60 percent of YouTubers under the age of 25

Illustrative photo: SGGP

Giving an opinion on opportunities for Vietnamese digital content businesses, Mr. Ta Manh Hoang, Chairman of the Digital Content Creation Alliance - DCCA, said that the development of cross-border platforms has opened up a flat world, allowing digital content creators to reach the public more easily.

As of January 2023, Vietnam has 77.93 million internet users, equivalent to 79.1 percent of the total population, an increase of 5.3 million compared to 2022. The number of people using social networks is 70 million, equivalent to 71 percent of Vietnam's population and over 68 percent of 70 million social network users are over 18 years old.

Specifically, there are around 66.2 million Facebook users, approximately 63 million YouTube users, some 10.3 million Instagram users, about 49.86 million TikTok users and about 2 million Netflix subscribers.

According to statistics, 60 percent of Vietnamese YouTubers are under 25 years old. Amongst them, 42 percent are under 18 years old and 70 percent of YouTubers started producing content while they are still students.

According to many experts, Vietnam’s youthful population brings many benefits as young human resources quickly access technology; plus, a large proportion of young adults provides a lot of outstanding ideas for innovation and creativity. The Government's policy is to promote the digital economy as a spearhead industry.

The State is developing a series of policies, creating favorable legal corridors for digital content businesses as well as studying tax policies for connecting and promoting trade as well as for the development of high-quality human resources which will facilitate the development of the digital content industry in Vietnam.

Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Digital Communications Association (VDCA) Vu Kiem Van said that in the last 5 years, the emergence of diverse digital platforms has changed the habits and behavior of the audience. Hence, to catch up with this trend, digital content producers are forced to change their thinking for making a variety of content products in many fields including news, entertainment, sports, and education and such.

The rise of digital has brought about irreversible trends, he emphasized. In this playground, individuals and organizations will face barriers and challenges on many issues, especially copyright stories and digital advertising businesses.

Improve institutions and raise social awareness

The popularity of the internet and the development of digital platforms have changed the habits and behavior of audiences when accessing and enjoying content from traditional forms such as television and radio, the print press moves to the digital space.

However, many digital content businesses believed that the legal provisions on intellectual property rights in the field of digital content are still unclear plus people’s low awareness of intellectual property rights of digital content.

These factors have made digital content producers encounter many embarrassments in their digital content creation. Digital advertising businesses are facing legal problems as well.

Vietnam still lacks legal corridors to protect and enhance the position of businesses in the international arena, and there are no protection options against possible disputes, said Mr. Ta Manh Hoang.

He took a large enterprise in the UK that abused intellectual property rights to dispute the digital copyright of Sconnect Vietnam's Wolfoo cartoon character as an example.

Along with that, a number of Vietnamese game businesses were entangled in intellectual property lawsuits from Chinese and Japanese companies. Since then, Vietnam has been labeled as a country with widespread piracy.

Moreover, Mr. Ta Manh Hoang also pointed out some challenges and difficulties for digital content creation; for instance, the fast money-making model popular in Vietnam today is mainly spontaneous and high-risk and more big start-up companies exist in a short time.

By the end of 2022, Vietnam has about 3,800 start-ups, ranking 54th in the global startup ecosystem, but for five years, a staggering 50 percent of new businesses will fail.

Vietnam is lacking outstanding products in the country as well as in the world to create awareness of customers and partners, leading to a lack of business opportunities and low value of labor resources.

In particular, users' awareness of digital content products is not high; as a result, they are easily drawn into negative products that do not carry much value violating copyright. In order to catch up with the trend in digital content creation and transform the monetization model, perfecting institutions and raising social awareness on this issue is necessary, according to many experts.

Source: SGGP