Video site announces strategy after acquisition

Baidu Inc's online video subsidiary iQiyi.com said on Wednesday that it plans to reposition the business of PPS, a video site it acquired in May for $370 million.

PPS will beef up its video on-demand service and focus on entertainment programs, while iQiyi will focus on building “comprehensive mainstream video media”, said Gong Yu, CEO of iQiyi.

The monthly overlap ratio between PPS and iQiyi is less than 30 percent and their different audience bases will help both sites to lure more advertisers, he added.

The combined viewer figures for iQiyi and PPS reached to more than 357 million as of August, making the union the biggest Internet-based video platform in China, according to the latest statistics from industry watcher iResearch Consulting Group.

The company will also cement its leading position in the mobile sector, the executives said.

PPS had about 150 million mobile viewers by the end of March, about 10 percent of them daily active users. In the mobile video sector iQiyi-PPS had gained more than half of the market share by the end of August.

Baidu, the largest Internet search engine in China, started to add investment in the heavily contested online video market last year, aiming to challenge Youku Tudou Inc, a long time leader in the sector before the iQiyi-PPS deal.