only is the number of people covered enough, the proportion of new middle-class families in the covered population is also relatively high, and correspondingly there is a high consumption power, which can be said to occupy the first-mover advantage at the user level; in addition, Xiaomi OTT Rihuo is also ahead of the industry, accounting for up to 20% of the market share.
In addition to hardware, the AIoT ecological-level intelligent hardware service provided by Xiaomi also superimposes another advantage for long-term video content marketing.
In the ecosystem, intelligent hardware devices can cover and connect a variety of scenarios, making the channels of content distribution more diverse, and also helping brand advertising to integrate into content and services, and subtly infiltrating the minds of target users.
Experience and technology constitute the premise of obtaining "traffic", and the accumulation of real content is the key to "retention".
In recent years, the upgrading of Xiaomi Marketing in terms of products and systems has paved the way for higher exposure of content, better reach users, and shorten the distance between users and explosive content.
For example, Xiaomi OTT upgraded the recommendation engine to make it more intelligent and more subdivided vertical labels to allow users to find explosive content that suits their interests. The Xiaomi TV's borderless desktop and short video guide can allow users to immerse themselves in it faster with a better viewing experience and stimulate interest in content. At the same time, Xiaomi TV will also use good IP to associate other high-quality IP content of the same type, which allows users to associate and jump to other content of interest faster after watching a certain content.
Video background guide
At the content operation level, Xiaomi TV has built a comprehensive "operation ecology" on the basis of completely opening up the system, platform and content.
For example, for key content such as iQIYI's drama "Wind Rises In Luoyang" and Mist Theater, Xiaomi OTT will do key operations in a targeted manner, including setting up a column area on the home page, innovating in content planning, creating high-quality visual effects, amplifying the sense of impact, and so on. In order to make the head IP get more attention and the possibility of payment, Xiaomi TV also has customized exclusive theater offers to attract more users to pay to watch.
At the same time, Xiaomi Marketing has also done content operation and content customization for more brands.
For example, last year, Xiaomi created an exclusive New Year theater for Coca-Cola, which aggregated brand micro-movies, New Year movies, and interactive lottery games, conveying brand values and deepening the emotional connection between users drinking Coca-Cola during the festival.
Xiaomi Marketing also launched the "Anjia Baking Channel" with dairy brand Anjia to launch brand awareness and popularity with brand customized baking courses. At the same time, by opening up the entrances of Xiao Ai Classmates and Xiaomi mobile phones, Anjia has naturally integrated more daily baking and cooking scenes; through the joint TV Taobao, users can also purchase products with one click, helping brands directly shorten the marketing conversion link, and also breaking the interaction between their own and third-party platforms, online and offline channels.
Xiaomi OTT "Anjia Baking Channel"
Once, OTT was still a new traffic depression, and now, OTT has entered the vision of advertisers and the public, and the platform has reached the time to explore more possibilities and find other new traffic outlets in the big screen. Xiaomi's TV Internet business enters the content track and invests in content, which will gradually show the increase in OTT content marketing, and will gradually drive the change of advertisers' vision.
The accumulation of content production capabilities and operational experience is not achieved overnight, but requires long-term layout and investment. On the road of making OTT content marketing a "new outlet", Xiaomi Marketing has taken the lead in taking a firm step.