"Yes, we are confident that the integration of Youku in the first stage was successful," said Yu Yongfu, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Entertainment.
It is true that the volume of Youku’s voice in the market is obvious to all. According to the data of the third-party platform Guduo, from Q2 to Q3 this year, the number of new dramas played by Youku far exceeds that of competitors. A series of super dramas made Youku win nearly half of the drama market in the summer file. According to statistics from Bida Consulting, Youku accounted for six of the top ten traffic dramas in Q3. Among them, "White Night Chasing Murder" became the most popular drama series in the third quarter with Douban score of 9.1.
After the verification of the summer file, Youku further pointed out the definition of super drama production: influential IP, appealing main creation and movie-level production, and the production standard of super drama must meet at least one of these three points. At the same time, Youku has redefined the drama series and divided it into super drama series, prime-time drama series and online drama series. Among them, "three are different", the audit standards are the same, and the target users, broadcast media and business models are different.
It was further confirmed at this autumn gathering that there will be sequels to the Alliance of Military Strategists, Spring Breeze is not as good as you in ten miles, and Chasing the Murder in White Night, which have created high reputation and high broadcast volume before. Yang Weidong, president of Dayouku Business Group, believes that the "sequels" of these super series are exploring the "Chinese-style seasonal drama" mode.
"Chinese-style seasonal dramas will not copy the American drama model or the Korean drama model, but will form China’s own standard of seasonal dramas." Yang Weidong said in an interview that in the future, China’s seasonal dramas will mainly focus on super dramas and online dramas. However, in Yang Weidong’s view, "the 12-episode seasonal drama is not suitable for the China market, which is determined by the viewing habits and business model of China users. In the future, the length of the seasonal drama in China will be dominated by 24+/36+/48+episodes per season."
According to titanium media, Youku will focus on supporting local seasonal dramas in China and promote the emergence of excellent domestic seasonal dramas with international competitiveness.The exploration of the seasonal drama mode needs to be based on the long-term and stable cooperative relationship between the platform and the content side.
"Today, the platform and the content side have changed from a short-term and simple production-purchase relationship to a long-term and closer symbiotic relationship. If the relationship between the content side and the platform is set to a simple one-shot sale, such content side has no future. " Yang Weidong said.
However, in the variety market, Youku’s own "cute baby+cute pet" "Little Hand Holding a Puppy" is still far behind iQiyi’s "Hip Hop in China" and Tencent’s tucao talk show "Tucao Conference" in terms of sound volume. In an interview with media including Titanium Media, Yang Weidong admitted that there was not much problem with Youku’s variety strategy in the past year, but it was "a bit conservative in tactics".In the coming year, Youku will put more energy into variety shows under the background that the series has achieved good staged results.
From the perspective of variety content market, the overall growth cycle of variety is 8-mdash; 10 months, compared with the drama, the life cycle is shorter, and it is more relevant to the market. This also directly determines that Youku’s two key words in variety tactics are "fast" and "content innovation", and the latter will innovate the content of the network around "new hearing, new stories and new knowledge".
At the autumn gathering, a series of web synthesizers were launched in one breath, covering comedy, dance, technology and other categories — — Will the coverage of such a "wide net" route by large categories cause insufficient focus on the content?
For this question, Yang Weidong said:"The Internet is a trial and error. If it is wrong, it will choose another program direction, but in general, it can’t be conservative, which will immediately reflect that the overall variety content rhythm of the platform will become very fast."
In addition to self-made dramas and variety content, Ali literature, as the source library of IP, has not performed well in business performance. However, at this conference, Ali Literature made clear the key points of the next step.
First of all, Ali Literature officially released the IP "Xinghehui", announcing that its 60 boutique web IP will be fully open to entertainment industry partners, pointing to Tencent’s reading.
Ali’s open web IP covers popular categories such as city, history, romance, Xian Xia and suspense — — This is more than nearly 40 works published by the IP conference in early October.However, in terms of IP quality and reserves, Ali Literature is still a "late" player. In the future, how to find a differentiated breakthrough has naturally become the top priority of Ali Literature.
In addition, Ali literature is also trying to innovate in the development mode of online texts, from "IP development" to "all-round cultivation of IP".
Secondly, Ali literature pursues the cultivation in different stages, starting from the planning stage of IP. In other words, "Ali literature needs to achieve what purpose and reach what people, and needs to have some goals and carry out practical operations." Zhou Yun, editor-in-chief of Ali Literature, told Titanium Media.
In April this year, Ali Literature, together with Youku and Alibaba Pictures, invested 1 billion resources to launch the "HAO Plan". At present, the first step of the HAO project, The Secret Story of Hexi Kou, is being shown in Youku, which is based on the novel of the same name in Ali literature.
Taking "The Secret Story of Hexi Kou" as an example, Zhou Yun, editor-in-chief of Ali Literature, introduced to the titanium media, "This film was originally signed as a short story, not a long web text in the traditional sense. However, it will be cultivated in the subsequent operation. A little bit of web text; Then consider cultivating it in the general direction of the network. "
Another Line of Ali Literature — — After all, this mode runs faster than the IP of film and television dramas. Among them, the comic adaptation "Miao shou Xiao Cun Doctor" has achieved 2 billion hits on the whole network.
It is worth noting that today, when major video platforms consider literature and comics separately, Ali Literature insists on considering literature and comics together. Ali Literature itself has its own comic content operation position and a special operation team.
"Today, there are only three or four online literature companies in China, including Tencent and Ali Literature. Ali literature has developed for five or six years. Relying on the development of UC, the scale of writers has actually developed and accumulated for many years, from business scale to content cooperation. " Yu Yongfu told the editor of titanium media.
Yu Yongfu also said, "(net text) is not selling copyright. You must have a fixed literature user to cultivate literature and then seek cross-industry development. The linkage between literature and animation, drama series and games is cross-industry, which requires a solid business foundation of literature itself. In the category that Ali Literature is good at, the growth rate is faster than that of friends. In the end, each platform has different advantages in different categories. "
Then how to rely on Alibaba’s entertainment resources for IP commercial development? Zhou Yun, editor-in-chief of Ali Literature, told the editor of Titanium Media: "The TV series" in the name of people "exploded, which made the sales subscriptions of physical books and e-books on platforms including Ali Literature very high. This also shows that readers’ willingness or ability to consume has achieved initial results through the cultivation of the market. Everyone is not short of this money. As long as it is good content, many people are willing to pay. This is the basis for Ali Literature’s follow-up film and text linkage. "
To the sky kingdom, which has received much attention before, earned 300 million yuan by authorizing Bao and Taoxi merchants to develop derivatives, and will also provide a new idea of realizing IP for Ali literature and the whole content of Ali entertainment ecology.
Interestingly, in this Youku Autumn episode, the S-class variety show "This! It is street dance, TV series Beijing Women’s Picture Book and Shanghai Women’s Picture Book, all of which have the participation of Tmall Studio and are closely linked with e-commerce. In this regard, Yu Yongfu said that one of the two things that have the most Ali flavor and characteristics in Ali’s entertainment is how to turn Ali’s 500 million active buyers into our paid members.
The second is how to make content and business have a chemical reaction. Tmall Studio is Ali’s latest attempt, and attempts in this regard will only get faster and faster in the future. In the whole video war in the second half, the competition mode is undoubtedly the key point.
Regarding the future development of Youku, Yu Yongfu said: "When Ali didn’t have Youku two years ago, Youku was bought at any cost, but today’s considerations are different. First, we should fully develop Youku, and there is no upper limit for investment. What is the upper limit of impact input? But if Alibaba’s e-commerce encounters challenges in its operation, it is estimated that there will be conflicts. If there are no challenges, Ali will be very determined to think and invest in new business in the future.
"Teacher Ma Yun has a classic sentence, and I don’t think I can do it either. He saw it because he believed it. Most people believe because they see it. "Yu Yongfu said.(This article is the first titanium media, reporter/Zhu Taowei)
