Alibaba to increase investment in video content

Yang Weidong, president of Youku Tudou and CEO of Alibaba Group's music unit, speaks at a press conference in Beijing, on Oct 12, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will increase investment in video contents to upgrade its family entertainment strategy after acquiring video-streaming site Youku Tudou Inc.

It will build up multi-screen interactive entertainment ecosystem which centers on the video and strengthen the content production including film, TV series, variety show and animation, said Alibaba's digital entertainment arm and Youku Tudou.

"The core of ‘living room economy' is content consumption, while the key of content is video, so in the past three years, Youku Tudou and Alibaba's digital entertainment unit have made great efforts to explore this sector," said Yang Weidong, president of Youku Tudou and CEO of Alibaba Group's music unit.

Yang added the companies will continue to invest more in the battlefield—the living room, and get through the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. The two sides will also carry out collaboration in brand, content, data and membership.

The culture and entertainment business has become one of the most important strategic directions for Alibaba, with large screen as the core. The company will concentrate on the users experience and strengthen the content and product advantages.

It is a good idea to combine the culture entertainment system with e-commerce to create greater value, said Victor Koo, chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou and chairman of Alibaba's big culture and entertainment industry development committee. He expected the growth and upgrade of their business that focuses on video and culture entertainment.

Moreover, Youku Tudou launched its VR1.0 product, VR camera and said it would establish a live-streaming cloud platform.

With the rapid growth of family digital entertainment industry, the number of internet TV is expected to reach 760 million units, and by 2020, the market scale of "living room" economy will come up to 630 billion yuan, statistics showed.