In the "post-advertising" era, iQIYI relies on "content + AI" to break through

"If the ceiling can't be pierced, the floor will be pierced."

On April 23, at the main forum of the 2024 iQIYI World Conference, different from the usual arrangements in the past, Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer of iQIYI, gave the first opening speech. "Opening the ceiling on the content" is one of the important points, especially when the short drama that directly hits people's "cool points" is rampant, Wang Xiaohui's judgment of "floor and ceiling" becomes more and more weighty.

The second speech was by Liu Wenfeng, chief technology officer of iQIYI, with the theme of "Embracing AI and Creating the Future Together". iQIYI founder and CEO Gong Yu was arranged at the end, and told the plan for iQIYI's future content production, market development, and business model innovation in the form of a "finale".

Returning to the main line of "content is king", empowering the film and television industry with AI technology, the order of appearance may have revealed the exploration route of iQiyi in the post-advertising era. And this may have become the core logic of the current long video platform collective "through the cycle".

The story of the little people

At the "2023 iQIYI iJOY Enjoyment Conference" in September last year, the theme of Wang Xiaohui's speech was "Little People Walked to the Cross Street". At the 2024 iQIYI World Conference, the theme of Wang Xiaohui's speech became the same "Don't leave me alone to face the wind and sand of the whole world", and iQIYI is still firmly telling the story of "little people".

At the forum on April 23, Wang Xiaohui reiterated that the biggest hit must come from realistic themes. The background of this page of PPT is "Zhou Bingkun" in "The World". The show was released in early 2022 and became a phenomenal hit at that time.

In Wang Xiaohui's view, the current film and television industry has entered an era of "downward empathy and upward creation", and professional film and television creators should be brave in creating, re-putting critical realism in the mainstream creative field, and piercing the ceiling of creation.

This focus on "little people" is also reflected in the film list. On April 23, Wang Xiaohui announced that iQIYI will launch two new theaters, "Everyone Theater" and "Dust Theater".

Among them, "Dust Theater" focuses on telling the stories of ordinary people and exploring high-quality short series with new aesthetics and new audio-visual. "Everyone's Theater" aims to introduce works created by great writers for everyone, and deeply reflect the real situation and fireworks life of the public.

But the two also have a common characteristic, "in fact, they both want to express the care of ordinary people to get rid of the difficulties of life and pursue a happy life," Wang Xiaohui said.

The 2024-2025 iQiyi film list was also announced, and there are many popular figures. For example, in terms of variety shows, "The King of Comedy Stand-up Season", in terms of dramas, "Fox Demon Little Red Lady" series, etc. The suspense ace "Fog Theater" will also return, including "Above the Clouds" and "Just Defense".

In addition, the new Dust Theater will also bring two works, "My Altay" and "In the World". According to Wang Xiaohui, "My Altay" is about to be launched, and "In the World" is being filmed.

AIGC does the blessing

In addition to content, AI may be the content that iQiyi mentions the most in public. At the main forum of the China Network Audiovisual Conference last month, Gong Yu just mentioned that the online audiovisual industry has shown three major trends in the past year, one of which is scientific and technological innovation, AI, especially generative AI, empowering the industrialization of film and television and promoting the quality and efficiency of the industry.

On April 23rd, Liu Wenfeng described in detail how iQIYI embraces AI, for example, in terms of IP evaluation, the application of generative AI assists people to complete the previous 3 times the workload in 1/3 time, and the overall reading efficiency has increased by 9 times.

At present, generative AI is empowering all aspects of creation, mainly including planning, production and publicity, and AI has also become a "story" favored by long video platforms.

Last month, Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV launched the first domestic AI director "Aimang" appeared in the variety show "We"; Youku drama "Tang Di Gong Case" used artificial intelligence to generate the background of ancient Chang'an City, and "Under the Alien" used AI digital human actor "Lili".

In comparison, Tencent Video is a little cautious in its exploration of AI. For example, Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent and CEO of Tencent Online Video, once mentioned that the emergence of artificial intelligence represented by the Sora model may bring impact and opportunities to short video creation in the short term, but the impact on long video still needs to be observed.

But this does not prevent Tencent Video from exploring AIGC. Sun Zhonghuai said that at present, the platform's self-developed technology has made a breakthrough, and AIGC auxiliary capabilities have first formed a certain productivity in the animation field.

Zhan Junhao, a well-known strategic positioning expert and founder of Fujian Great Aim Brand Positioning Consulting, said in an interview with a reporter from Beijing Business Daily that the application of AI in film and television production, such as special effects production and scene construction, can greatly improve production efficiency and quality. Secondly, AI also plays a non-negligible role in content distribution and promotion, such as through intelligent recommendation algorithms, which can push content that is more in line with user interests to users, improving user stickiness and activity.

"In addition, AI can help creators better understand and grasp market dynamics and audience needs, so as to create more popular works." Zhan Junhao said.

Advertising, membership

At the end of the main forum of the 2024 iQIYI World Conference, Gong Yu appeared in the finale and told a lot of thoughts about iQIYI. In his view, the time has come for the entertainment industry to grow steadily faster than GDP growth. In addition to continuing to pursue high quality and diversity in content, and widely using generative AI in production to improve the level of industrialization, Gong Yu also mentioned some new thinking of iQiyi to adapt to market changes.

For example, the "sunset" industry is changed to a "sunrise" industry. In the face of structural changes in the consumer group, Gong Yu believes that doing a good job in "one old and one young" service is the key to the creation of iQiyi products in the future.

"In the past 20 years, Internet products have been focusing on serving young people, and the current 'sunset' industry has become a 'sunrise' industry, and in the future, we should think more about how to make products and services suitable for middle-aged and elderly people,Gong Yu said,At the same time, iQiyi will provide children with a healthy entertainment experience through kiwi fruit TV"children's mode"and the mobile Qibabu App。

In terms of market development, Gong Yu believes that the era of dividends of the domestic film and television industry and the Internet industry relying on horse racing and population growth has passed, and overseas business is necessary to open up greater growth space. In terms of business model, Gong Yu highlighted that content derivative business is the focus of future business model innovation, driven by generative AI-led technology.

It is worth mentioning that when discussing the business model at the beginning, Gong Yu introduced a big background: since 2018, the number one revenue advertisement in the film and television industry, which has a long history, has continued to decline, and the membership model born more than ten years ago has also slowly climbed since 2019, and there can no longer be about double-digit growth.

In recent years, emerging models such as live streaming on short videos have had a direct impact on the "advertising + membership" business model of the long video platform, which has also prompted the long video platform to collectively reduce costs and increase efficiency, return to content, and drive growth with high-quality products. So we saw iQiyi's "The World" and "Hurricane", Tencent Video's "Disappearing Season" and "Flowers", Youku's "Chasing the Murderer in the White Night" and "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an".

"Generally speaking, the long video platform is entering a stage of development that pays more attention to content quality and innovation, and the application of AI technology provides a strong boost for the development of this stage", Zhan Junhao believes that in the future, with the continuous development and improvement of AI technology, its application in the film and television industry will also be more extensive and deeper, bringing us more surprises and possibilities.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Yang Yuehan