“We’re Up And Up:” Asian Streamer Bosses On How Creative & Financial “Discipline” Has Promoted Local Growth — Filmart

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“We don’t need a lot of content, we just need lots of really good content,” Kelvin Yau, President of Asia Pacific and Marketing iQIYI, concluded when quizzed on his company’s editorial strategy during a keynote session on streaming this morning at Filmart in Hong Kong.

Yau took part in the keynote alongside fellow streaming heads Marianne Lee, Chief of Content Acquisition and Development at Viu, Jessica Kam-Engle, Executive VP and Business Head at CreAsia Studio, and Winradit Kolasastraseni, President of Digital Media at True Digital Group.

The session was chaired by Asia Video Industry Association CEO Louis Boswell, who began the session by noting that iQIYI, which launched in 2010 as a tech company before moving into content production, was now profitable after hitting the black in 2023.  “It’s about putting the right resources in the right places,” Yau said. “It goes back to the whole point of being disciplined, and we had to make a lot of very difficult decisions four years ago to get profitability.”  Yau added that iQIYI had seven of the 10 top drama series in Mainland China in 2023, and the company found that 80% of its income that year was generated from those seven shows.

Yau’s enthusiasm for the local market was shared by Lee, who, later in the session, said the Asian market is experiencing what she described as an unprecedented period of growth and development.  “In Asia, we’re on the up and up,” Lee said. “We’ve never been so high.” Lee said Viu, which launched in 2015, has produced around 25 original projects in regions across Asia, including Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia.