It defined users engaging with online streaming, short video, online audiobook or radio, or live streaming services collectively as “Internet audiovisual users”.
In the second half of the year, 49.2 million people became new Internet users in China. More than 20% of new Internet users said they had connected in order to watch short video content. The country’s top two short video apps – rivals Douyin and Kuaishou – have together cornered nearly 55% of the market.The number of users watching long-form online video content rose to its highest point since 2017 in the first three months of 2020, at the height of pandemic lockdown measures. Streaming users hit 726 million by last March, accounting for 80% of all audiovisual content users.
Around a third of all users watching online video content in China watch them with bullet comments – rapid-fire, real-time comments from other viewers that stream over the top of videos.