Welcome to the wechat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Text / Tan Xiaohan

The website is in controversy again.

On April 20, the price of Tencent video was raised again: the price of continuous package increased from 218 yuan to 238 yuan, and the price of continuous package, annual card and super film and television VIP increased by 5 yuan respectively; A few days ago, Youku was accused by users of learning to “cut a knife” from pinduoduo because “my name is Zhao Jiadi” opened the function of “inviting five friends and unlocking the plot in advance” to members.

Over the past few years, video websites have been one of the areas most under fire from users. “Take members’ money to make bad films and fan exclusive films.” One user complained that the quality of website content has not improved, but the member price will rise every year.

The long video platform, which has been accused of rising prices for years, has not embarked on a smooth path of profitability, but has fallen into the mire of stagnant growth in revenue and user scale.

The advertising market is shrinking. The video platform that once relied on advertising and members walking on two legs puts more hope on member payment, and constantly tries to explore ways to increase income, such as advance on demand.

However, with the increasing complaints of consumers, the China Consumer Association criticized the advance on-demand by name. Last October, aiyouteng successively offline the advance on-demand function, leaving less space for everyone to move.

The dilemma faced by the long video platform today is related to its early loss for user scale and the long-term implementation of the strategy of free and low price. In the field of e-commerce, online car hailing and local life, this strategy has been tried repeatedly, but in the field of long video, which is difficult to monopolize, the playing method of simply pursuing user scale has failed.

Now, when aiyouteng’s user scale encounters a growth bottleneck and tries to return to common sense and try to increase prices and layers in member services, it will inevitably make users feel a gap from extravagance to thrift.

In fact, as early as the beginning of 2019, iqiyi’s solo online play exclusive memory launched the activity of inviting friends to help unlock the series, that is, non members can watch two episodes from Monday to Wednesday, VIP members can watch one week in advance, and invite five friends to unlock and watch the full episode. At that time, this practice did not cause too much public opinion backlash like the recent Youku’s “my name is Zhao Jiadi”.

However, after the advance on-demand is stopped, the voice of users is strengthened again, and the video website is more and more in a situation of being blamed at every turn; The Internet industry’s long-term reliance on innovation and promotion methods is gradually bored by users. The siege of Youku is also a concentrated outbreak of users’ dissatisfaction with the “cut” mode.

In the final analysis, a new balance needs to be formed between platforms, users and regulators based on common sense. The public opinion environment needs to give more space to the long video platform in terms of business model, and the platform also needs to set clearer membership rights and interests and provide better content.

Otherwise, the triangle game may be completely shut down, and the platform will withdraw from the market after exhausting its funds for many years. If users want to see the next meal dramas such as the legend of Zhen Huan and the legend of Wulin, they can only rely on Baidu online disk.

A

The dilemma of long video platform is not aiyouteng patent, and Naifei, the “ancestor” of video membership, has had a hard time recently.

In the first quarter of this year, Naifei’s paid subscribers decreased by 200000. Naifei explained that the decrease was mainly related to the suspension of Russian services and the rise of membership fees.

Naifei used the price increase as early as 2011. As a result, 800000 users unsubscribed in the United States in the third quarter of the price increase, and more users are expected to unsubscribe in the fourth quarter. Dramatically, Naifei’s revenue increased by 63% in the third quarter, which also made Naifei firm its price increase route and raised prices several times in the following years.

Every price increase of the video platform will encounter a rebound in public opinion, but to be fair, the price increase of the platform has its helplessness. Take iqiyi as an example. In the fourth quarter of last year, its revenue was 7.4 billion yuan and its content cost was 4.9 billion yuan, accounting for 66.2% of its revenue. Despite all efforts to control expenditure, iqiyi still lost 1 billion yuan in the quarter (not in accordance with U.S. GAAP).

Although the price increase can prolong life, after all, there is a risk of loss of users and declining reputation. It can be used once a year. In order to improve ARPU (average income per user), video websites have found a new charging method - advance on demand.

In December 2019, iqiyi and Tencent video jointly announced that the popular drama “Qing Nian Nian” at that time was launched on-demand, that is, after VIP members pay again, more episodes can be unlocked.

This way of increasing quantity and price has aroused the dissatisfaction of many members. Last October, aiyouteng went offline one after another because it was called by many departments and damaged the rights and interests of members.

“Most people outside the industry think that you two (Tencent and iqiyi) must have made a lot of money and tried to exploit ordinary users, but most users don’t know that you lose tens of billions of dollars every year and don’t make money at all. Pushing this (advance on demand) is also afraid of the impact of piracy and want to make up for it.” An iqiyi person once told the finance and economics department.

Iqiyi has publicly said that the subscription price of members of the video platform has been low, so that it “affects the healthy development of the industry”. This argument has naturally attracted a lot of abuse.

A video industry practitioner calculated an account: when the video platform customized or self-made projects with the production company, the platform has paid 70% - 80% or even 90% of the cost in advance. The actors’ remuneration, writers’ remuneration, directors’ production expenses and crew expenses are not small expenses. “The pressure is on the platform, and the platform has lost ten years.”

Niu Haipeng, an associate professor of the Business School of Renmin University of China, and others pointed out in their article “the way of platform price and value growth” that the pricing level of Chinese video websites is actually low compared with direct and indirect similar services.

There are two main reasons for users’ dissatisfaction with the price increase of the video platform: first, different users have different feelings about the value provided by the long video platform and different reactions to the price adjustment; Second, the long-term low price or even free strategy of the long video platform has raised the expectations of users to a certain extent, resulting in some increase in the original low-level pricing, which will make users have a psychological gap.

With the door of advance on-demand being “slammed”, there is another way to increase the income of the video platform.

B

What is visible to the public is that the popular dramas in recent years have become increasingly scarce, which is related to the quality of platform content and the scale of platform users. Vice president of Tencent video