According to the latest statistics released on June 03, 2012 by iResearch, the leading China internet research company, PPTV’s Daily Unique Visitors have reached 34 million, ranked No. 1 in the online video industry. With the intensive competition among China video players and low royalty for online video users, video companies are pursuing the strategy on the content differentiation to stay ahead of the competition. PPTV has been building its differentiated content base on Sports, exclusive Korean TV dramas and Taiwanese live TV shows for a while. Such a differentiated content strategy has helped company to retain the user base and support its growth among the competition.
Caption:PPTV (PPLive)‘s Daily Unique Visitors have ranked No. 1 in the online video industry (by iResearch)
iResearch has released such data based the measurement of ‘Comprehensive Video Services Ranking’ that includes the user traffic from both web and client software based video usage. The recent data shows that PPTV, Youku and PPS are ranked top three, all passing 30 million unique user in May, 2012. Many believes that the Euro-cup event has helped PPTV to boost its traffic as PPTV is known in its live streaming technology and large sports content holdings. PPTV is only one of two video companies who acquired the Live Euro-cup live streaming copyrights (Tencent video is another). According to industry experts, PPTV has grown its traffic rapidly in the past six months, also ranked No.1 in YTD growth, seen from the year-to-date traffic growth trend. After completing the $250 million financing from Softbank last year, PPTV has invested in exclusive content library including Sports, Korean dramas and Taiwanese TV shows. These contents are generally not available on Chinese TV broadcasting stations. Content exclusivity and differentiation keeps PPTV away from the competition.
Although the top three companies are very close to each other in the overall ranking of Comprehensive Video Services, PPTV had outperformed most of their peers by its growth rate, 26.8%, with Tencent followed at 25.1%. Clearly PPTV’s Euro-cup sports program was a big boost to both of their traffic.
The measurement of ‘Daily Unique Visitor’ is considered as key index for advertisement placement. Some experts have pointed out, with Youku and Tudou’s merger, the synergy is yet to be seen as the integration goes on. Suffering from the recent lawsuits from Tencent and Sohu, it shows that PPS is in shortage of copyrighted content library. It is a fact that most video players can hardly differentiate themselves from each other from the content standpoint. On the other hand, PPTV has constantly invested on live sports contents, such as Euro-cup, Premier League, NFL, UFC and domestic sports like CBA, China Soccer, etc. In early 2011, PPTV has signed deals with Korean and Taiwanese TV broadcasters, so PPTV now owns exclusive rights of most Korean TV dramas and Taiwanese TV shows. According to Vincent Tao, CEO of PPTV, ‘we have been pursuing our content differentiation strategy and had focus our investment on it. We understand that sports are great to male viewers, and Korean and Taiwanese TV shows are very appealing to female users.’ However, ‘having great contents do not guarantee your traffic growth,’ Tao adds. PPTV, used to be viewed as client software based video player, has engineered and released their new video products across all devices, including their web viewing product, tablet and mobile phone based products for Andriod, iOS, Mac, Win 8 etc. The wide availability of video experience had helped PPTV attract more video users. At the end of May 2012, PPTV is ranked No.1 most downloadable iPad appstore video application.
The next question is whether PPTV is able to monetize their contents effectively. In China, Sports media has gone through many tough times. PPTV has developed a so called SEM program, Sports Entertainment Marketing, to attract advertisers. According to the third party source, PPTV had bagged more than 30 advertising sponsors this time for its Euro-cup live program at an estimated dollar amount of over 30M RMB. ‘The year of 2012 is all about sports and monetization’, said Tao. With the Olympics event is coming and the competition goes on, it could be the year of content differentiation for the China online video players.