These days, people who work in streaming are just like Christmas.

As Netflix's profit methods mature and the industry environment has begun to be effective, a number of investment institutions have inevitably grown up a positive bet as Netflix's stock price hits a high price for several consecutive days.

There is a miracle in the net scene before, and the rise of Facebook Comet later. The wealth myth of the Internet has always been so fascinating. It doesn’t require too much ability. You can make a fortune by pressing the wind direction.

Not to mention Netflix's benchmark that has users and mature monetization models.

So many investment institutions’ top things that many senior executives have taken to heart recently are to understand Netflix’s stock price first, and then urge themselves to find other “Netflix”.

As hot money pours in, the corresponding industry personnel will naturally enjoy the benefits.

The threshold for this industry is not high, and it is all about how to sell content efficiently. Many people watch Netflix make money, find a team, rent a server and start working. Even if there is no money, the seed wheel can easily get it in this environment.

If you know a little bit of business methods, focus on playing different cards in a certain category, and survive several rounds of financing assessment, it is not difficult.

After all, film and television are a very broad thing. Users who share the same preferences and pursuits are often stronger in aggregation ability, just like horror to the Lion Gate and comedy to the world. When everyone thinks of representatives of a certain subject, they have their own answers in their hearts.

This is true for all brands. Isn’t streaming media based on film and television content easier to shape the image of the platform?

Of course, there is a disadvantage to doing this. Paying too much attention to the creation of impressions can quickly and accurately audience groups. The advantage of labeling is that it is low promotion costs and good results, but it adds difficulties to the later transformation. Just look at the Lions Gate. If you want to make some youth films and earn money from young people, you have to acquire Tingfeng Entertainment to distinguish the business because the audience's impression of Lions Gate starts to have a B-level movie.

However, for those investors, the only thing that is not good about streaming is that they do not have the technology leadership, and even users have to keep them, rather than saying that like other Internet products, once they become bigger and stronger, users will be very sticky. When users get here, it will be difficult for them to go to other places.

But if this pain point is very easy to keep users active compared to streaming media, it doesn’t seem to be a big problem. As long as the audience still has the need to watch dramas, the industry will not fall.

In this atmosphere, Amber is the top five streaming media share, removing the oil pipes, and Amazon's long videos, which are the third largest in activity and visits, have also attracted a lot of attention.

In the industrial park.

Ron Brandon was listening to his subordinates’ report.

After a while, another call was received.

He picked up his cell phone, signaled to stop, and asked, "Hello, who?"

"Hello Mr. Brandon, I am Fuller French, a partner of Sequoia Fund. Your company is currently..."

Barabala said a lot, and finally gave a 60 million investment of 10%, with a pre-investment valuation of 540 million US dollars, while Amber's registered capital was 80 million. Mann Media successively invested more than 200 million yuan, and paid users' monthly funds of 13.5 million yuan, keeping this amount unchanged, and the annual revenue was roughly 160 million yuan. The subsequent investment is not counted for the time being. In other words, taking advantage of Netflix's market value, the profitability was recognized by the market, and the value of Amber increased by one third in vain.

Of course, the reason why valuation is valuation is a judgment that is a bit gambling nature.

For Ron, he only knows that there are several institutions that are interested in Amber right now.

Investors such as Google and Facebook are also interested in investing.

He summarized the quotations according to the attitude of these people. The most quotations had been estimated to be 720 million, but it was just a comprehensive quotation, and neither party gave an accurate reply.

If you want to sell the things to get the best conditions, you can't just refer to the money.

"By the way, the boss is coming in the afternoon. We will make a list of our data analysis and give it to the content director." Ron ordered.

...

If you like Star Trek in the 1960s, Amber will recommend the Mission: Impossible series in the recommendations on the homepage; and if you like the TV series "Lost", Amber will likely recommend the British drama "I Want to Be Human" which also tells the supernatural theme; if you like to watch "As Out of the Dawn", then your homepage will also appear frequently: the violent action movie "Kill Bill" with amazing visual effects, which will not disappear until you watch it, or click in, and click on it to exit.

Streaming media filters interesting information behind the vast sea of ​​big data and unmeasurable user traces.

After the new round of enrollment expansion, a data capture team composed of 30 engineers is relying on algorithms to recommend episodes you may like to every registered user.

The existence of these people plays an important role in Amber's user stickiness. According to data, 75% of the video service audience's driving force comes from recommendations. The reason for this is that most people actually don't know what they want to watch, and often there are difficulties in choosing. This is why big data sometimes understands a person's taste better than a person.

By checking metadata, the initially simulated user behavior will not lie - browse, play and search, capture all the viewing traces on the platform, the movie duration, etc., and find various similarities.

Moreover, this kind of user behavior analysis is different from that of e-commerce.

E-commerce mainly focuses on search traces. For example, eBay and Amazon. 90% of users’ shopping comes from search, because these people have demands first and then search; while streaming media is just the opposite, creating demands and then recommending them. The existence of the search function only lies in the fact that the user has a particularly strong purpose, and it will only work if the homepage does not recommend the content they want to see to users.

To further this foundation, we will supplement the content of overlapping users, which is what Lehman is going to do now.

Netflix's development history is well understood. Their homemade dramas are estimated based on the distribution of existing user volume and possible values ​​of preferences.

This kind of real-time follow-up and continuous expansion of applications can help to continuously retain platform users.

"So, our visiting users are about 20 years old, mainly male, and they generally like sensory stimulation?"

"Yes, most of the more than 10 million users who visited our website are chasing the popularity. After watching "Thor 2" among the paid group, three-quarters of people watched "Bad Guys", especially the scene of "The God of War" in the elevator. Many people chose to watch it repeatedly or even enjoy it slowly."

"So do you have any ideas on production?" Lehman asked: "In response to users' behavior, we can shoot episodes that we think they should watch."

"We have refined a lot of elements, roughly in two directions: one is a gangster drama of the black crime type, which is filmed in the main form of the protagonist's emotions and behaviors, adding flesh-and-blood scenes, vendettas, turnarounds, and hot-ups and stuffing them with some adaptations based on facts. For example, I believe that the audience will romanticize allusions like Guzman (Mexican drug lord). Street-based adaptations should be loved by those who like to watch "Bad Guy" and Martin Scorsese's crime movies;

The second sentence is only for thrillers with a strong sense of atmosphere, which is only for psychological stimulation, and is a strong sense of atmosphere. I found that many people like "Dead Silence", "Death Penalty" directed by Wan Ziren, and other homicide cases involving several people." After receiving the data, Black summarized two templates based on the market sense of a senior producer.

“What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two solutions?”

"The first one is high investment cost, but the audience also favors it a lot, and it considers the crew's scheduling ability; the second one is small in investment, convenient in development, and requires the director's style, but it may not necessarily be liked by many people after it is produced. The market of thriller elements is easy to distinguish the audience."

"Blake, according to your idea, which one is more suitable for the current platform environment." Lehman took a sip of coffee and continued to inquire.

"I'll choose the second one."

Well, cost issue, using user behavior to figure out the experimental significance of the series elements is greater than the substantive significance. Black thought.

“To sum up these elements, our audience might like a series of thrillers with a small number of actors representing a theme?” Lehman said: “Then find some suitable screenwriters to take a picture of the unit story.”

......

Units, thrillers, themes, medium-cost information gathered together without a large-scale transition, what would you think of?

Looking at the production backbone refined based on the preferences of some paid groups, what naturally emerged in Lehman's mind was the thriller unit drama "American Horror Story" invested by the original FOX TV network, also known as the American version of "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio".

With ideas, Leman also carefully analyzed the success elements of this series. They rely on FOX's youth subscription group to focus on a topic each season, using elements such as murder, death, weirdness, etc., plus handsome men and beautiful women, perverted, paradoxical killing methods, and murder locations to lay a slightly different tone for each season.

Furthermore, this kind of series is very open because it is produced in the form of units and has little connection with each other, so it is also very inclusive and can freely design various strange frameworks.

More importantly, Amber is now mostly young men, and the number of paid members accumulated is relatively average, which is very suitable for such medium-cost dramas that cater to age.

As soon as this new idea came out, Lehman immediately said: "Let's determine the creative team first, and then decide how to advance the shooting."

Black nodded. The boss often had some ideas to cater to the audience. He just accepted it, so he immediately took out paper and pen to record it.

"The advantage of big data is that we can regulate what the audience wants to see at any time and how many people can accept it, which facilitates our judgment of market research and prove the direction. Now, it can be considered as a group of Amber Video deep users. About 3 out of 4 of them can accept the thriller style. Therefore, we can find out the most affirmative parts of these people, integrate them into a team, and give them freedom under the framework. Do you know the production staff that we want to compete for overlapping with affirmatives?"

Black was stunned for a moment and immediately reacted: "Use the exhaustive approach to summarize the general situation and then get the optimal solution? BOSS, what you mean is not to select the thriller dramas with the most user ratings and then find someone from it."

"That's right."

Lehman smiled and said, "The market review of many production companies is to first have scripts and then deduce possible audiences of scripts. We have the help of algorithms and have found common points for a certain type of user. We directly start from this aspect with stronger targeting and more efficient precise docking. Then why can't we achieve a more vertical positioning, that is, a general summary of each user."

Black's eyes lit up. He thought this method was not reliable, because there was never a necessary template for creating such things. But if it was reduced, and the unwanted things were eliminated, the last thing left not only means that there is a wide space for trial and error, but also means that there is a greater possibility of success. "I remember that there are not many universal thriller resources in our film library, and the discussion and topic level include the most annotated movies... I understand."

Black's voice was excited, "I think users will be most interested in people like Ray Warner (the main screenwriter of Director Wen), Ryan Murphy ("Plastic Surgery Room", "Survival in the Crack", Drew Gundam ("Dark Angel", "Double-Side Spy", "Vampire Hunter") and others. These are also some who are good at grasping the elements of thrillers and are more capable, and are favored by horror and thrillers. They ask them to create scripts and polish stories around a theme. At least the drama is filmed, and it is a matter of whether the quality is good or not. The audience is looking forward to the creator when they see it."

“The idea is right.”

Another point is that the more capable the producers of the type are, the harder they fail. Just like the movies made by famous directors are always more likely to be more popular than movies made by newcomers. This is a professional who has been certified by the audience and screened out layer by layer.

"The filming of a series does not cost much money, but it definitely does not mean saving money. This aspect must be taken seriously. Usually, we will summarize and analyze the behavior of users. For this drama, let's determine the idea, which is to use events from real history to artistically process it. Well..." Lehman thought for a while and said, "I'll start with it, and the first unit of this series will be filmed around the haunted house."

There are endless news about haunted houses, which is thrilling. The most common and most dramatic symbols appear in horror movies.

"Date?"

"I will bring people to interview them." Black replied.

"But we can't pay too much attention to the data. We should let the professionals decide for themselves how to execute it."

I still remember an interview, Netflix summarized: Users may like to watch a story about a US Senator and prepare to launch a project "House of Cards". As a result, David Finch's leading production team subdivided the rules and regulations summarized by Netflix into many episodes, and must create conflicts so that the audience will not lose the patience of watching, which is why the political drama exploded.

Data is just tutoring, and shooting is not a step-by-step plan, which is very important.

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Lehman was about to leave, and as soon as he got into the car, Kevin called over: "The people of the Universal want to start the Hulk's single-line sequel."

“What’s the situation?”

"The results of Captain America 2 were also good in the next week, and it was certain that the big explosion was a sure thing. When Global President Jeff Hill called to congratulate him, he asked about this. He wanted to know the release plan for our next film. Then, hasn't the preheating news of Guardians of the Galaxy been spread? I didn't hide it and wanted to shoot a different story. It was an interstellar chapter after leaving the earth." Kevin explained in detail: "After hearing this, he was a little surprised and a little confused about why the Hulk was not arranged."

Well, it's actually very simple. Hulk's big head profits are in the hands of Universal. Senior executives of companies, including Marvel Entertainment, are unwilling to spend too much effort on other works that are difficult to get high returns. Perhaps, Universal has also discovered this, and there have been more voices urging project establishment recently.

"I'll solve it, you'll do your business first."

After parking the car, Lehman walked past the front desk and waited for the elevator. The door opened and saw an acquaintance.

"Hi, Mr. Lehman, we're just about to see you."
Chapter completed!