From Traffic “Enclosure” to Cash Realization: Market Patterns and Investment Insights of China’s Digital Content Industry in 2020–2021

This paper selects the core content of recently released Market Patterns and Investment Insights of China’s Digital Content Industry in 2020–2021, and this series of reports has been published in four consecutive volumes (2015, 2017–2018, 2019–2020, 2021–2022). Based on the latest developments of the digital content industry in China, this paper probes into the market development, competitive landscape, investment and financing volume, investment hotspots, policies and public opinion environment of 10 sub-sectors, including online games, animation, online videos, short videos, live streaming, online music, digital reading, news & information apps, online education, and knowledge payment, provides an insight into the status quo of China’s digital content industry in 2020–2021 and ten major development trends of the industry. Furthermore, the investment value of 10 sub-sectors is assessed from two dimensions—internal factors and external factors, with a total of 7 primary indicators and 11 secondary indicators, and the results are compared with those of the previous two editions to observe market changes. Research conclusions are as follows: (1) From the perspective of development trends: the scale expansion of China’s digital content industry has slowed down; short videos continue to increase; user value operation becomes a new test under routine pandemic prevention and control; the competitive landscape among sub-sectors tends to be stable; leading enterprises expand their business territory via investment, merger and acquisition (M&A) for the integration of upstream and downstream industrial chain. (2) From the results of investment value assessment and investment trends: live streaming and online games lead the way of investment forward in the digital content industry, thanks to their mature cash realization model and huge market space, with the investment value ranking rising to the top two; in the video field, vertical content creation of short video, online video-related intelligent technology and digital marketing are worthy of attention; and in the digital reading field, focus can be placed on original content creation and novel/comic reading platforms.