OTT becomes the main content distribution channel, and large-screen marketing enters its golden age

As the global epidemic enters its third year, the TV industry has ushered in a new market environment where hardware sales have weakened and service value has increased.

This has created a distorted sense of contradiction in the color TV market: televisions, whose sales have hit the worst record in a decade, have become unprecedentedly popular with big-name advertisers such as Chanel and Versace, with the proportion of large-screen advertising almost doubling.

On the one hand, the global economy has been negatively affected by the epidemic, which has indirectly reduced the public's desire and ability to consume color TV products. In 2021, my country's TV market fell below the 40 million mark, with a market retail scale of 38.35 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 13.8%, a 10-year low;

On the other hand, the epidemic has also brought mass entertainment back to the living room. In 2021, TV viewers will watch TV for 5.83 hours per day, an increase of 12.3% from 2019 before the epidemic. Now that the "attention economy" has become a consensus, the value of large-screen marketing is generally recognized, and OTT advertising traffic has become the only growth curve among the three major screens (TV, PC, and mobile phone).

Users return to the living room, and large screens become the main content distribution channel

As time goes by, OTT's share in home entertainment continues to increase in 2022. During the Spring Festival this year, the daily active users of smart TVs reached 114 million, a significant increase of 35.7% year-on-year; the average daily TV viewing market during the Spring Festival was 6.63 hours, an increase of 21.7% compared with the period before the Spring Festival.

While the color TV industry is facing sales difficulties as it shifts from an incremental market to a stock market, smart TVs have achieved a leap in service and marketing value by relying on a large number of stock users. The OTT industry, with a user base of over 900 million and a stable daily active terminal number of over 100 million, has attracted widespread attention from the capital market in 2021. Not only BAT has made frequent moves, but long video platforms such as iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, and medium and short video platforms such as Bilibili and Xigua have also actively deployed their layouts. Behind this is the successful expansion of large screens at the user level and the continuous strengthening of their voice in the field of content consumption.

It is an indisputable fact that long video content is more compatible with large-screen platforms. According to iQiyi data, as early as the National Day holiday in 2020, the total time spent on iQiyi Internet TV exceeded that of mobile phones and tablets.

Nowadays, large screens have become an important distribution channel for short and medium-length videos, and have also made great contributions to expanding the user base of terminal video platforms. It is reported that in 2021, the MAU of Bilibili on the TV side has surpassed that on the PC side, and the CEO of Bilibili pointed out: "The overlap rate between TV and mobile users is less than 20%."

Deeply tap the marketing potential of large screens, and OTT will finally say goodbye to the value depression

With the shift in traffic, OTT large screens are becoming more and more popular among advertisers, with the three major industries of food and beverage, beauty and personal care, and retail services showing significant growth.

According to the "2021 NEW TV Marketing Report" released by Miaozhen Systems, 25% of advertisers have increased their advertising budgets on large screens in the past year. Especially for beauty and personal care brands, the advertising growth rate on OTT reached 28.45% in 2021, and nearly 20% of brand owners have made independent budgets for OTT marketing.

It is also worth mentioning that as a natural marketing platform, the large screen has more shocking expressiveness and better ability to present product details. In addition, the fact that the target customers’ living rooms have an effective screening of their purchasing power makes OTT extremely attractive to advertisers of high-value goods, luxury goods and other brands.

For example, automobile brands such as Audi, BMW, and Xiaopeng are all shifting their budgets to large-screen devices. Luxury brands such as Chanel, La Mer, and Versace have seen a year-on-year growth rate of 89.26% in OTT advertising, enhancing their ability to reach target users through more immersive large-screen advertising.

Of course, OTT brings more than just a vast amount of high-quality content to the big screen in the living room. For advertisers, big data and artificial intelligence, which keep up with the trend of intelligence, also make precise delivery and "integration of brand and effect" possible.

Taking Coocaa Technology, the first unicorn company in the OTT industry, as an example, relying on its coverage of 110 million terminals (data as of September 30, 2021), Coocaa Technology has occupied more than 1/3 of the market share and has established a complete user portrait data system.

With the help of the native DMP data management platform and CDP user data platform, Coocaa Technology can formulate precise delivery strategies for advertisers before the launch, make advertising data transparent and visible during the delivery process, and adjust the plan at any time. It can also conduct a review after the launch and perform post-link analysis on high-penetration populations to help advertisers continuously explore and optimize delivery combination plans, and achieve "product and effect integration" of increasing sales and enhancing brand value at the same time.

After users are tired of the stereotyped patch ads, the intelligence of large screens also provides more possibilities for advertising, including boot ads, screen-dominant ads, channel entrance ads, recommended ads, patch ads, screen saver ads, application entrance ads, global pop-up ads, event ads, mall ads, and Coocaa's original special ads, a total of 11 types. With richer and more diverse advertising forms, OTT marketing has the characteristics of Internet media being directional, strong in strategy, and interactive, and is the most imaginative advertising terminal today.

However, compared with the powerful marketing capabilities of the large screen in the living room, the OTT advertising industry is still in a significantly underestimated position, creating the most valuable trough with marketing potential at present. Data shows that in 2021, OTT revenue reached 15 billion yuan, of which membership income accounted for about 20% and advertising revenue accounted for about 80%. Whether compared with the trillion-level overall advertising market in China or the 500 billion-level mobile Internet advertising, the scale of the OTT large-screen advertising market has huge room for growth.

Undoubtedly, more and more brands and manufacturers have noticed the large-screen OTT market, which has strong precision marketing capabilities but is seriously undervalued. With users returning to the living room for entertainment and large screens becoming the main distribution channel for high-quality content, and with industry participants jointly exploring value, it is believed that the long-term underestimation of the marketing value of OTT large screens will come to an end in 2022.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.