Analysts are expecting the major Chinese internet giants to all move towards paid content, in their next moves towards further growth. Tencent and Baidu currently each boast around 20 million subscribers to their video streaming services, even though they each have around 250 million monthly active users on their entire sites. According to Tsang Chi, the head of Asia internet research at HSBC, this shows “how the economics of their [content] business could improve a lot”. Meanwhile, Alibaba is pushing into entertainment after seeing a substantial 400% increase in profit in the sector over the last 12 months. Alibaba has also invested in its advertising services on the marketplace website Taobao. Alex Yao, head of JP Morgan's internet and new media research has said that the advertising on the site is already “completely personalised” for users. He did add however that Tencent's equivalent advertising model was currently “undermonetised”.
