The Wind of China Entertainment 2005

Chapter 671: The King of Asian Streaming Media

"Ding Ding Ding!"

Xu Weifeng answered the phone: "Hello, Director Lu!"

"Lao Xu, during the video conference, I repeatedly stressed the need to pay attention to the server, but PPS crashed today. I need an explanation."

Lu Yuan's voice came from the other end of the phone.

Xu Weifeng said hurriedly: "We prepared for the launch of four times the usual volume. The colleagues in charge of technology, customer service, and operations were all keeping an eye on it, but we still underestimated the enthusiasm of users. The number of members surged in a short period of time, far exceeding our imagination."

"After the post was published on Weibo, there were nearly 200 million order requests instantly, causing the server to crash. We temporarily deployed servers and staff to handle network and payment issues. The maintenance time was a total of five minutes."

There was silence on the other side for a long time, which made Xu Weifeng uneasy.

His strength lies in company management, and his marketing ability is not outstanding. The plan of using the Double Color Ball for promotion was proposed by Lu Yuan.

During the meeting, the directors of SMG expressed their objections, believing that the marketing cost of nearly 8000 million yuan was too large an investment and too risky. Vivo and Oppo expressed their support, as the two mobile phone companies are good at marketing.

Later, Lu Yuan exercised his power as a major shareholder and made the final decision on this matter.

"Tell me about the current number of paying members." Lu Yuan asked.

"This is great news!" Xu Weifeng said excitedly, "Before this, we had a total of 1354897 paying users. Now, the number of members has reached 4968752, with 3613855 new members."

"With nearly 4 million new members, there is still a long way to go to reach the 10 million members we expected."

"Director Lu, there is still some time before My Love from the Star starts airing. Let's wait and see. Besides, we are already ahead of the other companies in terms of the number of members!"

The first attempt at paid video service in China was in 06 by a digital content platform called Youpengpule.

However, due to the blurred boundaries of copyright and the fact that the free model was the core competition of the entire industry in the PC Internet era, early paid video services were not truly promoted.

The one who truly started the era of paid video platforms was not iQiyi, Youku or Tencent, but LeTV.

Around 2010, major video platforms, after accumulating early users, began to look for profit models.

Among them, LeTV relied on its relatively complete copyright library and launched online on-demand and paid membership services in the first half of 2010.

Subsequently, PPS, Ku6, Youku and Xunlei also began to imitate and launch paid services.

This is the earliest "testing period" for paid members.

During this period, the monthly subscription fee for each company was basically around 20 yuan.

Video websites that have launched membership-based paid services mainly focus on Hollywood movies, supplemented by a small number of new domestic films to attract paying members.

However, many Hollywood blockbusters and new films in theaters cannot be watched directly by monthly subscription members and need to pay extra to watch them on demand.

And a serious piracy market.

Therefore, during this stage, monthly members face greater growth pressure and member payments develop slowly.

Later, the national Jianwang operation was launched to vigorously crack down on piracy.

IQIYI seized the opportunity, emerged out of nowhere, found the Blueprint copyright, and the two parties reached a strategic cooperation.

Relying on Baidu's traffic support, iQiyi's paid membership scale caught up with LeTV in a short period of time.

Later, Blueprint terminated its cooperation with iQiyi and moved into PPS.

Since the second half of 2012, PPS has been active, especially the announcement at the end of the year that "My Love from the Star" would be broadcast exclusively on the platform, which led to a surge in the number of members.

Before the big money-giving plan was launched, the number of members of major video websites ranked as follows: iQiyi, LeTV, Youku Tudou, and PPS.

This time, PPS spent more than 8000 million yuan on an lavish marketing campaign, which caused the number of paid members on the platform to soar and temporarily top the list.

Xu Weifeng said confidently: "Mr. Lu, don't worry, this time PPS will be the first to open the curtain of the domestic long video payment era!!"

"Okay, I'll wait for your good news. I hope that something like this won't happen again on August 8st. Zhou Yaoyao, if you don't obey me, you'll have to stand there in the corner!"

"dududu~"

Xu Weifeng: “.”

He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked at the street scene of the Magic City, feeling quite high-spirited.

At this time last year, PPS was in a dilemma. As the CEO, he had to sell himself to several well-known video websites in the industry, which was a complete disgrace. The company's internal staff were also dissatisfied with him.

But in less than a year, PPS made up for its shortcomings and, through methods such as copyright distribution and exchange, not only acquired the broadcasting rights of hit dramas at a low price, but also made a profit.

In addition, it has many high-quality film and television dramas, including "My Love from the Star".

Due to the profit-sharing model, many film and television dramas of varying quality on the market choose to be broadcast on the platform.

Based on this, he couldn't help but have an idea in his mind that he himself felt was unrealistic.

Build a pan-entertainment industry chain belonging to PPS.

What is pan-entertainment? It is based on IP library + Yuanfang/Tangren/and other film and television production companies + PPS video playback platform.

Around this main trunk, literature, comics, novels, live broadcasts, games, shopping malls, and online movies are developed to string together multiple fields to form a complete chain.

After this step is completed, we will first kill iQiyi, and then knock down video companies such as Tencent and Youku.

And driving the giant ship PPS, we left our homeland, carrying China's 5,000 years of cultural heritage, and rushed forward to start the Pan-Asian plan.

PPS, be the king of streaming media in Asia!

"Aqiu!"

"Mr. Gong, are you okay?"

Gong Yu wiped his nose, waved his hand, and then slammed the table.

"8 million, is PPS crazy? First, they adopted a profit-sharing model and gave away all the profits they had, and now they are spending nearly million on marketing. What do they want to do! This is business, not charity. How long can they lose that little money?"

It is well known in the industry that iQiyi and PPS do not get along.

PPS announced that "My Love from the Star" will be broadcast on August 8st, while iQiyi issued a statement that it will broadcast the Korean drama "The Heirs" on the same day, in a tit-for-tat manner.

Gong Yu plans to make something big after the leading actors of "The Heirs" come to the mainland.

But PPS's sudden marketing caught him off guard.

He paid a huge sum of 3600 million yuan to buy the Double Color Ball. According to past rules, the final winning amount would fluctuate around 2000 million yuan.

If nothing unexpected happens, PPS will suffer a loss of 1600 million, but in return it will gain unprecedented popularity, and now the entire Internet is discussing this matter.

Even as an opponent, Gong Yu had to admit that this was a genius marketing idea.

Anyone who has bought a lottery ticket knows that there are too many tricks behind the Double Color Ball, such as the number machine specifically selecting numbers that no one buys or very few people buy to give out prizes.

Even those numbers with few buyers may be in the hands of specific people.

Therefore, PPS’s operation this time, buying every ticket, means that someone is bound to win the jackpot.

It cleverly takes advantage of human nature and people's desire for big prizes, prompting netizens from all walks of life to flock to PPS, and the number of paid members is increasing rapidly!

After realizing this, the senior executives of major streaming media companies were envious and jealous, and also wanted to learn from it.

Gong Yu did the same and turned to look at Senior Vice President Yang Xianghua.

"What was the response from Shuangseqiu?"

Yang Xianghua had a strange expression on his face and said, "Their person in charge was also very puzzled. He said that he didn't know that the 3544 million was from PPS before. He didn't pay much attention to it because every year there were rich people who bought all the numbers. He didn't expect that it was used by PPS for marketing."

"We booked the lottery for the next issue after August 8st. Do they agree?"

Yang Xianghua shook her head: "They refused, saying that lottery is a public welfare undertaking. If other companies are allowed to follow suit, it will easily become a propaganda tool for competition between large enterprises, which is inconsistent with the original intention."

"Fuck the shit out of you."

Gong Yu was furious, but there was nothing he could do: "So we can only watch PPS eat up the market share and enjoy the dividends alone!"

"Well, that should be it."

"Report me, don't let me play, and no one else can play!"

(End of this chapter)