Text | 阑西
Just after "My Altay" became another hot spot in the domestic film and television industry and the Chinese Internet, its producer iQiyi handed over a financial report with a very high technology component, and it can even be said that this financial report explains to some extent why iQiyi, as a long video platform, has become a sample for the outside world to observe the landing of generative AI.
In the first quarter of this year, iQIYI's overall revenue was 7.9 billion yuan, of which membership revenue contributed 4.8 billion, ARM (average monthly single member revenue) has increased quarter-on-quarter for 6 consecutive quarters, and in the case of relatively stable marginal costs, iQIYI's non-GAAP operating profit margin was pulled to 14%, and non-GAAP operating profit reached 1.1 billion yuan, both hitting a record high.
This also makes the topic of "iQIYI started to make money" outdated, the company's profitability has long been no problem, and the new challenge is how to outperform the economic cycle and make the heavy business of streaming media into an increase in value.
In the context of weak consumption, the expenditure on watching dramas on the long video platform is not a rigid need in the real sense, and users can take out their wallets to vote, which in turn proves that the content value of iQiyi is indeed worth the money they pay month after month.
Although iQIYI, like other Internet companies, is groping its way forward on the road of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, it has not reduced the quality of content supply in pursuit of commercial returns, but has frequently produced excellent works. Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer of iQIYI, mentioned at the iQIYI World Conference some time ago that if film and television creation does not go up and pierce the ceiling, the audience will solve their own problems through other forms and break through the floor.
Last year, the work "Moses on the Plains" of "Fog Theater" broke into the Berlin Film Festival, and this year's "Dust Theater" launched "My Altay" was shortlisted for the Cannes TV Festival.
In the earnings call, CEO Gong Yu summarized many reasons for the steady improvement of operating efficiency in the first quarter, such as the quality of original content still leading the industry, and the refined expansion of membership rights, so that paying users can better perceive the value for money, but it is relatively easy to be less obvious - or easy to be underestimated - iQIYI has a benchmark efficiency example in the application of technology, including AI.
Don't forget, iQIYI is, of course, a content company, but at the same time, it's also a technology company.
The leverage effect of technology-enabled content
In February this year, OpenAI released the Wensheng video model Sora, whose fluency and support time are far behind Runway and Pika and other track products, and also made the AI substitution theory very popular again, and even burned the fire to Hollywood's backyard.
Obviously, OpenAI is deliberately approaching film and television companies, and the objects that Sora invites to test are basically directors, screenwriters, designers, and other figures, but it keeps a certain distance from interested Internet practitioners.
The reasons for Sora's delay in releasing have gradually emerged in the long wait: the generation is slow, the cost is high, and several stunning demos from third parties have been revealed to have a large number of post-production modifications, which are not as controllable as everyone thinks.
What's more, the wave of generative AI has oscillated between the extremes of world disruption and industrial bubbles, and has largely deviated from the direction in which it is supposed to enhance human values.
In contrast, iQIYI, which has both film and technology pedigree, has a very pragmatic understanding of generative AI, which is neither romantic enough to believe that everyone can create a video narrative out of thin air, nor does it hold a certain almost hateful Luddist stance on technology like fundamentalist artists, but uses an old saying to treat and evaluate change itself:
It doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches a mouse, it's a good cat.
Today, when major Internet companies are rolling up the model base, iQIYI's weight in it may not be large, but in terms of infiltrating the large model into the business as an underlying tool, iQIYI's "unity of knowledge and action" is unique.
The trickle-down effect caused by this is that every core link from planning to development, to production and publicity has been improved in productivity and various benefits have been accumulated.
For example, iQIYI's film and television literature model already has the ability to do IP screening, script digestion and dismantling for upstream studios; On the other hand, the "Xingluo Plot Understanding Platform" supports the AI search on the user side, making the selection and viewing of films intelligent, and realizing the most classic needs for cost reduction and efficiency increase.
What's more intuitive is that iQIYI's AI-generated personalized recommendation posters are already better than manual mapping in terms of click-through rate and playback time of conversion; The promotional materials for the operation activities of the station are no longer a rigid and fixed set of style templates, and are richer in terms of materials and elements, thanks to the Lora model independently trained by the design team.
This is not a cliché story of AI replacing designers,iQIYI's designers found that they can complete the workload that used to be completed in 2 weeks in 3 days,New production efficiency,It brings a new experience model to users,It also brings more opportunities for the content itself to be "seen" and "selected"。
There is a well-known concept in the development industry called the "man-month myth", which means that if one person takes 10 months to complete a project, it does not mean that 10 people can complete the same project in 1 month, otherwise it is mythical and unrealizable: "It's like it takes 10 months to conceive a life, no matter how many mothers there are. Man-months are only suitable for tasks that can be fully decomposed, which is feasible in the work of harvesting wheat and harvesting cotton."
iQIYI's practice of AI-empowered content proves that as long as the process can be broken down clearly enough, AI can become the efficiency cow of the enterprise, squeezing out more compound interest milk for high-cost businesses.
A strong boost to business model innovation
The Economist once published a report that generative AI is to today what a tractor was to a hundred years ago, and at first glance it seems to be a cliché to celebrate the technological revolution, but a closer look reveals that the business magazine's claim is "optimistic, but cautious".
When the tractor was introduced, it caused probably as much buzz as ChatGPT today, and on the day it was exhibited in Illinois, newspapers across the country were praising the seismic change in American agriculture.
In fact, the tractor did start the modern agriculture of automation, but for most of the first half of the last century, it did not form the so-called devastating momentum, and the horses and mules lasted longer than many people expected, for many reasons, such as the weight of the early tractors was too large, and they were loaded with metal wheels instead of rubber wheels, which could easily sink into the soil, and the concentration of farms was not high enough to spill the capital to purchase tractors on a large scale.
In other words, while everyone is expecting the AI industry to usher in its own "iPhone moment", another possibility exists is that AI has actually entered the "tractor moment", and in the gradual technological iteration, it has slowly developed rubber wheels, installed lifting harvesting rods, and reconstructed the entire project from planting to delivery of goods.
iQIYI's use and attitude towards AI,That's probably it,Neither radical like a god,Nor underestimate its potential value,Like all emerging technologies,As long as it can be used by me,It's the best creation。
In this Q1, iQIYI has used AI capabilities to pull out a double-digit growth rate in effect advertising revenue, and this growth trend is expected to continue.
The effect advertising of the long video platform requires a large number of materials to be tested repeatedly,In the large-size、High-resolution delivery environment,The burden on the producer is extremely heavy,iQiyi's Qilin effect advertising platform integrates generative AI capabilities,Advertisers can directly produce raw materials in batches,Even according to the different content of the patch,Personalized presentation of advertisements that meet the user's viewing scene。
The AI tool "Smart Drawing", which supports multiple functions including Wensheng diagrams, Tusheng diagrams, and copywriting assistants, has an industry penetration rate of more than 70% and an 88% improvement in material production efficiency. AI-generated ad creatives have increased the return on investment of advertisers in industries such as games and short dramas by more than 50%.
Essentially, tools are efficiency, and the ability to make and use tools is the competitiveness of an enterprise. Providing advertisers with better AI tools achieves a win-win situation for both parties in terms of business returns.
Gong Yu mentioned at the iQIYI World Conference that in addition to digging deep into the domestic market and improving quality, iQIYI will also open up more growth space for overseas business. In terms of action, iQIYI also achieved a year-on-year increase in membership revenue in overseas markets in the first quarter, of which the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, China increased by nearly 80% year-on-year.
In order for content to be successful, in addition to the attractiveness of the content itself, what else can technology do?
Sun Bin, vice president of iQiyi, once said that when the platform goes overseas to the Vietnamese market for domestic TV dramas, it is limited to the lack of dubbing resources, and many times all the roles in a drama are completed by the same voice actor. With the blessing of AI, although the voice actor is still the same voice actor, AI can process the vocals into different timbres very naturally, and achieve a leapfrog upgrade in supply quality under the condition that the cost has barely increased.
Read the popular models and understand iQiyi
The terroir of northern Xinjiang recorded by "My Altay" is extremely good, with mountains, rivers, sheep, and life intertwined, coupled with a stylized narrative language, bringing users the pleasure of watching movies like pure oxygen.
Behind the scenes of the production of this idyllic miniseries, it is full of technological empowerment: the reason why the picture is pleasing to the eye is because iQIYI is the first time in the industry to try to shoot and produce a drama with the high specifications of "true 4K + native HDR + panoramic sound design"; The reason why the cost is controllable is because iQIYI's self-developed "production to the cloud" solution allows the editing director and other main creators to work according to the cloud materials in different places, which greatly alleviates the pressure on cost and timeliness.
The visible place is the extraordinary tension between art and creation, and the invisible place is the light and heat empowerment of technology and ruthlessness, only by understanding the changes that are taking place in the streaming media industry can we truly understand the biggest highlight of iQIYI's financial report.