The long video pattern has changed, can Youai Tengmang B get out of the "infinite war"?

Author| Mia

Edit| fig

How many steps do you need to take to move from the same situation to the handshake and peace?

In recent years, the trend of combining long and short videos has become more and more pronounced. Following the partnership between Sohu Video, iQiyi and Douyin, the "Touteng War" also officially came to an end, and on April 7, Tencent's video copyright library was opened to Douyin, and the two sides officially announced that they would cooperate on the linkage promotion of long and short videos, and the second creation of short videos.

Compared with the three Youaiteng companies jointly questioning the infringement of short video platforms in 2021, Tencent sued Douyin 168 times in the second half of 2021, which can be described as no eternal enemy, only eternal profit and avoidance of harm. What kind of landscape will change in the online video space? What kind of disruption and opportunities will AIGC bring when it is in full swing?

Review of Youai Tengmang B performance: long and short video coopetition relationship regeneration

Netflix reorganized its film department, laid off a small number of employees, and Disney announced 7,000 layoffs, and overall the economic recovery in the post-epidemic era has a long way to go. Since iQiyi announced its full-year profit and Tencent Video announced that it would start making profits in October last year, long-form video "improving quality and reducing quantity" and "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" finally saw the dawn of profitability, so what should be the next step?

The first thing to see is that long-form video platforms are still under high cost pressure. According to the statistics of "Lei Bao", the 2022 performance report shows that among the "Aiteng B", Tencent will be 67.31 billion yuan in 2022 (excluding amortization of intangible assets), a slight increase and ranked first, and the average annual content cost of Tencent's articles in the past four years has remained at a level of more than one billion; iQiyi's content cost was RMB16.5 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 20%; Station B's operating costs for the whole year last year were RMB18 billion, the year-on-year increase was due to the increase in revenue sharing costs and content costs, and according to its financial results announcement, the company's revenue sharing cost last year was 9.1 billion yuan. Therefore, it can be estimated that the content cost it invested last year was about 8.9 billion yuan.

At the same time, due to the large environmental impact last year, almost all platforms experienced a decline in advertising revenue. Mango TV's advertising business revenue was 4 billion yuan, down 27% year-on-year. iQIYI's annual online advertising service revenue was RMB5.3 billion, down 25% year-on-year. Tencent media advertising revenue fell 20% to 10.7 billion yuan. This trend may improve this year, but it will not be specific to each platform, which faces different problems.

iQiyi, which held five "popular dramas" last year, caused heated discussions several times due to "member price increases" and "can't cast screens"; Tencent Video lacked explosive sales in the second half of the year, pointing out in its financial report that members were lost due to "delayed content scheduling"; Youku's explosive manufacturing power is still weaker than iQiyi and Tencent Video, Yunhe Data's 2022 serial drama effective screen list, Youku solo dramas only account for 2 seats, iQiyi and Tencent Video on the list of 9 dramas, 4 respectively, after Ali's business adjustment, Youku may face new challenges of independent listing and self-financing;

The problem of Mango TV's partial science is still prominent, with strong variety shows and weak dramas; In 2022, the net loss of Station B for the whole year was 7.5 billion yuan, an increase of 10% year-on-year. The number of monthly active users and the average monthly paying users were 28 million month-on-month, and the "UP main stop tide" has aroused the attention of the outside world about its commercialization dilemma.

At present, iQiyi, which was popular last year, has taken the lead in the number of users with 120 million members; after iQiyi and Tencent Video took the lead in making profits, Youku's pressure increased, and its losses narrowed for seven consecutive quarters, and it still needs to complete the challenge of breakeven and even profitability; With the cooperation between iQiyi and Tencent Video and Douyin, the co-opetition relationship and overall pattern of long and short videos have undergone new changes, and more platforms may join the ranks of long-term and short-term cooperation under the demonstration effect.

After taking a key step in this long-term collaboration, Kuaishou and Station B became "lonely". In terms of traffic data and publicity influence, Douyin is more prominent, and as a Chinese video platform, station B itself also produces long-form dramas, which has a certain business overlap and competition with Tencent Video, making Douyin a better solution. Considering the relationship between Tencent as a shareholder of Kuaishou and Station B, the future cooperation between the two parties may be less obstructed.

On the one hand, all major platforms have members raise prices, explore value-added services, and deepen the existing market, on the other hand, strengthening cooperation with short videos to attract new users is one of the solutions after facing the bottleneck of mobile Internet growth. According to the "2023 China Network Audiovisual Development Research Report" released at the 10th China Network Audiovisual Conference, the scale of mainland Internet audiovisual users reached 1.040 billion, surpassing instant messaging to become the largest Internet application. In 2022, the market size of the pan-network audiovisual industry will be 727.44 billion yuan, an increase of 4.4% over 2021. Among them, the market size of the short video field is 292.83 billion, accounting for 40.3%, which is the main source of industrial increment.

In fact, short videos are affecting the form of content from all aspects, and the increasingly short drama, mini-dramatized long dramas, and "micro-short dramas" are one of the results of the integration of long and short videos in the era of attention scarcity.

The huge traffic pool of short video platforms can supplement the increment of long video platforms, and their publicity influence is undoubted. After iQiyi cooperated with Douyin, last year's "Canglan Tips" and "Tang Dynasty Tricks", this year's annual drama king "Crazy" all ate dividends through a large number of fermentation popularity in Douyin, "Crazy" "Eating Fish", "What Grade" and other famous memes came out of the circle, and finally received 59 billion views, effectively feeding back the long-tail influence of the drama. The cooperation between Tencent Video and Douyin is conducive to the comprehensive publicity of its dramas, and at the same time promotes the standardization of short video content licensing.

It is foreseeable that under the "anti-monopoly" orientation and the pressure of competing products, although "Tou Teng cooperation" is the general trend, long and short videos will not put eggs in one basket. What Tencent Video will eventually embrace and integrate in all aspects is still its own video account. On April 7, according to the WeChat Open Class news, the WeChat Channels account creation sharing plan was officially launched, and high-quality original creators with an effective number of followers (fans) of 100 or more and meeting the content specifications can apply to join.

Can ChatGPT change the competitive landscape of long-form video?

The Q1 pattern has been basically clear: "Crazy", which has the largest traffic and contributed the most revenue since its establishment, guaranteed iQIYI's performance in Q1 and continued its market share lead: Yunhe data statistics show that the effective playback of iQIYI dramas in Q1 was 36.7 billion (accounting for 47% of the entire network market share), a year-on-year increase of 30%; Member content was effectively played 24.3 billion (accounting for 56% of the total network share), a year-on-year increase of 83%. Tencent Video's "Three-Body Problem" has gradually increased its reputation, and its popularity is inferior to "Crazy" but it also has a good performance. Youku "Who is He" effectively promotes new recruits and increases revenue, and the reputation is high and low. Station B's national style animation "China Qitan" cooperated with Shanghai American Film also has the problem of high popularity, opening and going.

Later this year, the biggest change key and content tipping point that major platforms may face has also emerged: like all walks of life, in addition to the "foundation", AIGC technology is undoubtedly the biggest outlet, opportunity, and challenge. If used properly, it may become the key to the platform's great savings in money, manpower and material resources. And whoever can be the first to find the best way to open AIGC technology may be able to gain a strategic advantage in the "infinity war" of long videos and overtake in corners. AI technology has been widely used in short video creation. Recently, Netflix has released its first AIGC animated short film "Dogs and Boys".

Film and television companies are already eager to test the possibility of AI liberating productivity. In February this year, Huace Film and Television publicly stated that the company opened the use of ChatGPT and encouraged employees to use it in their daily work. On March 19, Wang Changtian of Guangguang Media said in an internal letter to employees: "The progress of ChatGPT this year makes me more convinced that the combination of AI technology and content creation will enter a substantive stage and will bring major changes to the film and television industry." Light Media released an AI-drawn "Go to Your Island" promotional poster.

At the 10th China Network Audiovisual Conference, AIGC technology attracted strong attention from major platforms. Sun Zhonghuai, CEO of Tencent Video, believes that Tencent Video will also invest more technology and funds, such as the application of cutting-edge technologies such as AIGC in film and television creation, and focus on promoting the mutual empowerment of film and television shooting technology and virtual technology. ChatGPT can be applied to the basic editing of TV scripts, which can save relatively large labor costs.

Chen Rui, CEO of Station B, mentioned that in the past year, the number of AI-related video submissions on Station B increased by more than 86% year-on-year, and the cumulative number of ChatGPT-related videos exceeded 200 million. iQiyi Gong Yu believes that AI is evolving too fast, but it is difficult to replace top scientists and artists. With the continuous expansion of the application scenarios of AIGC technology, it can automatically generate text, images, audio and other content according to a large number of data models, allowing the industry to see a broader prospect of intelligent production.

Language and text and graphic images became the first to be replaced, and in March, the Hollywood Writers Guild allowed ChatGPT to be used in screenwriting. According to entertainment unicorns, at present, there are domestic publicity material companies and advertising companies that have begun to actively use AIGC technology to make posters.

For patterned and routine commercial assembly line operations, screenwriting, production coordinator, budget, finance, scheduling, art, lighting, photography, recording, editing and most other positions, AI may be competent or provide strong assistance, it is difficult to replace the creative crystallization of "flash of inspiration", and actors and other professions that are highly dependent on experience and based on the "human body" itself. From this point of view, AIGC technology will continue to penetrate deeply into the content production process, which will become the mainstream trend, and further improve the efficiency of "cost reduction and efficiency increase".

But film and television companies and long-form video platforms should also see the impact of the double-edged sword of AIGC technology. The topic of "Station B Big UP said that AI creation is cracking down on originality" illustrates the impact of AI technology on the original creation ecology, AI changing heads or falling into ethical dilemmas may even be illegal, massive production of content needs to invest more review manpower, and copyright infringement questions, explosive growth also means that "electronic squeeze" content homogenization, and even loss of vitality. Fundamentally, it is still human aesthetics that determine the upper limit of AI creation, so it may be better to let AIGC act as an auxiliary and set boundaries and fences for it than to act as the main output.

The war on long-form video will continue, and the entire landscape of content production and platform status will continue to change: no one dares to slack off on this long road.