From a certain point on, content products began to be added to people's shopping lists just like physical products.
We have gone through the barbaric era of random copying in the early days of the Internet, the advertising era of "wool out of pigs", and the era of "is content free" debate. Today, content consumption has begun to take shape.
In all major pan-entertainment platforms, membership has become the most mainstream payment method. There are ten items of membership rights at every turn. Are these "family bucket" value-added services really valuable and attractive to users? In many cases, we think that buying membership means buying content, but on video platforms, a lot of content is still free and open. Why are users paying for it? Why sometimes people are willing to actively reward content and even repeat purchases exponentially?
At the fork in the road of industry development, returning to users helps us grasp consumption patterns and provide more valuable content. Today we are trying to talk about people’s real content consumption motivation from the user’s perspective:
One is to pay
for the content itself. There are two typical ways to pay for the content itself: one is the viewing and listening period of the content. For example, platform membership (paid monthly), movie coupons (mostly 48 hours); another approach is closer to direct purchase of content, such as digital albums or singles, and chapters of online novels. For users, the biggest difference is whether the content is used once or repeatedly. The entertainment programs are mostly consumables, the content pool is rich, and the replay rate of single films is not high; but music is an exception. The music is short and concomitant, suitable for re-listening; and the development of the music industry from physical records has led to our purchase of digital albums with a sense of possession. This special payment method is also more suitable for users' desire to own content.
Although free content will exist for a long time, the number of users paying for content is indeed rising. This is due to the improvement of residents' income level, the improvement of copyright protection and the continuous cultivation of payment habits for many years. In the long-term video field where the payment is more mature, the number of paid members on the top platform has exceeded 100 million, and the proportion of paying users is approaching 20%;
Although the music platform has experienced years of content construction and paid cultivation, the proportion of paying users is only about 6%. The study found that the willingness of content platform users to pay is affected by the value of content and peer payment preferences. The uniqueness of content and the positive attitude and behavior of peer payment will promote payment, but users’ free psychology of content will play a moderating role.
In addition to the number of paying users, another issue is the average cost of a single user. The ARPU value of domestic video platforms is much lower than that of foreign video platforms such as Netflix (about 1/3). Although the initial development cost of content products is high, the marginal cost is negligible; coupled with the lack of physical form, for users, the real price perception of content is often very vague and subject to external influence.
IResearch found that the price that domestic online music users are willing to pay increased from 16.3 yuan/month in 2016 to 31.7 yuan/month in 2019. However, according to Tencent Music’s financial report for the first quarter of 2020, its ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) ) Only 9.4 yuan [5], there is a big gap between the user's willingness to pay and the actual payment situation. Due to the influence of the early free era and the era of low-price competition, low-price expectations may be more solid. Cost-effectiveness has always been an important factor in the payment of a considerable number of users, and there are more price-sensitive users of video platforms, and the promotion of promotional activities is obvious.
In short, from free to paid is a big step in the psychological change of content payment . However, there is still a lack of a more objective perception of the cost and value of content. This aspect is worthy of further consideration; in addition, the value of the same content to different users may vary greatly, and the costs they are willing to pay are also different. In addition to identifying the user base for the content, it also means that the price of the content is flexible. With the help of data, we can better understand different people and explore differentiated content services and flexible consumption methods.
2. Paying for additional experience In
many cases, we are not just paying for the content itself. Especially pan-entertainment content has strong sensory and emotional experience attributes. In other words, what users buy is a sense of pleasure.
The most obvious example is the exemption of advertising. Ads do not deprive the content, but temporarily interrupt the content and occupy part of the user's time. Users of free content just choose to transfer part of the viewing experience and pass the content cost to advertisers; and in order to obtain a continuous viewing experience, it has become one of the important factors for users to purchase membership. However, the extra experience nowadays is much more than that. such as:
1. Audio-visual enhancement
Almost all audio-visual platforms, such as Dolby audio-visual, lossless music, multi-viewing, are studying technology, continuously improving audio-visual effects, and providing higher-quality services exclusively to platform members. However, compared to the "rigorous need" of having the right to view content, having clearer audio and image quality is probably only considered "icing on the cake."
However, it is not that people have low requirements for audiovisual, but that it is often only particularly important in certain situations. Just imagine, when we go to LiveHouse, are we willing to tolerate the "standard sound quality" of music players? When watching a concert, why are the high-priced infield tickets and the cabbage-priced grandstand tickets also sought after?
Therefore, if an additional audio-visual enhancement service is added to a pan-music program that focuses on audio-visual experience, this combination will be a bit more “attractive” because it satisfies the user’s gap between Tingge and LiveHouse. Compromise demand. For another example, in a large-scale performance or sports event, the focus of the audience's attention is often difficult to adjust. Some people like the perspective of God, and some prefer close-ups of characters. The multi-view playback function of the live broadcast cleverly fits this point.
In essence, when you choose online rather than offline, you have already given up part of the audiovisual experience. But online consumption will eventually become the main scene for many people. With the further implementation of 5G, VR, and wearable devices, the cloud-based audio-visual conference is one step closer to offline experience. Audiovisual enhancement + specific content is no longer just "icing on the cake."
2. Timeliness
If "audiovisual enhancement" is to make flat content products three-dimensional, then "timeliness" is to change the consumption time of content products on the vertical timeline. But there is a question, is pan-entertainment content time-sensitive?
Timeliness is a measurement tool invented for news, and the value of news decays over time. The timeliness of entertainment content is not obvious, so great works often endure. However, when a content becomes popular, evolves into popular culture, and begins to enter people's afternoon chats, and appears in Weibo hot search, Baidu Index and WeChat Moments, topicality becomes its added value.
The timeliness of popular culture content is not in the content itself, but in the same-frequency discussion with the groups that share the content. Some users only care about getting content, and some users are keen on topics outside of content and sociality. If you look carefully at the popular works on the content platform, you will find a large number of variety shows, serials, and serialized animations, most of which will be released to the public for free. Members are more eligible for priority viewing, which is equivalent to the timeliness of purchasing the content. Nowadays, the advanced on-demand mode emerging on video platforms also further advances the consumption time of content.
With the first wave of users watching, they will trigger discussion and occupy the center of the topic. However, the continuation cycle of entertainment content is longer, and latecomers can still join, or simply establish an independent discussion group. For example, movie-watching fans on Douban will be divided into different groups according to different movie-watching time to protect latecomers from being "spoiled".
The split of content timeliness is not only an experience sale, but also a kind of differentiated price. The important thing is to understand which people have time-sensitive needs for content, and which people only care about getting the content itself. At the same time, in terms of implementation details, provide both parties with differentiated services that do not interfere with each other.
3. Efficient entertainment
"Efficiency" does not sound like what a fun seeker is concerned about. But not necessarily. A very important phenomenon is that for a long time, we have been accustomed to the segmented and periodic way of consuming entertainment content. "Chasing drama" and "reinforcing changes" have become part of the daily routine of people's leisure life.
There are many historical reasons for the formation of this consumption habit. For example, in the television era, all viewers share the same schedule, and it is impossible to allow long content such as TV dramas to be played at one time; in the Internet era, periodic schedules have been continued and become a popular topic and attract more The way people pay attention; for seasonally updated works, periodic broadcasting can also collect feedback in time to adjust the plot trend; in addition, in the field of online literature, due to the low cost of copying and misappropriating text, chapter-by-chapter updates are also used A self-protection against piracy.
But in any case, chasing drama is a contradictory experience. Those unfinished story chapters have become clues left in our minds, popping up from time to time, wanting to find an answer. Many drama fans are enjoying the feeling of "with drama companions" and "hopefulness". But some of them are not happy about this. They just want to make a quick decision, take a good look, and then kick these thoughts out of their minds. Therefore, some friends always adhere to the principle of "non-final, no drama", and some people have become loyal fans of short films and movies.
As a result, some forms of trying to change the efficiency of entertainment appeared: First, a type of secondary creative film and television quick-cut work appeared on the PUGC video platform. Introducing half of the original film through half of the narration, you can chase a drama in a few hours, explain a movie in 20 minutes, etc. The other is advanced on-demand. Advance on-demand is not only a segmentation of timeliness, but it is interesting that it resets the rhythm of the drama. Most of the on-demand rules are straight to the ending after a period of update, or divided into multiple centralized viewing. This mimics the experience of chasing after the show is over, and provides another option for those who don't want to wait in order.
This demand for entertainment efficiency will be more obvious in the fast-paced, time-stressed stage and crowd. We both hope to get full and deep relaxation and entertainment in the limited fragmented time (this is also the reason why highly immersive short videos and lighter heavy games are popular), but we don’t want it to take up too much attention in our daily lives. Human resources. The content is best to be freely split, reorganized, compressed, restored...for different people, scenes and times.
Third, pay for "fan behavior"
Another feature of cultural entertainment content is to serve people's spiritual world. It is not cold, nor does it focus on tool attributes, but silently conveys a large number of personality characteristics and values. Our payment is often accompanied by a certain degree of affection and even recognition. And this kind of affection and identification can easily be directed to the living people, that is, writers, singers, characters, and actors.
When a character or work meets our expectations, we have the desire to express and act to establish a closer connection with it. This type of consumption is quite proactive. "Rewarding" is a typical example, such as Rewarding on WeChat Official Accounts, Work Recommendation Tickets for Reading at the Starting Point, and UP Main Charging at Station B, etc. It conveys a clear encouragement and recognition, which can not only promote the continuous production of the work personally, but also a "simple and rude" way to attract the creator's attention and establish contacts. The amount of reward is flexible, which is equivalent to a differentiated price adjusted by the user. Especially for non-head creators with limited pricing power, it is a compensatory return method.
With the gradual heading of content, the size of fans has greatly increased. When the work has strong influence and trust endorsement, pricing is no longer a problem. At this time, the typical rice circle culture and activities are more likely to be born. Fanquan has a more distinctive identity, and the identification and interaction of fans among fans has become an alternative way of communication; Fanquan also has a clearer goal and strong appeal, paying for idol works.
This type of consumption has surpassed the purchase of content itself. For example, the total sales of Jay Chou's "Mojito" on the QQ music platform have exceeded 5 million copies, of which the number one fan guild has contributed more than 60,000 copies of the sales, and the number one fans have repurchased more than 4,000 times ( Data as of 2020.8.3). Except for the first fee to pay for the song, thousands of repurchases are all to convey a strong love identity and a desire to stand out from the massive fan base.
The IP value and fan effect of pan-entertainment content has been repeatedly fulfilled and continuously developed. Active voluntariness and flexible payment have always been important internal characteristics of this type of consumption. We can derive a variety of rich content services and consumption patterns based on the needs of social interaction, expression and co-creation in the broad "fan behavior".
Conclusion
Because of the long distance from the consumer, the high degree of personalization, and the efficiency of circulation, historically, content producers have often been unable to win returns equivalent to their works; and now, the digital content industry, which has just passed the free era, welcomes content consumption To recover, we still need to be patient on the road to foster copyright and payment awareness.
In this process, we should see huge differences in the status quo and demand of the content consumption market. On the one hand, due to the difference in the level of economic development, there is still a big gap in the content consumption capacity of different groups. There are users who do not hesitate to consume content, and there are also extremely price-sensitive groups; on the other hand, content products are different from physical products, and different people may have completely different motives for consumption. In addition to purchasing the content itself, the content also has powerful sensory experience attributes, and users will pay for the additional experience; the content also has personal attributes, and fans of content works will actively pay for their love and recognition.
As a platform and content producer, we deserve to understand these diversity carefully, create different content services and consumption methods, and meet differentiated needs. At the same time, always grasp the value of the unchanged content.