Streaming media business strategies and audience-centered practices: a comparative study of Netflix and Tencent Video

Abstract Purpose This comparative study of streaming services in different cultural and economic contexts shows how they optimize the user experience by improving recommendation algorithms, upgrading infrastructure, and developing global services, in responding to the crisis of losing subscribers. Method We use analysis of industry documents to demonstrate how different approaches to streaming video business value user-generated data and reconstruction practices. Findings There is already a similar trend among global streaming platforms to create a pan-media entertainment & cultural service by increasing revenue streams and merchandise offering categories, as well as keeping subscriptions and attracting more viewers in the long run. Practical implications The study displays how streaming platforms with SVOD, AVOD, and Mix-funded modes are changing their business strategies in the current hyperinflationary and increasingly competitive media market, updating how they create user-centered practices in search of ultimate commercial success. Social implications It also illustrates how different commercial streaming service formats end up with similar solutions to the challenges. Originality/value The study is a comparative analysis of the streaming phenomenon as it happens in real-time, complementing the observation and evaluation of the latest updates in the streaming industry and predicting the future trends of global brands in the digital ecosystem under different commercial and cultural logics.