Youku Tudou, Inc. (NYSE: YOKU) Adds Foreign TV
Youku Tudou, Inc. (NYSE: YOKU), China’s leading Internet television company (“Youku Tudou”), announced today that the first foreign TV series approved by SAPPRFT (State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) under the new 2015 regulations for streaming foreign TV series and movies will debut on the Youku Tudou platform. The first episode of the Korean romantic comedy entitled “Hyde, Jekyll, and Me,” originally airing on SBS, will be made available on July 13 for all Youku Tudou users, with one new episode made available each day after. On July 16, paid subscribers will be given exclusive full season access and regular users will continue to have one new episode made available every subsequent weekday.
Youku Tudou is one of the leading destinations for Korean content in China with as many as 185 million unique visitors per month and over 11.5 billion cumulative video views of Korean content for 2014 per internal data. By improving user experience and adding exclusive content similar to “Hyde, Jekyll, and Me,” Youku Tudou has substantially grown its subscription base and Youku’s mobile app is currently the #1 mobile app per monthly user time spent among major Chinese apps with an average of 648 minutes in May 2015 according to iResearch.
Youku Tudou’s subscription service currently offers a wide selection of movies from primarily Hollywood and domestic Chinese studios. Going forward, Youku Tudou will further enhance the value proposition of its subscription services and add exclusive TV series into the subscription package. These new additions will include TV series from the United States, Korea and Hong Kong as well as Youku Tudou’s in-house productions.
“Subscription services are the next growth pillars for online video monetization. China is shifting towards a consumer-driven economy and online consumption is becoming mainstream. Leveraging our user base of over 500 million monthly unique visitors, we have seen big growth in the number of our paid subscribers. By partnering with top players and continually enhancing our services, we are able to create a premium experience for our paid subscribers and further drive subscription based revenue,” said Victor Koo, Chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou, Inc.
Youku Tudou Inc., incorporated on September 20, 2005, is an Internet television company in the People’s Republic of China. The Company’s Youku and Tudou platforms enable users to search, view and share video content across multiple devices. As of December 31, 2014, its monthly visitors from home and office personal computer (PC) users numbered approximately 256 million and 169 million for Youku platform and Tudou platform, respectively. The daily mobile views of both Youku and Tudou platforms combined reached 900 million in 2014. Through its Youku and Tudou platforms, it has built an online video content library. The videos accessible on its two platforms are produced content, such as television serial dramas, movies, variety shows, current events reports and music videos. The remaining content consists of user-generated content and in-house productions. The Company licenses professionally produced video content at fixed rates for a specified term. The terms of its licenses vary depending on the type of content and producer, though the terms for television serial dramas and movies range from six months to ten years. As of December 31, 2014, its video content library contained more than 5,500 movie titles, 2,600 television serial drama titles and over 540 variety shows.
The Company offers products and services through its Youku platform and Tudou platform to users, which includes online video content, online video search and discovery and Youku Tudou community. Through its Youku and Tudou platforms, it has built an online video content library, consisting primarily of professionally produced content including television programs and movies, and, to a lesser extent, user-generated content and in-house productions. Its professionally produced content spans across five categories: television serial dramas, movies, current event reports, variety shows and music videos. As of December 31, 2014, it licensed a collection of domestic and overseas contents that encompass more than 5,500 movie titles, 2,600 television serial drama titles and over 540 variety shows. The providers of professionally produced content in China are fragmented and primarily include media production companies, professional studios, copyright distributors, television stations and music companies. The Company license professionally produced video content at fixed rates for a specified term.
The Company’s Youku and Tudou platforms allow Internet users to upload, watch and share user-generated video clips. The Company produces a spectrum of content, including sponsored Web serial dramas, reality shows, interviews and variety shows. It focuses on producing Web serial dramas and variety shows for its young, educated and urban user base. On the Youku platform, it promotes its in-house productions under the brand Youku Originals. As of December 2014, Youku Originals had released more than 70 productions. Tudou platform develops original programs, distributes and monetizes online video content developed in-house. The Company has a video search engine called, Soku.com. It also provides products and services, such as video channels and popularity ranking indices, on both of its platforms, to facilitate navigation and content discovery on its Websites. Its back-office content editors organize its video content into channels, including Movies, Television Serial Dramas, Variety Shows, Automobiles, Music, Fashion and Style, Travel, Sports and Technology. Each of these channels is accessible from its homepage.
The Company provides online community services to facilitate user communication and interaction. It enables users to create a personalized video-sharing space and other users can choose to follow that personalized video-sharing space, creating a personalized channel based on the Video Space curator’s preferences, and track their videos viewing history. Users of its Video Space functionality can manage video uploads, their online friends list, visitor comments and online chats within their Video Space. It enables users to comment on or rate videos by either clicking on vote for or votes against buttons or by posting comments below the video for other users to see. It co-operates with Chinese online community Websites. Users of these Websites recommends to each other the video clips on its Websites.
The Company’s online advertising services include in-video, display, sponsorship and other forms of advertisements. In-video advertisements appear at certain times during the playback of a video. These video advertisements can be pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll or pause advertisements. Display advertisements can be delivered alongside a video and takes the form of graphical banners or text hyperlinks. Other forms of advertisements include product placements in its in-house-produced Web video series, sponsored live events or in-house-produced viral videos.
The Company competes with iQiyi.com, Tencent and Sohu.
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