LeEco no longer has ambitions under heavy pressure? Liang Jun: Give me three years to achieve 20 billion in TV large-screen operating revenue

Over the years, the outside world has always given mixed reviews to the Internet company LeTV. Some people hate it, while others regard it as a role model and continue to emulate it.

But when we look back at the end of 2016, from September 19, 2012 when LeTV announced its entry into the TV industry, it was not optimistic, but the LeTV model was gradually recognized by users, industry, market and investors, until it completely subverted the traditional TV industry.

At this point in time, when the entire LeTV Group is once again in crisis, its followers are still watching LeTV. They want to know whether there is still profit in the TV screen market.

If LeTV once brought television terminals into an era of negative profits, then in the future LeTV is likely to become a new model again - making the Internet TV industry profitable.

At LeTV's 2016 closing press conference "OpenEco", LeTV Zhixin President Liang Jun announced that LeTV will achieve non-hardware revenue of 20 billion in the next three years. While other competitors are still at the content operation level, LeTV has risen to operating users, which is a higher level of operation and also requires stronger Internet technology capabilities to support it.

Where does LeTV get the confidence to reach 20 billion?

"I dare to say today that we have a revenue of 20 billion. This is definitely not something I came up with on a whim. It has been accurately calculated by LeTV, including every source of ecological income in the next three years, including membership, advertising, games, innovative services, etc. I tell you responsibly that what I am telling you today is a true story, and I will tell you with facts in three years." In response to questions about the 20 billion ecological operating income, Liang Jun answered with confidence.

Smart TVs with larger screens and better interactive experiences have become an important platform for home users to enjoy entertainment scenes. The return of users to the living room is an irreversible trend. User demand has directly stimulated the rapid rise of the OTT market.

Liang Jun dared to say this because in the past few years, LeTV's large-screen ecosystem has tens of millions of users and is a high-value customer asset that can be operated. According to Nielsen Netcom's "LeTV Super TV User Value Research Report", Super TV has a large number of young high-income users, 94% of whom are aged between 20 and 45, 86% of whom are families with two or more people, 50% of whom own cars, and 89% of whom own houses.

Today, the value of large-screen TVs does not only lie in how much hardware is sold, but also in how many users are connected to these hardware and what value they can continue to provide to these users in the future. This is also the original intention of major video websites, licensees, operators, and mobile phone manufacturers to rush into the terminal market to make TVs. They hope to gain users in the living room again and get dividends similar to the heyday of the mobile phone market.

According to the forecast of Aowei Cloud Network, the household penetration rate of OTT terminals in the country will reach 45% in 2017, which is equivalent to the 43% penetration rate of smartphones when the mobile Internet market exploded in 2013. By the same token, the OTT market is already at the critical point of exploding.

So what do LeTV’s high-value users mean to the OTT industry?

In the past, Alibaba Digital Entertainment had subsidized TV box manufacturers and brought 70% of the OTT terminals in the market under YunOS. "After aimlessly subsidizing and enclosing the market, it did not have sufficient operational and development capabilities, and messed up the situation." This is the evaluation of it from industry insiders.

In terms of payment ability, high-value users are more feasible to operate. Previously, some terminal manufacturers dumped Internet TVs and boxes to third- and fourth-tier cities at low prices. Since users did not have the ability to pay, after the TVs were sold, they had nothing to do with the manufacturers except after-sales service.

According to data from LeTV Super TV Stargazing System and LeTV Smart Terminal Research Institute in November, 66% of Super TV users are in first- and second-tier cities, and 39% are concentrated in the southeast coastal areas, which have higher commercial value. At the same time, LeTV's average daily power-on rate exceeds 60%, the average daily power-on time is 5.26 hours, and the average weekly on-demand time is 16 hours. The value of Super TV terminal hardware entry is more obvious. LeTV Super Video's average daily power-on accounted for 65.8%, while iQiyi was 2.4%, Tencent was 1.9%, and Youku was 0.7%.

When a TV brand’s cumulative sales are about to exceed 10 million units and it has a large number of high-value users, a strategic adjustment is needed at this critical point.

"We need to slow down the pace appropriately, so that the entire team can shift from aggressive user acquisition to refined acquisition of high-value users and ecosystem operations. LeTV used to have aggressive sales targets, but now it has stepped back a bit. LeTV is very rational, so we have adjusted our strategy to achieve this goal within three years, rather than in 2017," Liang Jun explained.

At the same time, in terms of hardware cooperation, LeTV launched the super TV uMax85 and X65S to continuously acquire incremental users; and released the smart home center screen boss to convert existing users; and the return of LeTV box aims to cultivate potential users.

It can be seen that LeTV's development trajectory in the TV business has become very clear. LeTV's large-screen user value and marketing value will surpass the existing OTT TV model and usher in the next new media era.

Technological upgrades double the value of TV content ecosystem

“In order to achieve an ecosystem operating income of 20 billion, is it enough to just have high-value users?”

"It's far from enough!" This is the answer given by LeTV itself.

Without real Internet operation capabilities to support it, LeTV would have no chance. Liang Jun believes that the reason why LeTV Super TV is a real large-screen Internet company is because LeTV has the ability to provide the most powerful basic technical support for large-scale Internet user operations.

The five intelligent platforms of LeTV Cloud (smart cloud), Ark System (advertising service), BOSS (one-stop business), AI (intelligent algorithm), and Stargazing System (user insight) provide sufficient guarantee for targeted operations and continue to create innovative ecological services, which is something other manufacturers cannot achieve.

Technology remains the cornerstone of operations.

Taking the stargazing system as an example, it is a real-time management system that can provide deep insights into users. It can collect user behavior data throughout the process, intelligently push advertisements and service information, and accurately deliver advertisements through user classification.

First of all, the stargazing system can quickly match, accurately classify, respond in real time, and push information in a timely manner. It can complete fully accurate dynamic calculations in the blink of an eye, focus on exciting content and provide services to users in a timely manner.

Secondly, LeTV Super TV's audience screening function has evolved from the pixel era to the vector lossless era. Through the seven dimensions of viewing content, terminal attributes, social attributes, application attributes, shopping attributes, dynamic use, and geographic location, more than 2,000 tags are derived, which can flexibly customize service content for each user.

Finally, automatic triggering can achieve 100% error-free response 24 hours a day. For example, if the trigger rule is set to watch domestic historical blockbusters for more than 5 hours and watch two films by Zhang Yimou, once a user meets the above conditions, the rule will be activated and it will automatically trigger the push of tickets for the premiere of Zhang Yimou's latest movie "The Great Wall".

A guest at the scene commented on the stargazing system, "It is really amazing. It provides real-time insights into users throughout the entire process. It pushes audience screening from the pixel era to the vector lossless era."

Perhaps this is the beginning of television entering the AI ​​era.

What are the advantages of integrating VS aggregating the open closed loop of LeTV's large-screen ecosystem?

As for the significance of "Open Eco", Liang Jun explained, "We will take the lead in launching in-depth cooperation with third-party partners in LeTV's vertically integrated closed-loop ecosystem, allowing them to seamlessly integrate into the LeTV ecosystem, forming a consistent user experience and higher commercial value, so that users and business partners can experience the value of LeTV's open ecosystem."

It is understood that the end-to-end vertically integrated open closed-loop ecosystem of "platform + content + hardware + software + application" built by LeTV has core competitiveness in the five elements, and each element is technically prepared to connect with external third-party partners. After connecting with third-party partners, LeTV ecosystem can continue to maintain the closed-loop experience of LeTV ecosystem, while providing users with more and richer Internet services. Other manufacturers are currently only opening the entrance and cannot provide the ultimate experience.

Taking LeTV's partner CIBN as an example, LeTV will customize an independent intelligent exclusive desktop "Little C Selection" for it. The user operation logic and viewing experience are similar to LeTV's own Lejian Desktop. You can return to where you came from. Unlike the aggregation mode, each APP is independent and the operating experience on the same TV is very different.

At the same time, LeTV uses powerful background data systems including the star-gazing system to collect and track user behavior data throughout the process, and provides CIBN with specially customized user behavior reports, commercialization reports and overall industry reports based on in-depth insights and analysis of users, so that CIBN can better complete efficient operations on Super TV.

Opening up marketing capabilities is also an important part of LeTV's large-screen open strategy.

In terms of advertising containers and presentation formats, LeTV has created a variety of innovative modes on Super TV that can fully interact with users, such as BMW's video screensaver, Mercedes-Benz's cross-screen interactive advertising cases, OMEGA's voice screensaver, etc., which fully demonstrate LeTV Super TV's extensive technological innovation capabilities and help business partners better showcase their product features and enhance user interaction effects.

Liang Jun said, "We will take the lead in launching in-depth cooperation with third-party partners in LeTV's vertically integrated closed-loop ecosystem, allowing them to seamlessly integrate into the LeTV ecosystem, form a consistent user experience and higher commercial value, so that users and business partners can experience the value of LeTV's open ecosystem."

Faced with the various crises LeTV has encountered recently, some people may ask whether this heralds the closure of the Internet boom?

But I believe that LeTV is not perfect, and perhaps this is precisely the starting point of a new journey.

When a company with real potential has expanded to a certain level, it rationally chooses to stop burning money and seriously considers making profits. This is the value of LeTV as a new model.

Too many turmoil and a lot of negativity have covered up LeTV's achievements one by one. If you remove these doubts, you will find that it still has healthy and value-creating businesses.

"We still have a future. We will take any problems seriously. Super TV will still have great development. We want to let potential future investors in Super TV and LeTV.com know that Super TV will represent LeTV in taking the lead in trying out an open strategy. We want to tell everyone that an open strategy is attractive enough and we need to take practical actions to make it a reality." Liang Jun is full of confidence in LeTV's future.

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.