China video website tries to solve profitable knot

While YouTube sold a good price for 1.65 billion dollars (with Google for shares), the domestic video podcast site is still struggling to find a profit model.

October 18, the domestic peer-to-peer streaming media network live video platform Shanghai Cohesion Media Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as PPLive) and the new Yes Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (the next good Yes), Shanghai Riverside Advertising Co., Ltd. (hereinafter called the River Media) to achieve strategic cooperation, In the same industry began to systematically try advertising business.

"Piracy" knot

According to the relevant agreement, good Yes will become pplive advertising technology providers and advertisers agents, and the river media become pplive in the online gaming industry, the sole agent of advertising. The relevant proceeds will be divided into the parties.

"Unlike previous experiments, this cooperation, our advertising patterns are mainly ' patch ' form." PPLive President Bill Yao told reporters that the PPLive slots are mainly focused on the front end of the program and the midrange.

According to Bill Yao, July 2006, the PPLive platform support advertising technology has matured, in the investigation of user experience, PPLive has tentatively experimented with "SMD" ads on a small scale.

In fact, "patch ads" is also the domestic video podcast industry widely discussed and tried the business model. What attracts advertisers is that it has the same visual impact, mandatory, and Pay-per-click advertising Tracking and statistics as television commercials.

But since most video podcasts are based on user-uploaded videos, which are mostly from pirated movies, they are not always used on a large scale.

"Our webcast is based on the traditional content publishers ' genuine programs, so we can avoid related problems." "Bill Yao said.

According to Bill Yao, currently PPLive has become the Phoenix Satellite TV, light media, the traditional content of Kai culture, such as the owner of the network live publishers.

In addition, it has taken over a number of individual programme sources. As in February 2006, PPLive became the "Global Chinese Animation Spring Festival Party" designated Peer-to-peer communication platform, and such as through with the buyout film "The Banquet" network distribution rights of excellent network cooperation, in October 2006 through the network Live "the Banquet."

"Because there is no piracy problem, and Peer-to-peer streaming media can do a good job of advertising visual effects, the advertising industry will increasingly identify Peer-to-peer streaming video site model of the launch effect." "Chan Xuejie, vice president of Chinese capital, said," similar to the recent YouTube-allied Warner Record Group, Baidu and the company of Viacom, copyright owners, advertisers and the love of ' free lunch ' of online consumers to stand on the same front. ”

With the upstream of the industrial chain of genuine content publishers, industrial chain downstream of the advertising agencies, advertisers, it seems that pplive is forming and perfect business model. It is understood that, in addition to good yes, riverside media and other cooperation, pplive internal also has a specialized advertising sales team.

Peer-to-peer Puzzle

"We need to develop a peer-to-peer streaming overseas market and work with more global providers and advertisers," he said. Bill Yao said that at present, PPLive's global partners have included the content of the French fashion Taiwan (FASHIONTV), French television (TF1), as well as network providers Zim companies.

Peer-to-peer first originated in the United States, the initial application is file Exchange, the current popular applications include download sharing and electronic magazines. Peer-to-peer Streaming Media is currently one of the most popular applications, which can effectively reduce server pressure, improve the flow of online video.

According to Iresearch's latest "2006 China Peer-to-peer streaming Media Research Report", in 2005, there are 12 million users who have downloaded and used Peer-to-peer streaming media, and 25 million people are expected to use Peer-to-peer streaming media in 2006, and by 2010, This user will reach 140 million people, accounting for 60% of Chinese netizens.

The report also said that the January 2005 online, the current day independent IP traffic has been over 2.5 million pplive, has been sitting in the domestic peer-to-peer streaming media software market share boss, 71.3% of netizens have used pplive.

With a huge number of users, pplive a huge investment. At the beginning of 2005, SoftBank China Venture Capital Limited (Soft Bank venture capital) invested in "millions" dollars to pplive. According to Bill Yao Introduction, earlier this year, PPLive also won the SBCVC (software Bank China Venture capital fund) and Bluerun Investment fund a total of tens of millions of dollars.

"Early next year, we intend to buy some companies that are related to the pplive business." Bill Yao told reporters that PPLive will be planning to buy video podcasts and mobile services, mainly from user programs, which will be ready for wireless revenue after 3G's arrival.

However, some analysts believe that, at present, there is not a lot of copyright wonderful programs, which will restrict the development of pplive to some extent. In addition, although the Peer-to-peer streaming media technology has not been proven to be too crowded for the entire network bandwidth, but peer-to-peer other technology applications or some local network has brought a huge load, the attitude of telecom operators is still an unknown.