Burning money to make up for shares has become an old routine. Movies O2O platforms seek differentiated competition and profitability

The hot box office during the Spring Festival period once aroused expectations from all walks of life for the recovery of the film market. However, the film market in March lost the huge subsidies for the Spring Festival period and seemed particularly deserted. Even the "Girls 'Day" and "Women's Day" on March 7 and 8 only received about 60% of the box office on the same day in the previous two years. Industry insiders estimate that the country's box office mark fell to 3 billion yuan in March.

The hot box office during the Spring Festival period once aroused expectations from all walks of life for the recovery of the film market. However, the film market in March lost the huge subsidies for the Spring Festival period and seemed particularly deserted. Even the "Girls 'Day" and "Women's Day" on March 7 and 8 only received about 60% of the box office on the same day in the previous two years. Industry insiders estimate that the country's box office mark fell to 3 billion yuan in March.

This cold current, in addition to the relatively deserted schedule in March itself, also reflects the fading enthusiasm of online ticketing players for walking horses and circling the land. 2015 was the craziest year for online ticketing platforms. In order to expand their market share, every player has made great efforts to subsidize stadiums and launch fares as low as a dozen yuan or even a few yuan, just to gain more users and market share. In 2016, the scale of extensive ticket subsidies was greatly reduced. In addition, there were fewer high-quality films in 2016. Even if there were cheap ticket subsidies, users would not watch many films. No one would be willing to spend money and time on a bad film. In 2017, in addition to the loss of nearly 1 billion yuan, several major ticketing platforms continued to strengthen their subsidy offensives to seek greater market share. Cat's Eye Films, Microfilm Era and Baidu Nuomi were all looking at subsidies in a more cautious manner and no longer entangled in the data of market share reports issued by third-party organizations.

Burning money and racing to grab shares has become a thing of the past.

Since 2016, the overall growth rate of the film market has slowed down and the quality of films has declined. The industry has generally called for a return to rationality; the O2O market is also in a relatively cautious state, and relying on subsidies to seize the market has become a thing. In the past, returning to the commercial nature is the right way for O2O. Against this background, online ticketing platforms are obviously lagging behind the times in competing for the box office cake in the limited market space. Taking advantage of Internet thinking and technology platform traffic to infiltrate the traditional film industry and improve the overall operating efficiency of the industry and make the cake bigger has become the consensus of industry players.

After reorganizing with Light, Cat's Eye Films has accelerated its ecological layout. With the "Internet + Film" comprehensive platform as its development direction, it has become a long chain of the entire film industry, from upstream investment and production to middle publicity and downstream theaters, ticket sales, Users, services, and settlement must all participate in every step of this to create a complete commercial product matrix that runs through the upstream and downstream of the film industry.

Since the brand strategy upgrade in 2016 in the microfilm era, its business has also penetrated into the content industry, including film investment, film production, drama production, IP development and other businesses."Microticket" has been upgraded to "entertainment ticket", from the original The online movie ticketing platform has transformed into a pan-entertainment platform, covering three major fields: film, performance, and sports.

Baidu Nuomi is the first to advocate a return to the commercial nature of O2O in 2017, empowering theater merchants and focusing on integrated solutions for member ticketing and sales information, positional advertising in theater business districts, and refined film distribution. At the beginning of 2017, Baidu Nuomi Pictures took the lead in achieving profitability.

Competition on online ticketing platforms tends to be rational and standardized, exploring the nature of business.

It can be seen from the development paths of major platforms that each platform is digging deep into its own resource advantages to achieve differentiated development. Cat's Eye Films was incubated from the vertical channel of Meituan Group Purchase. After Enlight Pictures became a shareholder, it further strengthened its publicity advantages; in the micro-film era, it increased the distribution and support for foreign blockbusters, and supported performances and sports events. Support has also further consolidated the positioning of a pan-entertainment platform. Although Baidu Nuomi Movies, like Cat's Eye, are an important category of group-buying platforms, relying on Baidu Nuomi and Baidu's platform resources, with theaters and business districts as the core, it has built China's largest online and offline diversified life scene advertising platform, which has taken the lead in achieving profitability while the industry is still thinking about how to subsidize and seek development.

With the upgrading of the consumption structure, movies have become an increasingly important link in the diverse consumption behaviors of daily life, undertaking multiple social functions, and becoming a trigger point for a series of consumption behaviors. When watching movies, people will comprehensively consider shopping, catering, parent-child activities and other scenarios. Baidu Nuomi Movies relies on the Baidu Nuomi platform to build an ecosystem with theaters and business districts as the core, and provides integrated solutions for movie viewing, dining, shopping and other behaviors. While enhancing users 'overall experience of leisure consumption, it also gathers high-quality consumer groups for theaters and surrounding merchants. At the same time, through the intelligent advertising marketing system connecting high-quality consumers, cinema merchants, and Baidu Nuomi's powerful advertiser resources, Baidu Nuomi has formed a unique competitive advantage in cinema intelligent advertising services, and has also led the ticketing platform in the business model. Innovation in the field.

In 2017, if the competition for online ticketing platforms simply relies on ticket compensation and burning money to gain market share, it will return to the old path of 2015, which is a historical setback. In 2016, especially at the Shanghai Film Festival in June, the discussion on creation and capital triggered the entire film industry to think calmly about the Internet and capital, and the worry that "all film market companies have to work for BAT" was gradually eliminated. If online ticketing platforms want to explore the path of sustainable development, they must, on the premise of respecting the laws of the film industry, tap their own advantageous resources to form differentiated competition, and empower the film industry to promote the healthy development of the film ecosystem, so that they can get feedback from it., achieve their own long-term development.

Editor: queenie