China video site obeservations

There’s a very interesting article issued in May 2010, which provide a comprehensive survey on China’s video site, and in-depth research on major video sites from three aspects: a) basic info, b) content, and c) user and advertisement.
Kind note that video site here means all the sites that typically have video-related business, and can be divided into two categories:
1) Video portal site (straight-up video site), include Youku, Tudou, 56, Ku 6, Qiyi, Joy,cn,
2) Portal website that has video function, include Sina, Tencent and Sohu.

Take-away and analysis:
• Speed, quality of the picture, and video content are three most important factors for video site selection.
• Video portal sites beat portal sites in speed, traffic and quality of the pictures. Therefore video portal sites are the way to go.
• Ku6 is the unexpected dark horse, beats competitors in picture quality, traffic and the amount of originals. These provide us guidance on platform selection.
• Different from the US, Movies and TV are the most accepted and liked program for Chinese online audience. Therefore tend to attract advertisement.
• Audience is still reluctant to typical video Ad, yet character-driver Ad is different story.

Part 1 Basic Information—video portal sites, specifically Tudou and Ku6 are the way to go
Speed—straight-up video sites are faster than portals
Portal site is slower than straight up video portal site. Reason: as trading company, major portal sites such as Sina and Sohu won’t heavily invest in upgrading server and other technologies until they see promising profit. Within video portal sites, Ku6 stands out to have the fasterst speed.

Traffic—Youku, Tudou, and Ku6 are top three
The top three sites that have the highest traffic are Youku, Tuou, and Ku6. Within portal sites, Sina and Sohu has different model—Sina focus more on news reporting, whereas Sohu’s model is more like Hulu.
Noteworthy is that Ku6’s traffic enjoy tremendous growth, mainly because the strong support from Sunda.

Part 2 Content—fierce competition among video sites, professional content is the majority.
Speed, picture quality and content are three most important factors in site selection
Speed is the most important factor in choosing video sites, 33% of the researched audience chooses speed to be the most important factor; content is the second most important factor (28%). Picture quality is the third important factor (26%). Noteworthy is that the brand value of certain site is the least important factor for audience. This means that, audience are not confined to one video site. This leads to fierce competition among video sites.
In terms of picture quality, Ku6, Sina, and Qiyi top the list, Youku is in the bottom. The reason is that Youku needs to control cost given its highest user base.
All video sites categorize its movie and TV content by region. Youku and Joy.cn has the highest percentage of content that’s from Hollywood and Europe. Tudou has the biggest percentage of Asian content.
Professional vs. Original
Ku 6 stands out to have a stronger content team. Youku stands out to have the highest amount of user upload and user interaction.
Out of all the audience researched, 39% of them are most interested in new movies and TV, second interested content is entertainment and variety show (10%), third interested content is sports. Different than YouTube, originals are the least popular category (3.7%).

Part 3 Advertisement—advertisers favor professional and authorized content, audience needs time to accept
From advertiser’s perspective, Ku6 and Sina attract advertisers most for its support for high-definition, and authorized professional videos; Youku and Tudou are considered to be risker in copyright due to the mix of both professional and original content. Video advertisement is well-accepted among advertisesr; however, users are not so excited about video advertisement—33% of the audiences researched indicate that they cannot accept Ad on video site.

Access
In terms of how to access video sites, the most common way is search engine (26%); website links is in the second place (25%); advertisement is the least common way to access these sites (0.4%).


Source:
http://www.chinaz.com/Webmaster/Topsite/05251163002010.html
www.kejixun.com