China’s long-form video platform iQiyi again faced a user backlash over removing the ad skip option from basic membership,X-Deal (2011) as recent discussion prompted iQiyi to respond that basic membership is for users who find ad watching acceptable as the price for access to members-only content at low cost. The Baidu-backed platform said on its official Weibo account, “Consumers can see the difference in price and service between basic and gold memberships on the subscription page before choosing on-demand and purchasing.” In the first quarter, iQiyi saw subscriber service revenue down 13% to RMB 4.8 billion from last year, attributed by the company to “the high base effect in the same period last year.” [iQiyi, in Chinese]
