Copy_article _ Under the epidemic, which is happy and which is sad in the cultural media industry?
This year, due to the impact of the epidemic, many areas of the national economy have been hit hard, and countless industries have been looking forward to the Spring Festival dividend, and labor-intensive real economies such as catering, movies, tourism, and hotels have been greatly affected.
On the other hand, with the continuous introduction of measures such as home epidemic prevention, the extension of the Spring Festival holiday, and the delay of the resumption of work, online consumption has become the main consumption scene, and the traditional tertiary industry and the emerging industries represented by video and games have presented different situations of "fire and ice" in this opening tragicomedy.
"Video" heats up
Capital markets are sensitive. Affected by the epidemic, on the opening day of February 3, a total of 3,199 stocks in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell by the limit, but from the second trading day, a number of industry stocks, including video and games, rose rapidly, ushering in a number of daily limits in nearly a month, confirming the hot market in these industries from the side.
In terms of the market, during the epidemic, Youku, iQiyi and Tencent video soared in popularity, and head short video platforms such as Kuaishou and watermelon video also successively won the top five positions on the iOS best-selling list, and the video industry ushered in the best "Spring Festival file" in history.
Among them, the number of new paying members of iQiyi hit a new high in the past year in January, when the epidemic was spreading. During the Spring Festival, it occupied the top spot in the Apple channel app best-selling list for 8 consecutive days, and ranked fourth after three game products in the total best-selling list. Of course, in addition to the impact of the epidemic, iQiyi's popularity benefits from the new role of high-quality content. In the past month, a number of solo TV series launched on iQiyi have gained good popularity and reputation, such as IApartments 5, Detective Chinatown and Master.
On the other hand, due to the extended holiday of students, Station B, which is the main base of young people, also saw a peak of activity. Data show that during the epidemic, the 63,000 up masters of Station B created 100,000 works and played 680 million times. Station B & CCTV News special page on fighting pneumonia has 307,000 discussions and 320 million page views.
Traditional video crocodiles win favor, but the greater heat of the video industry comes from the Internet premiere of "Lost Mother". According to data, in only three days, the total playback of "Lost Mother", which abandoned the theater line and chose to broadcast online, exceeded 600 million on the four App platforms under the Headlines department, and the total number of viewers reached 180 million. Affected by this, the share price of the film producer Joy Media increased by 19% on the same day, the watermelon video of the headlines department, from January 25, for six consecutive days in the top of the iOS hot free list, the situation can be said to be happy.
Despite the obvious implication of today's headlines - watermelon video hopes to enter the long video battlefield occupied by Youaiteng for a long time through the battle of "Lost Mom", but it is not easy to really go deep into it. The 650 million yuan spent to buy out "Lost Mother" may not be a huge amount of money for ByteDance, but the long video website is currently in a state of loss, and the net loss of more than 650 million yuan a year. The big Bytedance may also need to tread carefully on this issue. In any case, it is foreseeable that the long video track will usher in a new round of competition after the pattern is initially set.
In terms of short videos, during the Spring Festival, the daily user increment of Kuaishou and Tiktok both exceeded 40 million, and the number of daily active users of Tiktok in January exceeded 400 million, which made BAT ashamed. Kuaishou even played the "cloud disco", attracting many head nightclubs and labels from Beijing, Qingdao, Changsha, Suzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing and other first and second tier cities. Among them, an anchor started 26 minutes of the circle of 300,000 fans, while the number of online more than 100,000 +, the total audience of more than 231W, the likes reached more than 3 million.
In general, during the epidemic period, whether it is long video or short video, users' viewing behavior is more positive, the frequency of opening is higher, and the viewing type is more rich. In addition, the paying behavior of users has also increased. But on the other hand, the number of platforms used by users is increasing, and with the end of the epidemic, it is foreseeable that the consumption trend of users on the video platform will fall back. In this case, how to retain new users and maintain high user stickiness is a new challenge faced by video platforms.
Game burst
Affected by the epidemic, the game industry, which has been in winter for two years, has become a new outlet under the crisis. Probably no one could have predicted that during the ten days of the Spring Festival, influenced by the players who were forced to stay at home, electronic games unexpectedly changed from ordinary entertainment consumer goods to players' "necessities of life".
Glory, Peace Elite, Onmyoji... The popularity of a number of high-quality mobile games has reached a new high, and young players who stay at home can meet their entertainment needs through games, but also connect with friends. Online chess and card games such as "Xiao Mei Dou Landlord" and "Happy Dou Landlord" have become "substitutes" for many middle-aged people under the epidemic; Ultra-casual games, such as Master of Imagination and I Kung Fu, offer more options for light users.
Under the wrong circumstances, China's game industry has achieved unprecedented explosive growth in the past month. According to statistics, during the epidemic period, the top three categories of the 50 applications with rapid growth in downloads are casual games, video and audio, and medicine-related categories, of which games account for a staggering 52%; "Glory" on the 30th of the New Year water more than 2 billion yuan, compared to the same period last year 1.3 billion yuan increased by 54%, a month of water more than 8 billion, an increase of 44.6%. The daily active peak of "Peace Elite" during the epidemic also reached 79.94 million people, even on the key day of the first day of the New Year because of server downtime on Weibo hot search. In addition, the incremental growth rate of other head heavy games in the month was generally more than 30%.
From the perspective of user behavior, during the epidemic period, users spent more time playing games than last year, and their gaming behavior was more positive; However, there are fewer new users, and the growth is mainly driven by the stock of users. It is worth noting that in addition to the higher frequency of opening a single game, users are also relatively high enthusiasm for trying new games, more than 1/3 of users will play new games and even new game types, and the user competition between games has become more intense.
With the rush of users, game companies have also come up with brilliant results in January this year, and the rising momentum of the game industry is still unabated. The gaming sector also kicked off the carnival after the Spring Festival. The A-share online game plate soared from 8010 points on February 3 to 9392 points on February 21, behind which the market value of the plate increased by more than 100 billion yuan.
Despite the bright results, there are also views that the short-term boom that the entire game industry has shown so far during the Spring Festival may only be a "false" growth in special times and under special circumstances. Indeed, if we delve into user behavior, it is not difficult to find that the core driving force behind this round of growth is not the improvement of game quality, the active marketing of game manufacturers, the fundamental change of user habits or the relaxation of external policies, in fact, domestic and foreign game companies are almost in a "lie win" state during this period of time. Is based on the emergence of "black swan" caused by short-term user demand changes.
It can be predicted that when the haze brought by the epidemic clears, players return to life, work and study, if the game market and products do not fundamentally change, today's short-lived prosperity is still false. At that point, I'm afraid innovation and quality are the "medicine" that can really drive the growth of the game industry.
Looking at the entire field of culture and media, industries and industrial chains based on the "head flow" logic have been significantly affected by the epidemic, while businesses and formats based on online logic have ushered in unexpected development opportunities. In order of the degree of impact of the epidemic, the most affected are movie theaters, physical bookstores and exhibition business; Printing, outdoor advertising and other businesses were also hit. Relatively speaking, book publishing and news media have been less affected by the epidemic, and the influence of some traditional news media that have been prominent in the epidemic has been enhanced and spread. Digital reading, online education, video and games have benefited from the epidemic to some extent.
