Text: Node Finance, Seven Publics.Approaching the end of the year, Youaiteng's long-term ** battle is significantly white-hot, iQiyi's "Yi Nian Guan Mountain", "Three Teams", Tencent**'s "Shen Yin", "Flowers", Youku's "News Queen", "Song Ci Shaohualu", each has its own coffee position, each has its own wonderful, setting off waves of ratings heat.
But under the water, the three giants are quietly differentiating, and it is intuitively reflected in the performance: iQiyi and Tencent** have made profits one after another, and Youku has not jumped out of the "bitter sea" of losses.
Personnel changes are frequentTencent** has been in the limelight in recent years, and with a series of popular dramas, it took the lead in ending the situation of income not being able to offset expenditure. According to the report of "Late LatePost", Tencent**'s annual revenue in 2022 exceeded 10 billion yuan, and it began to make money from October of that year.
iQIYI followed closely behind, and also waited for the good news of the "iconic reversal". It had a surplus in the fourth quarter of 2022, with a single-quarter revenue of 7.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3%.Net profit attributable to the parent company 304.3 billion yuan, compared with a loss of 1.8 billion yuan in the same period last year.
In contrast, Youku, which was once a top student, has become a laggard.
Alibaba's financial report shows that for the six months ended September 30, 2023, the revenue of Dawenban Group was 111600 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21%;Adjusted EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was a loss of 13.8 billion yuan, compared with a loss of 126.9 billion yuan.
After the biggest change in the history of "6+1+N", Ali Entertainment now includes the three core sectors of Alibaba Pictures, Damai.com, and Youku. In the 2024 fiscal year interim report, Alibaba attributed the progress of Dawen Entertainment Group to Damai.com and Alibaba Pictures, especially in the investor** meeting, focusing on Damai.com: Q3 has achieved strong triple-digit GMV growth, but only regards Youku as "small transparent" and never mentions it, and the unspeakable hidden in the heart is already clear.
Indicators in other dimensions are also confirming Youku's lag.
Analysys Qianfan data shows that from 2020 to 2022, Youku's MAU (number of monthly active users) will be 32.6 billion, 23.9 billion, 16.3 billion, declining year by year. In December 2022, iQiyi and Tencent**MAU were 50.7 billion, 39.6 billion, occupying the top and second positions in the industry, the third and fourth are Mango TV and Station B, respectively, and Youku has been squeezed to fifth.
According to QuestMobile data, in 2022, the average monthly usage time of the domestic *** APP industry will be 151-18.5 hours, the long** platform usage time is: station b (18..)8 hours), iQIYI (89 hours), Tencent** (72 hours), Mango TV (57 hours), Youku (5 hours).
It is not difficult to see that whether it is user scale or user stickiness, Youku has a tendency to gradually end.
Analyzing the reasons behind it, we have to mention the turbulent high-level structure.
After being acquired by Ali in 2016, Youku has changed three heads in 7 years - from Yu Yongfu who pursues integration to Yang Weidong who radically participates in the war, and then to Fan Luyuan, who is bent on stability.
Especially at the end of 2018, CEO Yang Weidong was criminally detained for corruption, which not only disrupted the company's established rhythm, but also seriously affected the external image, resulting in very few good dramas and variety shows that can be used.
Some industry insiders also said that the reason for Youku's decline is that Ali transplanted e-commerce culture and ideas to content, and the logic did not work. The e-commerce model pursues reshaping the link, optimizing efficiency, and expanding GMV, with clear goals and simpler and more direct implementation, but the content is both rational and emotional, not only to keep up with the market outlet, ponder the preferences of the audience, but also to work slowly and carefully.
At present, Youku is helmed by Fan Luyuan, president of Alida's entertainment business group. Fan Luyuan joined Alipay in 2007 and was the leader of Alipay's quick payment products and one of the founders of Taopiaopiao. Judging from the resume, it is also good at making products than making content.
So far, Youku's organizational change does not seem to be over. In 2021, Zheng Wei, the former vice president of Youku, resigned;In 2022, Lin Zhiqiang, the former head of Youku's variety show, vice president of Youku, and who has been in charge of Tmall's "Double 11" party for three years, will resign, and the business executives will be replaced;In 2023, many project teams that have existed on Youku for a long time will be laid off.
When will Youku stabilize the management team?Unknown.
Return to the essence and usher in a critical nodeAs the former "first brother" in the long-term industry, the oldest player, backed by the business giant Alibaba, why did Youku fall behind?What are the shortcomings of the "Five Elements"?
Back to the essence, it has to fall on the content. Take 2023, for example.
According to the "2023 Drama Market Report" released by Lighthouse Professional Edition, in the past year, high-quality and high-reputation content has been in a "blowout" shape, with as many as 23 dramas with a Douban score of 8 or more, compared with only 6 in 2022, a sharp increase of 2833%
Among them, according to the score from high to low, "The Long Season" produced by Tencent** won the highest score of 94 points, followed by "Three-Body Problem" produced by Tencent ** and "Where There is No Wind" produced by Mango TV, both of which won the second highest 87 points;iQIYI's "Broken Things Elite Season 2" and iQIYI and Tencent**'s "Zeng Boy When I Was Young" jointly produced are listed as "Tanhua" 85 points.
Source: Lighthouse "2023 Annual Drama Market Report".
systematically combing, among these 23 good dramas, most of them have been taken away by Tencent** and iQiyi. Especially the former, in 2023, it will produce many solo masterpieces such as "The Glory of the Fathers", "The Legend of Magpie Knife Gate", "Love Only", etc., with countless fans;The latter also relied on a series of hard goods such as "Hurricane", "Lotus Building" and "Special Mission" to show a strong ability to attract gold: in the first three quarters of 2023, revenue increased by 129% to 241700 million yuan, and the net profit attributable to the parent increased by 431 year-on-year29%。
Youku only has four dramas, "Three Years of Songs", "Days of Chasing the Light", "Under the Stranger" and "The Year of Fire", which account for only 174%, and they are all relatively low-rated works.
Judging from the timeline, at the beginning of the year, iQiyi ushered in a good start with the popular "Hurricane" on the whole network, and Tencent's TV series of the same name adapted from the super IP "Three-Body Problem" also won a lot of applause;In the summer file, Tencent**'s costume drama "Sauvignon Blanc" and iQiyi's Jianghu drama "Lotus Building" have aroused empathy between the audience and the characters, and continue to dominate the main topics of Douyin and Weibo.
Although Youku also output "Who Is He" starring Zhang Yi after "Hurricane", the plot, rhythm, and editing are lackluster, and in the end, they started high and went low, and they didn't even pass the Douban score, only 56 points;In the summer file, Youku's "Chasing the Light" and "Under the Alien" collided with "Sauvignon Blanc" and "Lotus Building", and in the face of the fiercer offensive of competitors, they could only silently swallow the bitter fruit of "others eat meat, I drink soup".
At the end of the year, Youku finally handed over the acclaimed and popular "News Queen", which has been online for more than a month, and the number of Douban ratings has exceeded 100,000, and the score has reached 78 points, it is one of the few Hong Kong dramas that have received both popularity and word-of-mouth in recent years, and even the popular news major, as well as the educational theme of "Minglong Boy", also received widespread attention when it was launched, but on the whole, the total number of projects that Youku can play throughout the year is too small, and there is no drama with national influence similar to "Hurricane" or "Sauvignon Blanc", which is naturally not enough to compete with opponents, and it is impossible to continue to attract the audience's enthusiasm for chasing dramas and recharging.
For the long-** platform, content is the origin of all actions, whether the C-side should be a member, and whether the B-side should advertise or not, ultimately depends on the content to support. In other words, only good content and good stories can help the platform go far and jump high. Obviously, Youku's basic skills still need to be vigorously consolidated.
What's more, after Ali split into six, broke the "big pot of rice", and the six major businesses were self-financing, as well as the pervasiveness of the short drama market, the strong rise of the short drama market posed a big threat to the long **, and there was really not much time left for Youku to transform.
However, the turnaround is not without it. In Youku's latest release of the 2024 drama variety documentary list, head dramas such as "Shangganling", "Qingming Riverside Map Code", "Snow Labyrinth", "Sea of Dreams" and other head dramas have aroused widespread expectations, and there are also ace directors such as Zhang Yimou, Liu Cixin, Zheng Xiaolong, Ding Hei, Xu Hongyu, and the classic IP "This!".It's Hip-hop 6", all-star OST ** program "Drama Good Song 2", etc.
In 2024, can Youku usher in an inflection point?Wait for the market and time to answer.