iQIYI Breaks Live Online Viewership Record with CCTV's New Year's Gala

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Feb 20, 2015, 08:41 ET

BEIJING, Feb. 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- iQIYI ("iQIYI" or "the Company"), an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) and one of the largest Internet and mobile video service providers in China, today announced that the CCTV 2015 New Year's Gala broadcast on iQIYI's online platform received the most simultaneous views for a TV program broadcast live on a single online platform ever.

Simultaneous views of the Gala reached a record 14 million on iQIYI's platform, far surpassing the previous record set during the 2014 World Cup. As of February 19, the Gala had been streamed over 70 million times, with total viewership surpassing 40 million and total viewing time reaching more than 50 million hours. During the live broadcast, viewers posted more than 100 million subtitle comments, called danmu, on iQIYI. Of those who watched the Gala on the Company's platforms, 91% are under age 30.

iQIYI's CTO Xing Tang said, "We are delighted to have provided global audiences with a live broadcast of CCTV's New Year's Gala through our online platform. iQIYI has built a global hybrid content delivery network with over eight terabytes of bandwidth. Through the efforts of our nearly 1,000 engineers, we added an additional two terabytes to ensure a smooth and high-quality viewing experience."

iQIYI hopes that CCTV's cooperation with iQIYI will encourage more TV stations to release copyrights to the market. The Gala deal, in addition to the ever-increasing amount of iQIYI-produced content, shows that the influence of the Company's online video platform continues to grow, a phenomenon more advertisers are recognizing. Fifteen major companies competed for commercial time during the Gala on iQIYI.

CCTV granted iQIYI exclusive online broadcasting rights to stream the Gala live domestically and overseas.

About iQIYI
iQIYI is an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu, the world's largest Chinese search engine, which launched on April 22, 2010. Since its launch, iQIYI has pursued the ultimate online video experience for Chinese users, becoming an industry model in promoting innovation in products, technologies, and marketing.

On May 7, 2013, iQIYI announced a merger with PPS. According to IUT data released by iResearch in December 2014, iQIYI and PPS were among the leaders in the industry in terms of all-platform unique visitors and monthly effective viewing duration. As of December 2014, iQIYI's mobile app (including iQIYI and PPS) was running on 860 million devices, with mobile traffic accounting for 63% of the sites' total traffic. The monthly viewing time on iQIYI and PPS surpassed 1 billion hours for three successive months in 2014. According to data from November and December 2014, mobile accounted for 1.17 billion hours of monthly viewing time on iQIYI, and PCs accounted for 1.15 billion hours. Unique visitors per day on iQIYI reached 44.27 million on mobile devices and 44.18 million on PCs.

In the future, iQIYI will continue to pursue providing customers with ever richer video content and a ceaselessly improving viewing experience.

For media inquiries, please contact:

iQIYI Inc.
Stephanie Ye
PR Manager, International Communications
[email protected]

Brunswick Group
Beijing
Yajun Zhang
+86 (10) 5960-8600
[email protected]

Beijing
Rachel Morarjee
+86 (10) 5960-8600
[email protected]

SOURCE iQIYI