Chinese Video Streaming Websites

This week, teacher's videos talked about the Ads on the websites and the Ads blockers. Those reminded me of the video streaming websites.

Interestingly, and also pity-fully, in China, we can only enjoyed the domestic Video Streaming websites. That is the YouTube is not available to us. The other interesting thing is, in China, we have so many choices for the watching videos online. Many companies shared the market. The picture below shows how the video streaming websites market being shared in May,2014(resource:iUserTracker).

Similar to Youtube, the Ads are setting in front of the videos we choose to play, and the more the clicks/views, the longer the time of Ads. The slight difference is all the Ads are usually being played at the beginning, and will not being played again in the middle of the video. In addition, almost all the video streaming websites have a policy that once you pay a annual fee or so to gain membership, then all the Ads could be erased. Here attached the revenue of the online video website. 

I, as well as all the people who are accustomed to watch videos online, always have several video apps in our PC or mobile devices. They are all familiar to us, and have different unique "strengths" though. 

 I am not sure it's an International routine or just a typical Chinese style: almost all the online videos the websites provided are purchased by the websites. So the  main websites are competing in the resources of videos fiercely. The choices of website are various, and the sources of videos are similar. Then, what can make the differences when earning market share? Most of the sites choose to buy some certain popular videos outright. 

For example, Sohu has the most resources of foreign serials, Iqiyi has most movies, Youku has most domestic serials and  variety shows, and so on.

However, these competitions can easily be copied and catched. Then, it became a simply competition of capitals. So the next step for these website is creating their own series or verities.

The main video websites like YouKu(/Tudou), Iqiyi, Sohu, and Tencent all have their own self-making videos. Moreover, they set up subsidiary companies for movies, serials, and verity shows making. Hiring actors, actresses, directors to step into this industry. 

It's a pretty troublesome situation that consumers need to go to different websites to watch different videos, but as to the websites, it seems to the only way for them to win the market.