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Welcome to iQIYI’s bi-weekly news round-up! Here you’ll find the latest news and stories from the company, from entertainment, tech to business and from local to regional. If you are interested in learning more about iQIYI, please do not hesitate to reach out to press@qiyi.com .

(Jan. 10, 2022-Jan. 24, 2022)

CONTENT

iQIYI Announces New Slate of Content for the Laugh On Series

On Jan. 7, iQIYI released the new slate of content for the Laugh On series. Adopting a stylized theatre-like category for online productions, Laugh On was launched to provide young users with a wide selection of comedy options with interactive content.

Themed "pressing the pause in your busy lives," the Laugh On series is another genre-specific content library launched by iQIYI in addition to the Light On and the Sweet On series. Laugh On incorporates a variety of elements in its diverse contents, including Chinese Jianghu culture, bonds of brotherhood in Northeast China, and workplace stories to meet different preferences and needs of viewers.

iQIYI Premieres Deer Squad Season 2

Produced by iQIYI under the supervision of Nickelodeon, Deer Squad Season 2 is created by iQIYI's I.N.K. Studio and was aired on the iQIYI platforms on Jan. 14, bringing joy to children before the Chinese New Year.

A Poster of “Deer Squad” Season 2

Deer Squad is an animated series featuring four young deers– Kai, Lola, Rammy and Bobbi-- who protect the animal and human inhabitants of the Central Forest. 
 
A great example of Chinese animation IP going global, Deer Squad is the first Chinese original animated series to air on Nickelodeon in the US. After premiering on iQIYI on Jul. 15, 2020, Deer Squad Season 1 became available on Nickelodeon International in August 2020 to air in Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Latin America, and, Jan. 25 of 2021, the United States. It was the No.1 and No.3 most watched animation during its premiere in the UK and the US, respectively. When it was aired in Australia and the Philippines, Deer Squad was named the TV channel's most watched animated series by children.

iQIYI Launches Variety Show Let’s Go Skiing

iQIYI's original variety show Let’s Go Skiing was aired on Jan. 14. Launched in the run-up to the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the show focuses on skiing, now a popular sport among young people, incorporating sports and the creativity and fun of games. The show showcases to the audience the competitiveness and entertainment value of skiing.

A Poster of “Let’s Go Skiing"

Featuring participants engaging in different contests such as relay, racing using hand-made snowboards, and others, Let’s Go Skiing allows audience to experience the fun of skiing.
 
SUN Xiaoqing, the program's executive producer, observed that season-based socialization has become increasingly popular among young people, so going skiing is something that many young people do to socialize in the winter. Through light-hearted games, Let’s Go Skiing aims to promote winter sports among people and communicate to the public that the entry barrier to skiing might not be as high as they thought.

Gold Panning From iQIYI Light On Series Now Streaming

Created by iQIYI’s Running Water Studio, adventure and suspense series Gold Panning aired exclusively on iQIYI on Jan. 18. Gold Panning is the ninth instalment of the company’s Light On series, which is dedicated to suspense and thrillers. Gold Panning tells the little-known story of gold panners who travel to remote mountains for their pursuit of gold.

A poster of “Gold Panning”

Following the company's highly successful Light On series, romance-dedicated collection Sweet On, and the comedy-focused Laugh On collection, iQIYI is stepping up its themed operation model for short drama series, making the company a pioneer in China’s streaming industry.

iQIYI’s Super Sketch Show Helps Enable Development of China’s Original Comedy Industry

iQIYI aired the season finale of its original variety show Super Sketch Show (season one) on Jan. 7, bringing China's comedy scene to the attention of the mainstream public and setting out the great potential of the industry's development. As the program showcases the amazing young comedy talent whose art had not received extensive attention, Super Sketch Show breaks new ground in China’s broader entertainment ecosystem.

"Super Sketch Show" Award Ceremony

Covering topics of love, society’s relationship with the Internet, career, childhood, and others, much of the show’s content has deep resonance to young people in China, resulting in the show’s huge popularity. The show’s content popularity index, which iQIYI generates from user viewing, interaction, and sharing and other user activities, reached 7,631, which is among the top 10 for iQIYI variety shows in 2021. As of Jan. 11, the show scored 8.4 out of 10 on China’s film and TV review platform Douban.

The preparation for Season Two of the Super Sketch Show is currently under way as part of iQIYI’s extensive slate of new original content to come. 

TECHNOLOGY

iQIYI Announces Highlights in Technological Innovation

1) In 2021, the number of bullet comments posted by iQIYI users reached 670 million.
2) Qiguan, an original feature that iQIYI rolled out to allow viewers to identify the information on screen with just one click, was used 2.7 billion times in 2021 by iQIYI users, a strong testament to Chinese viewers’ strong interest in interactive viewing technologies.
3) In 2021, iQIYI’s Watch Party function enabled over ten million users to share screen and stream content together. On Chinese Valentine's Day, a couple in a long-distance relationship spent 1361.64 minutes, nearly 24 hours, on the interactive platform to celebrate the special day.
4) In 2021, the time users spent on QIYIGUO TV, the company's smart TV application, averaged nearly three hours per day. The platform turns the living room into a home theatre, bringing users an immersive experience via large screen.
5) As of Q2 2021, the iQIYI app has been activated on over two million cars.
6) Starting in January 2021, iQIYI has utilized its IQDubbing platform to dub dramas issued overseas. IQDubbing greatly reduces the time cost of dubbing. For example, for a 45-minute TV show episode, dubbing with IQDubbing takes only 1/6 of the time traditional dubbing would take. IQDubbing currently supports Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai.
7) iQIYI’s proprietary machine translation technology based on the universal Machine Translation Post Edit (MTPE) model continues to improve the efficiency of human translation, reducing translation time by 30%. Currently, the technology supports translations from simplified Chinese to Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and other languages.

iQIYI Works with Akamai to Enhance User Viewing Experience

iQIYI has worked with Akamai, an American content delivery network (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, to improve the viewing experience for its global users, enabling viewers to access video contents with almost no time lag.
 
As it expands globally, iQIYI aims to have a content delivery network (CDN) servers near all of its global users and content providers. In cooperation with Akamai, iQIYI achieved this goal, allowing users around the world to enjoy a premium viewing experience. In addition, developers also benefit from this partnership, for the involvement of the Akamai edge servers makes hundreds and thousands of servers around the world reachable with just one click, thereby offering a solid technical infrastructure for developers to leverage for their own use.
 
Now iQIYI’s developers are starting to write code directly on edge servers with EdgeWorkers. In November 2021, the iQIYI DoH(DNS, domain name system, over HTTPS) team won first prize in the first EdgeWorkers Coding Challenge with a solution for DoH announced. The application reduces DNS resolution time by 40% and makes websites load faster. “One of our user interface engineers wrote the DoH service, deploying code to more than 100,000 edge nodes globally in a matter of minutes,” said QIN Jianhua, Senior Director of Infrastructure and Intelligent Content Distribution Business Group of iQIYI.
 
According to Qin, Akamai is among one of the cloud service providers with lowest latency and widest reach in the CDN filed. “Our videos now stream from the Akamai node that is closest to the subscriber, so the videos load quickly and will not freeze,” said Qin.

BUSINESS

iQIYI Issues First Digital Collectibles Based on Original Series Luoyang

iQIYI announced the launch of its first set of digital collectibles on Jan. 21. The set is based on iQIYI's popular original drama series Luoyang, making it the first period drama-based digital collectables issued in China. The set sold out in just seven hours after its release.

The six pieces from the Luoyang digital collectibles

The set features in total 6,000 copies of six antique-inspired items from Luoyang as well as 500 copies of a key scene from the show. Unlike traditional digital collectibles, most of which are digital images, items in the Luoyang-inspired set are usable devices in the Luoyang metaverse, which Mints, iQIYI's partner and a technology service provider in China, has created. The Luoyang metaverse brings users back to the cultural milieu of China's ancient city, Luoyang.

iQIYI Releases Online Film Box Office for 2021 

On Jan. 11, iQIYI released the 2021 box office of online films. In 2021, 199 online films were distributed through the revenue-sharing model, 32 of which had a box office of more than RMB 10 million yuan, accounting for 16% of the total number and marking an increase of five percentage points.
 
Online movies have become more diverse in both themes and genres. iQIYI continues to extend the PVOD (premium video on demand) model to new fields, releasing numerous titles under the model, including Dreams of Getting Rich, Northeastern Bro, etc. The company also streamed Malignant, a film directed by James Wan, on its Cloud Cinema via the PVOD model.
 
Among the top 50 films generating the most value for iQIYI in 2021, more than 40% are online movies. As viewers are increasingly opting for premium audio-visual content, the growing demand also inspires and motivates creators to produce more high-quality online movies.