Who will be the leader of the video website industry in the next five years?

Prior to this, Gongyi, the CEO of iQiyi, once expressed his own opinions. In his opinion, "The video website industry is unlikely to form an oligopoly in the short term. In the next three to five years, the video website industry will continue to experience mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy. The two or three companies surviving in the competition will eventually compete for a 40 billion-scale video market, and will continue to differentiate their original content and platforms in the competition."

Obviously, Iqiyi will divide itself into the remaining "two or three companies."


Formally launched in April 2014, iQiyi relied on Baidu, the leader of the Internet giant BAT, to fight against the network video copyright war that broke out in 2011. It began to stand tall with a small, large body. Forefront of the video website industry.

In fact, iQiyi who has just encountered the copyright dispute after entering the game can be said to be a blessing in disguise. First, the short history determines that it has not been contaminated with the genes of pirated resources; second, it has won a certain amount of content resources and user markets in the contention for copyright. In particular, under the support of Baidu's funds and resources, iQiyi completed the video site industry's continuous integration and mergers and acquisitions.

With the entire video website industry still in the "burn money" mode, Baidu has chosen to invest 370 million U.S. dollars in the acquisition of the PPS video business and merge it with iQIYI. It is obviously not just the use of complementary users and resources. To expand the overall scale of iQIYI's platform, users and duration in the industry, but to further strengthen iQIYI's leading role and integration in the video website industry.

In particular, after Youku and Tudou, the two companies listed on the US-listed video website, merged and merged 100% of their shares in 2012, the trend of video website industry mergers and acquisitions became more and more obvious, and if they did not, they would fight for the goal of “China's largest online video platform”. It will only be even more distant.

At this point, the video website industry has Tuyou Tudou's Tudou, iQiyi's acquisition of PPS, and Sohu's video acquisition of 56 networks, as the current video site industry's top five giants, only LeTV and Tencent video has not yet out of mergers and acquisitions. A step of integration, obviously, is not in line with the industry's opinion that "before the advent of the industry oligarchs, video industry investment, mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy will continue to appear."

It is difficult to say whether the iQIYI, YouTu and Sohu videos after the completion of the integration can escape the fate of integration.


Behind this money-saving and integration, in fact, there are also considerations and screenings on the content resources of video websites.

If the dispute over copyright is the first test of the video market's first round of survival, then the creation of original content is yet another stage of development in the logic of change. After all, in the competition for copyright, there is no firm video website company that has the power to monopolize the entire copyright content market. Specialized operation with self-made and original content as the direct expression form is an important export that produces long tail effects.

More importantly, with the strengthening of profitability requirements of capital and the improvement of market maturity, the video website industry can no longer blindly burn money. The direct input-output ratio of copyrighted content stimulates the video website companies without obscuring. future development.

The cognition of original and self-produced content can ultimately be attributed to differences in copyright and content.

For the input of original content, Gong Yu said, "A broadcast platform must have its own characteristics and form a clear differentiation with other platforms; and the best way to create this differentiation is to use almost the only means. Through homemade content, there are many types of self-made content, including drama, programs, anime, and movies, so the development of online video to the current stage, iQIYI must start large-scale input content self-manufacturing from the medium and long-term perspective. "."

Obviously, the quantitative and original self-control content can more accurately and profoundly understand the characteristics and requirements of the target audience. More importantly, the video website company itself can also improve the attributes and characteristics of its own brand in self-produced content.

Of course, iQiyi is always just a member of the video website industry and cannot determine the future mainstream of the entire video website industry. However, with qualitative changes, we can easily predict what will happen.