Guolian's 2025 media industry strategy: focusing on AI applications, second round of going global, and IP derivative products as the three main themes.

Guolian released a research report stating that looking ahead to 2025, the focus will be on three main investment themes in the media and internet sector: 1) Accelerating the landing of AI applications, which will impact industries such as marketing, e-commerce, education, film and television, and gaming, further increasing efficiency and creating incremental growth. Also, attention will be given to hardware opportunities such as AI glasses and toys. 2) Going global and starting the 2.0 era, opening up new growth opportunities and continuing to have a positive outlook on games, short dramas, and toy exports. 3) The IP derivatives sector is entering a period of rapid development, with spiritual consumption and self-indulgent consumption becoming long-term consumption growth points. There is optimism for high-quality domestic IPs to expand online content and offline physical derivative products, enhance IP influence, and open up commercial space. Guolian's main points are as follows: AI application: The main theme of technology in 2025 Looking back on 2024, global AI investment and financing mainly focused on infrastructure, hardware, and model ends. Global companies with large models have accelerated financing and integration, and the competitive landscape has become clearer, with top companies having high valuations. It is expected that there will be a shift from focusing mainly on model training to a stage that also emphasizes model training, product optimization, developer support, and commercialization. In 2025, it is expected that AI applications will accelerate. On the enterprise application level, attention will be on the efficiency of AI in marketing, e-commerce, and other areas; on the native application level, progress is expected in search, companionship, education, short dramas, games, and other native AI application directions. In addition, the combination of AI and smart hardware will bring about an interaction revolution, with a focus on AI glasses and AI toys. Going Global 2.0: From business model output to cultural output Previously, Chinese entertainment companies' "Going Global 1.0" era focused on exporting business models. For example, in the mobile game industry, it primarily involved a combination of smartphones + host/end-gameplay transplantation/simplification + service-oriented game operation mode, with themes still focused on multiple civilizations and the apocalypse preferred by users in T1 markets such as Europe, the US, Japan, and South Korea. With the success of the "Fable Myth: Monkey King" game with global sales of nearly 30 million copies and nomination for TGA's Game of the Year, as well as the global breakthrough of POP MART's IPLabubu in Southeast Asia, both companies exceeded expectations in performance, marking the start of the cultural Going Global 2.0 phase. With the business of cultural exports, there will be more explosive and sustainable growth potential. IP Derivatives: Industry resonance with the times, large market spaces both domestically and internationally Derivatives include entertainment toys, licensing, physical entertainment, and other monetization models: 1) Entertainment toys: The domestic toy industry is in a phase of moderate to high-speed growth, with product innovation and globalization driving continued growth; the overseas toy industry is large, and Chinese companies are expected to shift from export processing to brand operations. 2) Licensing: Still in the early stages, backed by the huge domestic consumer market with great growth potential. Globally, leading entertainment companies such as LEGO and Bandai leverage IP to drive diversified monetization, promote age and global diversity strategies, and are expected to continuously drive performance growth. Risk warning: Risks related to AI, MR, and other technologies not meeting expectations, intensified competition, industry regulation risks, economic development falling short of expectations, and risks of deviations in industry space estimation.