In-depth original author | Lu _ In the past year, long video has entered an important turning point. Faced with long-standing pain points such as content cost, the industry as a whole has put the slogan of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" to the ground, emphasizing quality improvement and quantity reduction at the content level, focusing on refinement and pursuing efficiency at the operational level. Positive actions bring good news. Just like Youku Vice President and Variety &; Shen Yan, general manager of the commercialization center, said: "This represents a new cycle and new opportunities." The transformation of long video is gradually gaining positive feedback from the market. One of the concrete manifestations is the rising water level of the platform. Taking Youku as an example, QuestMobile data shows that since June 20021,10, the daily average number of users of Youku has increased for 13 months, and increased by 26% in July 2022. Faults lead the industry, and from June 2022 to 2023 10, the number of days per capita used by Youku Weekly remained the first. According to the Q2 financial report of Alibaba in fiscal year 2023 (1-September 30, 2022), the average daily paying users of Youku increased by 8% year-on-year. In the field of big screen, the number of daily terminals of CIBN Cool Miao Film and Television (Youku TV Edition) has also been increasing in the first half of 2022, ranking first in the industry for several consecutive years. Look at the results of commercialization. According to the report "Insight into the Soil", in terms of drama series, the number of investment brands of Youku's summer solo drama increased by 109.5% year-on-year, ranking before the industry1; At the variety level, in the first half of 2022, Youku ranked the TOP 1 in the industry in terms of the number of cooperative brands of integrated new programs. It is worth noting that in 2022, excellent cases created by Youku and its cooperative brands won a total of 182 awards including Golden Award, Golden Eye Award, Tiger Roar Award and Lingmu Award. Youku's "Endogenous Fixed Investment" brand repurchase rate has exceeded 50% since its launch; The number of cooperative brands of Youku OTT increased by 400%. Youku's achievements, while confirming its own strength, also show us that long videos can win the favor of many brands after washing away the lead. If we sort out the content and business performance of Youku from a more complete perspective, we can also find that the long video platform has a stronger capacity reserve and a more mature strategic layout while helping brands find more deterministic growth from uncertainty. Based on the "content power", we will form a marketing "fertile ground" to meet the entertainment consumption needs of users. At the same time, it has also been used by brands and enterprises in business context, becoming the third communication element besides products and services. This is why "content is king" is often mentioned in the marketing field, and the long video platform naturally understands this point-based on "content power", it will continuously produce high-quality works and provide fertile ground for brand marketing. Since 20 19, Youku has actively adjusted its strategy, actively embraced change, and insisted on the cultivation and precipitation of content. The strategy of walking steadily can always release the energy of "many a mickle makes a mickle, and the hair is sparse". Looking back on 2022, Youku has gained a lot in many content fields. In terms of drama series, according to Yunhe data, one third of 12 S+ (Yunhe score) solo online dramas are in Youku, and the effective broadcast volume of Youku drama series increased by 16% in the first half of the year. Youth songs, the gate of rebirth, and happy stories light me up and warn you. Specifically, in 2022, "Meeting Jun Chu" and "The Gate of Rebirth", happy stories light me up and warn you that many dramas such as youth songs have gained millions of popularity in Youku, covering many themes such as costume, suspense and realism. Among them, The Gate of Rebirth won great attention because of its innovative theme of "stealing suspense", and won the first place in the hot list of cat's eye dramas in May 2022 and the first place in the hot list of suspense dramas in 2022. The Happy Story shows the advanced creation of realistic drama and has won wide acclaim from the audience. During the broadcast, it won the titles of platforms such as Lighthouse and Cat's Eye, and was among the best in the lists such as Gu Duo and Detavan. As a drama that shows the story of "New Martial Arts", "Young Songs" became a "dark horse" at the end of 2022 with novel themes and high-quality audio-visual effects, and won many lists such as Lighthouse, Cat's Eye, Yun He, Gu Duo, Detavan, Vbang and Kuyun, with hot search 1730+. In terms of variety, Youku Classic IP and New IP have achieved stable performance. "this! Hip-hop 5 ","China Yin Chao "and" Great! Dance club, I have never been in love, 20 years old, 2, the summer I met, singing in Chaoyang, and doing well in the infinite class. " This! That is to say, Street Dance 5 (hereinafter referred to as Street Dance 5) is still the strongest trump card of Youku. After five seasons of growth, the program has brought street dance culture from cognition and breaking circles to the stage of building an international competition stage, which not only ensures the high reputation of IP, but also stands out in this year's trend cultural variety show. More importantly, it has become a masterpiece of circle culture and continues to lead the innovation and continuation of street dance culture. With such achievements, Street Dance 5 has attracted more than 50 brands to cooperate, covering 20 industries. Among them, the core product of China Resources Snow Beer won the title of Tianya superX four times, which deeply bound this trend variety IP. "this! It's hip-hop 5&; The Chaoyang Singing Center, which bravely fills the gap in the singing stage with superX advertisements and revitalizes the "vitality" of internal entertainment, gained a high degree of attention before it was broadcast. After the program went live up to expectations, Douban scored 8.5 points. By the time it was broadcast three times, several high-quality music stages had exceeded 3 million, and even a hot topic among fans appeared. Infinitely Beyond the Classroom, jointly launched by Zhejiang Satellite TV and TVB, has caused many topics through the discussion and collision of the acting skills of the older generation of Hong Kong actors and young actors. The whole network searched for the first nearly 500, becoming the second variety show with a popularity value of over 10,000 after street dance. " Young people in Chaoyang Big Center and Infinite Transcendental Class learn to love and express their love on the emotional road, and emotional observation variety shows have also gained popularity in Qi Fei. A reality show "Heart-pounding 20-year-old 2", a youth travel agency that shows the honest heart-to-heart and love attitude of Generation Z, has set off a wave of drama chasing among young people. Douban scored 7. 1, and the total number of hot searches in the whole network was113, and it was listed on the hot search list of cat's eye, cloud data and guduo for many times. In addition to drama series and variety shows, Youku has also produced many works in animation, children, humanities and other fields, which have attracted attention and praise. Especially in the field of humanistic content, which is regarded as "scarce content resources", Youku has continuously exported a number of high-quality cultural programs, such as the round-table school called "talk show ceiling", the douban score of 8.9 in the sixth season, and the sci-fi ramble program "Don't answer" created by the three-body universe. According to Yunhe data, 40% of Youku Douban's works scored above 9 points last year, which also made the platform as a whole establish a unique label and high recognition in the humanities field. For brands, the failure to answer how many users the Round Table can reach in the sixth season is the basic factor to ensure the effectiveness of advertising. Every high-quality content output by Youku can be used as a "traffic aggregator" to quickly break through the circle, and help the brand achieve a wide reach to consumers while accumulating high water levels for the platform. Diversified content also provides a variety of channels for brands to resonate with consumers. The cultivation of fertile soil needs tools, and the content that improves marketing power through innovation is the fertile ground for marketing. Then advertising products and systematic strategic ideas that are suitable for the present and can really improve efficiency are actually effective tools for cultivating soil. It is these tools that together form the "marketing power" of the long video platform. However, it is worth emphasizing that for a long time, patches, implants, titles, etc. It has become the basic mode of long video marketing. These major video platforms can do it, and the effect is basically stable and predictable. Therefore, the core of the marketing power emphasized by the current long video platform lies in "innovation", which helps the brand to further achieve efficiency improvement and business growth. How to innovate specifically? Youku's action first fell on the advertising products. For example, endogenous advertisements for long videos are generally sold by point, and direct investment is not targeted. Youku launched the industry's first "endogenous fixed investment" product to achieve large-scale targeted delivery, allowing brands to reach and activate core user groups more flexibly and accurately. Of course, different industries have their own gameplay when applying this product, which is more suitable for their own characteristics and marketing goals. Take food and beverage brands as an example. Chasing dramas at home is one of their important consumption scenes, and summer is also the peak consumption season. So Lex used Youku's "endogenous fixed investment" last year to "catch all the popular dramas in Youku's summer file" and achieve super brand exposure. At the same time, under the integration of Youku, Xerox has also opened up three fields: search, movie viewing and purchase, and built an exposure-transformation link to realize Qi Fei. The case of music marketing is on the OTT side, and Youku's innovative products have also brought many surprises to the brand. The report of the second hand system shows that screen projection has become the mainstream habit for users to consume large-screen content. The average daily viewing time has reached 1.82 hours, and the user scale has increased by billions. In order to seize this potential scene, Youku OTT launched a "screen-projection interaction" product, giving full play to the powerful visual effects of the big screen, allowing brands to find new traffic depressions outside the mobile terminal; Moreover, the linkage of large and small screens is of great benefit to the brand to penetrate more life scenes and increase awareness. There is a lot of value ahead, and this product quickly attracted the favor of well-known brands at home and abroad, such as Dyson, Guerlain, Xerox, Clarks and vivo, and served more than 50 brands in 2022 alone. In addition to the innovation of advertising products, innovative marketing ideas are also indispensable. When it comes to long video marketing, brand awareness is basically around the work itself, and marketing is also concentrated during its hot broadcast. In this way, the marketing cycle is actually limited to one or two months, and it is difficult to have too many new changes in marketing gameplay. Moreover, if you only use drama synthesis for exposure, you are still doing brand advertising in essence, you can't directly link the effect transformation, and you also lack deep connection with consumers. At the moment when everyone emphasizes "product effect synergy", this will affect the recognition and selection bias of advertisers. Taking high-quality IP as the original force, Youku IP full-link marketing has been deeply cultivated for 4 years, and a "Youku model" has emerged to create new business space together with major brands. In fact, in the long video industry, IP development has also experienced years of upgrading. Youku applies this concept to marketing. On the one hand, marketing content can run through the whole process of IP development and derivation, realizing full coverage and full utilization from content production and broadcasting to subsequent derivative works output, so that brands can seize every touch of consumers in the content consumption journey. On the other hand, IP development will move from content to consumption, from online to offline, with more channels and scenarios, which also makes "product-effect synergy" more possible. Corresponding to Youku, many mature and high-quality IPS have proved their IP content derivative development capabilities, and brands only need to follow suit in marketing. At the same time, it is worth emphasizing that, as Shen Yan said, "Youku's role is not only to provide a platform for video content consumption, but also a frontier entrance in marketing." Backed by the huge Ali ecology, the online and offline resources and business areas of the entire back chain route can also be docked with Youku, which is also the unique advantage of Youku. With such a complete link, the brand can play a lot of space in marketing and the commercial value of the content can be released as much as possible. For example, the cooperation between Pizza Hut and Xiaominjia, relying on the marketing value of explosive IP, Youku incited the scarce resources of Ali Ecology-Taobao Tmall, Hungry, and directly linked content and consumption. Creative grass planting in the play fills the brand mind, and many positions outside the play have built brand business contacts and built a complete link of "seeing-eating-hoarding". During the event, the joint package created by Pizza Hut's new sausage pizza and Xiaominjia IP achieved Top3 in this Super Brand Day. Hungry? The exclusive IP venue of "Pizza Hut × Xiaominjia" was named "This! It's the brave superX of street dance. In the fifth quarter of last year, the meta-universe marketing gameplay was also integrated: the super-realistic virtual digital person LimX officially announced by the brand appeared on the show and was officially announced on various social media; Brand and Hungry * * * Create a "Battle of Big Players" venue, and its customized 10000 NFT was sold out in 4 days. Virtual digital person LimX；; Brave the World Super x &；; Hungry &; " This! Just like Pizza Hut and Brave Tianya superX, many brands of customized NFT of Hip-hop 5 have jumped out of the inherent mode of "doing long video marketing is doing exposure" by comprehensively using Youku's "content power" and "marketing power", so that "marketing" and "sales" can really be connected. Users who pursue drama synthesis can build brand awareness from IP content, generate interest, and then transform and retain it in the consumer market, and the path is complete and correct. As far as possible, brands can reduce the possibility of losing consumers, and the more certain growth will naturally not be empty talk. The new story in 2023 has accumulated content and marketing power. At this point in time, Youku's content reserve in 2023 will add more confidence to the brand. Youku continues to exert its strength in the variety field, constantly improving the production capacity of high-quality content, continuing to share the same frequency with young people with rich themes and types, injecting vitality into the industry and building a solid content position for brand communication. "this! It is street dance 6 ""awesome! Dance club 2, meta-stage plan, superstar electronic music 2, hip-hop and its spirit are Youku's eternal beliefs. In the new year, Youku will play IP with Trend King. It takes "Street Dance 6" as the core, creating a diverse "street dance universe" and constantly creating a number of fine content for the young trend culture. In the upcoming sixth season, we will continue to join hands with Canxing Simon Lu team to open up a new pattern, pay tribute to sportsmanship, and complete the transformation from variety show ip to more influential international event IP; And "it's amazing! As an important part of the hip-hop universe, Dance Club 2 will launch a brand-new battle in the second season, managing the existence of people and dance clubs and dancing together; Another heavy IP "Meta Stage Project" will unite the top production teams in the industry to create a new stage for talented dancers to shine. On the music track of classic variety show, Youku strives for perfection: "Transcendental Music 2" is upgraded subversively, and the Z-generation music aesthetics and expression are displayed in a panoramic and immersive way; As the first OST music stage competition show in China, the new IP music ensemble "The Beautiful Song of Drama" will select representative OST golden songs, discuss and confront generations, aesthetics and values, and reshape the breakthrough point of the music ensemble for ten years; Debut is the peak. Douban's annual score is 8.5, Chaoyang Singing Center. In the second season, there have been brand-new upgrades in the lineup of artists, stage visual effects and gameplay, and we will continue to let good music "bask in the sun". Nice song, unlimited detective team, heartbeat 20 years old 3, good friends pay attention to interest on weekends, and don't forget to take care of life. The platform will radiate many aspects of life and grasp users' emotions through multiple vertical variety bands. I am 20 years old. 3. Let's fall in love. 5. Let the audience continue to "eat sugar". Hey, urban hunters and let's get started. They vividly depict the colorful career choices and new industry prospects of contemporary youth and open up a new perspective on workplace themes. "Weekend of Good Friends" focuses on the most fashionable lifestyle of young people, making the weekend "micro-travel" of star friends a proof for young users. In addition, in 2023, Youku laid out the reasoning track, and jointly created the first infinite flow reasoning reality show "Infinite Detective Team" with the super reasoning team, redefining the reasoning variety with peak mode and gameplay. In terms of drama series, Youku always adopts the strategy of head, big drama and solo broadcast, focusing on fine content. The five major cinemas of petty bourgeoisie, suspense, city, Hong Kong drama and family fun include multi-theme works, and constantly explore genre innovation to fully release the value advantages of "potential explosion" from aggregate traffic to cognitive occupation. Judging from the market feedback last year, the theme of ancient dolls still dominates. In Youku's film list, the number of people in Youku's station has exceeded 2 million. Long Moon Blooms, Care for the Heart and Starfall Solidified into Sugar, which will be released soon, are also the works worth looking forward to. I can't hide it secretly. Centrifugal force and this year's hits "Light me up" and "Warm You" are all adapted from popular novels, and IP has a sufficient fan base. Houlang, which tells about the inheritance of Chinese medicine culture, and Love of Jiuqu Bridge, which is a reform and opening up, are also potential stocks that are expected to become the "annual drama" in the new year. In addition, there are classic IP screenwriter Couple on the Wrong Bus, female growth inspirational drama Be Your own Light, youth drama Long Ming Teenager, suspense drama Who is He, wilderness urban drama The Warm Spring Sun, Walking into the Vanity and so on, which are worth looking forward to. In the advantageous humanities field, Youku also has a lot of classic IP and innovative content ready to go this year. In the classic IP, the Round Table School will still maintain its unique tonality in the seventh season, gathering elites in the cultural circle and exporting forward-looking views; "Me and My Time 3" continues to look for Chinese representatives in different fields around the world and convey the value orientation of struggle. The second season of Wonderful City is a documentary urban exploration program produced by Youku, which takes craftsmen, gourmets and artists living in cities as the starting point, presents people's stories with the inner spirit of cities, explores the wonders hidden in the daily life of six cities, and depicts the cultural cores of different cities and the inner spirit of people in cities. In the new program, "Voice" and "Night Wandering God" will be led by Cai Kangyong and Xu Zhiyuan respectively, leading the audience to observe all kinds of life and unlock the reflection and poetry at night; The immersive aesthetic experience reality show "Never Beautiful" will fully present the charm of traditional culture and oriental aesthetics. These "textured" contents will bring deeper thinking, give the audience a sense of gain, promote spiritual growth, and at the same time enable the brand to reach high-net-worth people more accurately and spread in depth. With the recovery and full recovery of offline performances in 2023, Xiami Music entertainment brand under Barley will build IP matrices of music festivals with different scales, styles, scenes and rich experiences in Beijing, Shenzhen, Hebei, Hangzhou and Sanya, and go to Shanhai with you in a relaxed, romantic and warm atmosphere, which is worth looking forward to. At the same time, in 2023, Alibaba Pictures participated in the production, co-production or distribution of films to be released, which are rich in reserves and diverse in themes, such as Disappearing She, Keeping You Safe, The Spirit of the Dragon and the Horse, and I'm glad you came, etc., and will also meet with you one after another. To sum up, Youku's works in various fields, such as variety, drama, humanities and film performances. , showing wide reach and high tolerance, so the brand has more space for participation and integration, and it is possible to communicate and interact with consumers across fields and time periods, and continue to generate emotional connections. Seeing the big from the small, Youku's ability also shows the improvement space of long video marketing in the future. "Despite all kinds of uncertainties, long video is still the core position of brand launch." As Shen Yan said, based on good content and innovation, the marketing value of long videos will be continuously verified. From the perspective of preservation ability and film list, Youku has also made full preparations.