About this Blog

The purpose of this blog is for my personal use. It serves as my personal diary as I investigate Chinese internet/gaming companies for investment purpose. If you have any comments or disagreement, please give me feedbacks.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

SINA – SOHU – NTES – Video Shootout part1

Video Shootout Part 1 – NTES Video Activities

Video is going to be the major growth engine for China’s online ad. I am going to review the video activities of China’s 3 main web portals and hopefully gain insights on which company is doing the best in this critical area of growth. I am also going to talk about other competitors against these three portals.

The first stop is NTES and its main web site www.163.com

From the main web site, there is virtually no embedded video. No news items with video signs next to them. The main page looks and acts like a newspaper.

The two areas that usually have embedded video are the sports channel and the entertainment channel. Let’s go there.

The following is the CBA (Chinese Basketball Association) portion of the sports section.

On the CBA page, two of the top 7 stories have embedded videos with them.

The next page is the page with all the CBA stories that have embedded videos with them:

There are about 4 to 5 stories with embedded videos per day on CBA.

Next, we go to the entertainment channel:

The top story for tonight has three embedded video. If we click one of the link, we get the following:

A video of a singer sang a song when he was much younger.

There are several observations that can be made:

1. There are very few videos. The ratio is probably 100 to 1. For every 100 stories, only one has embedded video in them.

2. NTES doesn’t have TV stations. It has a hard time getting video clips. To get video, it has to somehow get it from partners. Except in sports area, I don’t think it has sign many partners.

3. All the videos are embedded video.

4. There is no third party TV station.

5. There is no NTES created TV station

6. There is no hint of video on the main page.

Overall, only one word can best describe NTES’s video activities: disappointing.

In part 2, I will investigate SOHU's video activities. In part 3, I will investigate SINA's video activities. In part4 and 5, I will have a brief descriptions on other competitors. Part 6 is the conclusion.

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