Saturday, December 5, 2009

The Renaissaince Site

Apparently, Tudou.com partakes in more than meets the eye! Not only are they a social video uploading site, a platform for content providers, and an innovating content provider, they are also the founders of the Tudou Film Festival. The second Tudo Film Festival took place on April 18th of this year in Shanghai, China. What differentiates this past festival from the first is Tudou's partnership with China Film Group Corporation, a company that has earned the reputation of being China's most prestigious film production and trading organization. This new union will create opportunities for participants to qualify for titles and access film production facilities, funds, resources and channels, which opens the door to China's film industry for aspiring content producers.


Another major aspect of Tudou's Film Festival was accurately described by Tudou's CEO Gary Wang when he said, "based on the experience of our first Tudou Video Festival last year, our 2009 campaign aims for a bigger goal to build up the value chain for Internet video creative talents, who are getting insufficient attention and financing at this point. Our goal is to expand development and extend opportunities for amazing talents and vitality that we have seen on Tudou.com, hopefully in real terms such as cash financing and broadcasting opportunities.”


According to Marc.cn, during the Tudou video financing forum, fifty selected proposals in the categories drama, non-fiction/documentary, music/entertainment, animation, and reality show were pitched in front of potential content buyers and investors from TV channels, production companies, mobile/new media channels and brand advertisers, simulating a content trading platform. Through this type of audience - content provider interaction, Tudou is creating an environment that has potential to change the traditional business model of Chinese media and entertainment. By not only allowing a space for audience content, as they do on Tudou.com, but also allocating funding to their projects, Tudou is declaring its continual commitment to revolutionizing the definition of Chinese online media.



Thursday, December 3, 2009

A Co-Branded Fan...is a Synonymous Fan : )









As we've discussed in class, a company's "brand" determines their image
and the type of consumer they attract. Tudou.com has been quite successful with the image they project to their site users, and has gone one step further to ensure a larger audience. Tudou does a thing called "co-branding" in which it presents products, services, or artists along with the producing companies. An example of this is co-branding artist with music labels, one of the most popular being songstress "Guo Meimei presented by Warner Music and Tudou." Tudou provided Warner Music/Guo Meimei their own music homepage which got 6,000,000 page visits in the first 2 weeks of creation. This type of relationship between companies and Tudou allows Tudou to gain more diverse video users who could potentially become regular Tudou site users. Also, once these new site users become accustomed to using Tudou to watch their favorite Warner Music artists, the two names, Tudou and Warner Music become synonymous brands to the consumer = a Co-branded Fan...is a Synonymous Fan : )

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Demographically speaking...

An important aspect of any company is "knowing your consumer," in order to expand your customer base. Tudou.com has mastered this better than any other social video-uploading site in China. Tudou's top competitors in China are websites, Youku.com and 56.com, that have similar functions and capabilities as Tudou. Youku's ratio is 0.74 male - 0.26 female, 56's ratio is 0.91 male - 0.09 female, while Tudou's is 0.65 male - 0.35 female. Although, Tudou's demographics are not perfect, they are more evenly distributed in terms of male and female users. This allows Tudou to attract advertisers looking to target both male and female users simultaneously or individually, unlike Youku and 56 who are only likely to attract advertisers that are looking to target a male dominated audience, therefore, limiting ad sales. Tudou's demographic gap is continually closing, and creating more opportunities for ad $$$...