However, after the cancellation of advanced vodge, can the price increase save the video? Judging from the financial report, after the continuous increase in membership prices, it seems that the loss momentum of major video websites has not been curbed. Many people in the industry are worried that if the price increase strategy is not used properly, it may force away users who do not have the need to chase the drama, and the loss will be more serious.
On April 20, Netflix shares plummeted 35.12%, and the market value evaporated by nearly $54.4 billion, equivalent to 350 billion yuan.
Some analysts believe that Netflix's stock price fell sharply because of the farewell to high growth. According to the earnings report released by Netflix, the number of paying streaming users decreased by 200,000 in the first quarter. The decline in the company's paying users is related to rising prices. In the first quarter of this year, Netflix began a price increase strategy in the North American market.
Radar Finance noted that domestic long video platforms are also trying to increase prices.
On April 20, Tencent adjusted the prices of Tencent Video VIP and Super Film VIP members. It is reported that this round of price increases is between 5 yuan and 20 yuan.
After the price increase, the "Tencent Video VIP Continuous Subscription Year" rose from the original 218 yuan to 238 yuan, and the "Tencent Video VIP Continuous Monthly Subscription", "Tencent Video VIP Annual Pass" and "Super Film and Television VIP Continuous Monthly Subscription" increased by 5 yuan respectively.
Tencent Video is not the only video platform to increase prices, and at the end of 2021, iQiyi and Mango TV have also raised membership prices. In the eyes of the outside world, membership and advertising are the main sources of income for long videos. In the case of declining advertising, increasing membership revenue and reducing content costs have become one of the few options for long video platforms.
Youku, which has not increased its price for the time being, has recently sacrificed the operation of "inviting 5 friends on the basis of VIP members to unlock the latest two episodes", which is considered to be powerless to "grab money" and can only make an article on "grabbing people".
In recent years, video VIP users have experienced advanced on-demand, paid tidbits, and price increases, and then ushered in the "slash a knife" experience. In this regard, some commentators said that under the fancy operation of the platform, the three words of VIP have been reduced from the past noble status symbols to the object of the video platform "Xue Wool".
In addition, the long video platform, which is deeply mired in losses, has recently adjusted the sub-account model, which has become the main means to further control costs in addition to price increases.
From "grabbing money" to "robbing people"
After the price increase forecast on April 9, on April 20, Tencent Video officially opened the price adjustment for VIP and Super Film VIP members.
Radar Finance noted that in this price increase measure, the VIP selected by the user was continuously raised by 5 yuan per month, an increase of 25% per month from the previous 20 yuan.
In addition, the monthly subscription price of Super Film and Television VIP was adjusted from 30 yuan to 35 yuan, and the price of Tencent Video VIP annual pass was adjusted from 253 yuan to 258 yuan.
The prices of monthly, seasonal, annual and consecutive annual packages of Tencent Video VIP and Super Film VIP remain unchanged.
The price adjustment is from 00:00 on April 20, 2022, and users who were already in the auto-renewal status of Tencent Video VIP or Super Film VIP before this time will enjoy the preferential renewal price before the adjustment until October 23, 2022 if they do not change the current auto-renewal status.
In this regard, netizens have launched a complaint, "Even a Zhen Huan biography is not crazy? "Don't buy, take the member's money to shoot bad movies, shoot fan exclusive films, and buy more money." "If I don't continue, I have very few video resources, so why did I renew it?" ”
It is understood that Tencent Video's last member price adjustment occurred in April a year ago. On April 10, 2021, Tencent Video announced an adjustment to the price of VIP members.
Radar Finance found that before the first price increase in 2021, Tencent Video's monthly subscription fee for consecutive monthly subscription members was 15 yuan, but in about a year, this fee rose from 15 yuan to 20 yuan, and then rose to 25 yuan today.
Similarly, the members of the consecutive package season have risen from 45 yuan before the price increase last year to 58 yuan and then to the current 68 yuan; the members of the consecutive package year have risen from 178 yuan before the price increase last year to 218 yuan and then to the current 238 yuan. Other non-consecutive members also have different degrees of increase.
In fact, looking at the entire long video industry, in recent years, the "rising voice" has continued.
In November 2020, iQIYI took the lead in breaking the silence of video membership prices for many years, and officially announced the adjustment of membership prices. iQIYI adjusted membership to six tiers, with prices ranging from a minimum of 19 yuan for consecutive monthly subscriptions to 68 yuan for consecutive quarterly cards, and then to a maximum annual pass of 248 yuan.
According to the calculation of the continuous monthly card before the adjustment of 12 yuan, the continuous quarterly card is 58 yuan, and the continuous annual card is 178 yuan, the increase is between 17.2% and 58.3%.
By the end of 2021, various platforms have followed up to open price increases again.
In mid-December 2021, iQIYI updated the subscription price of gold VIP members, and the price of monthly pass ordinary users rose from 25 yuan to 30 yuan, and the price of consecutive monthly subscriptions rose from 19 yuan to 22 yuan, with a price increase of 20% and 16% respectively.
At the end of December 2021, the price increase of Mango TV members was between 1 yuan and 20 yuan.
On February 1 this year, Migu Video also adjusted the price of Migu Video Diamond members and Pass pass, of which the price increase of the Diamond Membership Annual Pass was the highest among all platforms, rising from 175 yuan to 218 yuan, an increase of nearly 25%.
In this regard, Yuan Shuai, the relevant person in charge of the China Cultural Management Association, believes that "domestic video platforms need to purchase a large number of copyrights every year, and the high procurement cost makes the platform monetization environment more and more bad, and it is an inevitable choice to increase prices in order to survive." ”
However, there are few Youku videos from the sound of price increases, which is a different way.
It is reported that this time Youku is in line with Pinduoduo, in the solo drama "My name is Zhao Jiadi", for VIP users, opened up a new experience of "inviting five friends and unlocking the plot in advance", and each invitee can only help once during the event.
Subsequently, the official customer service replied that the "Invite Friends to Help" activity was limited to episodes 23 and 24, and other episodes had not yet launched the corresponding activities. But it also means that watching each episode in advance requires inviting different friends to help, and watching 2 episodes requires inviting 10 friends.
In view of the fact that Youku's operation of pulling new with the help of the series is very similar to Pinduoduo's "slashing a knife", Kuduoduo, which is called "robbing people" by netizens. Some comments also pointed out that on the "preemptive look" approach, there is no essential difference between letting members pay again or pulling friends, which are all advanced on-demand that have been intensively named before.
However, Youku's innovative payment model does not end here. According to media reports, the previous hit "Mountain and River Order" filmed two versions of the ending, one version for the sad film, and the other version for the "3 yuan payment" article.
After the finale, Youku also launched the exclusive undisclosed tidbits ["Lang Ji" Jianghu] series, which is updated one episode a day, a total of 7 episodes. There are only 6 minutes of tidbits, and each episode costs $1.
The double-edged sword effect of price increases
Taking stock of the history of long videos on VIP users' "wool" can be described as a variety of tricks.
For movies launched on the video platform, in the past, after users logged on to the online video platform, VIP members could watch for free, ordinary members needed to pay to watch, and only some of the more popular Hollywood blockbusters such as "Avengers 4" and "Aquaman" required VIP members to pay extra.
However, in the Spring Festival file in 2019, "The King of New Comedy", "Flying Life" and "The Wandering Earth" followed the example of Hollywood blockbusters, and chose the payment model to land on the video platform at the first time of the screening, non-members paid 12 yuan, and members paid 6 yuan.
And even if the user buys it, it only has 2 days of viewing rights, so spending money to watch domestic films online is worth it, which caused great controversy at the time. This is also the first time that IYouteng has tried to charge VIP users twice.
In August 2019, the new payment model "Advanced On Demand" was born, and the fire's "Chen Qing Ling" became the first advanced on-demand drama to test the waters. VIP users can unlock new episodes in advance through secondary payment (3 yuan per episode), and according to media statistics, Tencent Video recorded more than 75 million yuan on the same day.
In December 2019, the popular drama "Qing Yu Nian" was broadcast on Tencent and iQiyi, and the two platforms invariably opened the advanced on-demand service, and paid another 50 yuan on the basis of membership to unlock 6 episodes of content in advance.
In the early days of the launch of the "advanced on demand" mechanism, the market did not set off too much resistance, because the target audience of "Chen Qingling" was mostly members of the rice circle and had become accustomed to "Kryptonian" consumption.
However, Wu Shengwei, a lawyer at Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, sued Beijing iQIYI Technology Co., Ltd. to the Beijing Internet Court for "bad experience advertising" and "advanced on-demand" charges when watching "Qing Yu Nian".
After the two trials, iQIYI was ordered to compensate the plaintiff Wu Shengwei for the loss of notary fees of 1500 yuan, and provided him with the VIP membership rights and interests originally enjoyed by the plaintiff for 15 consecutive days.
In September 2021, the People's Daily named the "advanced on-demand" of the video platform, and the professionals interviewed in the article said that the automatic renewal and "advanced on-demand" model is not advisable and is contrary to relevant regulations and business ethics. On October 4 of that year, iQiyi, Tencent, and Youku issued a statement to cancel the advanced on-demand service for episodes.
After cutting off the "advanced on-demand" road to making money, adjusting the VIP price has become a common choice for all platforms. From the perspective of revenue, price increases can bring visible benefits to the platform.
Taking Tencent Video as an example, according to the annual report of Tencent Holdings, as of December 31, 2021, the number of paid members of Tencent Video increased by 1% year-on-year to 124 million, ranking first in the number of paid members in the domestic market. According to the latest annual pass membership price increase of 5 yuan, Tencent Video's 124 million paid members can bring 620 million yuan of new revenue per month, and 7.44 billion yuan more in a year.
But at the same time, round after round of price increases, the negative impact has emerged.
The most obvious cost is user churn. According to the data, the number of Paid Tencent Video members decreased by 5 million compared with 129 million in the third quarter of 2021. According to iQIYI's financial report, in the fourth quarter of 2022, the number of iQIYI paid users was 97 million, a decrease of 7.7 million from the previous quarter.
Although the decline in the number of members cannot be directly related to the price increase, the price increase will undoubtedly affect the willingness of members to renew. Some netizens said, "I am not against price increases, but I am very disgusted that there is no good content." In the long run, users will only be willing to continue to pay for membership fees if the platform provides content that matches the price.
What else is there to do with long videos?
Losses seem to have become a label that Aiyouteng can't get rid of.
iQIYI's financial report shows that in fiscal 2021, the company's total revenue was 30.6 billion yuan, an increase of 3% year-on-year, and the operating loss of non-GAAP financial indicators was 3 billion yuan.
Tencent admitted in its earnings report that Tencent Video will alleviate the plight of video platform losses by reducing cost expenditures. As for Youku, another head video website, the latest data from Alibaba's financial report shows that the adjusted EBITA of digital media and entertainment in fiscal 2021 was a loss of 6.118 billion yuan, compared with a loss of 11.446 billion yuan in fiscal 2020.
According to the "Economic Daily" report data, Aiyouteng burned out more than 100 billion yuan in ten years, and still can't see profit expectations.
At present, the top priority of Aiyouteng is to move closer to profitability. In addition to Tencent Video's measures to optimize costs and reduce financial losses, iQiyi's CEO also set "breakeven" as an operational goal for the first time.
Radar Finance noted that after layoffs, business contractions and price increases, the main long video platforms have recently adjusted the sub-account model and "opened the knife" to partners.
Recently, iQiyi announced that it will implement a new online film cooperation model from April 1, the most interesting of which is the change of two rules, "cancel the platform rating" and "divide the account according to the length of time".
After the cancellation of the platform rating, the sub-bill price of member viewing will be unified, of which the exclusive online video is 1.5 yuan / hour, and the non-exclusive online video is 1.05 yuan / hour.
The time-based ledger also changed the previous six-minute effective viewing to divide the account, and the number of paid views of one or more paid users that exceeded the trial time was the primary principle of the producer and the platform.
In iQiyi's view, the new rules can prevent the plot from collapsing in a slippery slope after six minutes, and play a role in urging producers to improve the quality of the film.
According to titanium media reports, Tencent Video held a closed-door meeting on April 8, discussing topics related to cost optimization, creative incentives, and long-term sustainable development.
In terms of Youku, in October last year, the platform added a "post-broadcast rating" sub-accounting model on the basis of the two modes of "advertising CPM cooperation" and "pre-broadcast grading", and carried out film-based sub-account cooperation according to the unit price corresponding to the rating results.
Industry insiders believe that the innovation of this ledger sharing model is an important step in the cost control of long-term video, but it involves the change of the rules of benefit distribution, and the acceptance of the producers remains to be further observed.
This article originated from Radar Finance