Expertise comes from specialization and success comes from momentum: The logic behind Coocaa Network’s divestiture of its TV business to build a super-intelligent system ecosystem

April 26, 2018 was an important milestone for Coocaa Network, which was founded in October 2006. It took more than ten years to complete a huge leap from zero to a valuation of 10 billion. It was also on this day that Coocaa Network announced the divestiture of its TV business and began to focus on building an open and unified super-intelligent system ecosystem to deeply explore the commercial value of large screens.

Ten Years  

Ten years ago, Skyworth, a traditional TV manufacturer, laid out its future plans, and Coocaa Network was launched. At that time, consumption upgrades were driven by changes in product form, and the market quickly transformed from CRT to LCD flat panels, which brought huge room for imagination. At that time, it seemed like a golden season of raging fire and blooming flowers. Tens of millions of families upgraded the largest screen in their living rooms, and domestic brands took the lead in introducing brands and quality, thus rising comprehensively, and the overall situation was initially determined.

History has always been like this. When the progress on one end begins to rise, the other end is also changing. When the flat-panel LCD industry is advancing by leaps and bounds and is about to dominate the living room, the small screen of the mobile Internet has shown a more powerful force. The rich content and diverse interactions have formed a very high user stickiness and occupied a large amount of user time. The large-screen ecology in the living room is in crisis, and the industry even fell into the dilemma of overall sales decline last year.

Coocaa Network was born in such an industrial background, seeking a breakthrough in the large-screen TV market. Now it can be said that the task is arduous and the times are difficult. After more than ten years of perseverance, it has waited until the spring of the OTT industry comes. It can be said that Coocaa has won the ten-year long march.

Ten years of integration

From the migration to digital TV, the dream of IPTV to the rise of OTT today, the commercial operation exploration of large-screen TVs in living rooms is almost a process of continuous trial and error.

It is also during these ten years that the Internet has evolved from 1.0 to 3.0, from PC screens to mobile phone screens, from the extensive push of massive information to today's big data precision marketing. As time goes by, we have to admit that the only standard for testing the truth is not discussed in the editorial department of Pravda, but is tempered by the fire and sword of users in the market.

After ten years of integration, from Internet TV to the new generation of AI TV, you will find that it is the integration of smart home portals. From the strategic investment of iQiyi and Tencent to the recent 1 billion yuan investment of Baidu, Coocaa has been reborn, from thinking to products, and has stood at the commanding heights of smart home portals.

Coocaa Network has found a blue ocean in OTT. With the strategic investment from Baidu and the support of underlying AI technology, Coocaa Network has more room for imagination in the more than 33 million large screens it operates. In this context, Coocaa took the initiative to divest its TV terminal products. This is Coocaa's inner monologue to show its determination to tradition, and it is also a sign of openness to the industry. From then on, TVs belong to TVs, content belongs to content, and operations belong to operations. Only the system Coocaa turns to embrace users directly, aiming to create an operating platform with hundreds of millions of users, and everything is done for this.

Cool open is cooler

How much room is there for OTT operation value to increase? One comparison is today's traditional TV advertising market, and the other is the Internet advertising market. Last year, the advertising revenue of the entire OTT market in China was about 2.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 130%. From the perspective of the global market, the traditional TV advertising market is constantly declining. In 2017, the sales of TV advertising in the United States experienced the largest decline in 20 years, a decrease of 7.8%. The Chinese market can be imagined.

The super intelligent system ecosystem built by Coocaa Network is precisely at the right moment of this historical transition. Based on dynamic and accurate user portraits, Coocaa Network's intelligent system integrates content through the living room smart screen and pushes value-added services directly to the home screen. Its technology and model are becoming more and more mature, and the number of users covered by the service has exceeded 100 million. More importantly, Coocaa's system-level services are still open. Among the current 33 million terminal users, nearly 5 million are third-party terminal users such as Philips, Panasonic, and Panda.

The strategic investment from Baidu is more significant in strengthening Coocaa Network's intelligent system. This is a key move for Baidu to implement its world-leading AI technology in more devices and more scenarios, and to accurately position itself in the advancement of its AI strategy. For Coocaa Network, this strategic investment allows it to more effectively promote the evolution of smart TV operating systems, laying a solid foundation for its dream of a smart TV operating platform.

In the subdivided field, the system advertising layer, which is mainly based on the boot-up, has accumulated a huge number of users for more than ten years, and the focusing effect on the cooperation of the entire OTT industry chain is self-evident. At the content level, the strategic investment of Tencent and iQiyi means the guarantee and empowerment of content export. In the "Special Analysis of China's OTT TV Market 2018" released by Analysys, the report stated that China's OTT TV market has entered a stage of rapid development, video content has covered the entire network, and the OTT advertising market has great potential, especially content-layer advertising, which needs to be further developed. In the future, the OTT TV market still has a lot to do in terms of content, marketing, user operations, etc. This constitutes the fundamental logic of Coocaa Network's construction of a super-intelligent system ecosystem - grasping the OTT era wave, based on the basic demands of serving users, continuously expanding business partners, and working together with peers to push China's OTT wave to its climax.

With expertise and momentum, Coocaa Network has been in business for ten years. With the empowerment of today's giants, Coocaa Network will surely be even cooler in the OTT operation industry.

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.