Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and good evening. Thank you for joining Sohu's third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After management prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Huang Pu, Investor Relations Director of Sohu. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Sohu's third quarter 2019 results. On the call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Charles Zhang, CFO, Joanna Lv, and Vice President of Finance, James Deng. Also with us today are Changyou CEO, Dewen Chen, and CFO, Yaobin Wang, and Sogou CEO, Xiaochuan Wang, and CFO, Joe Zhou. Before management begins their prepared remarks, I would like to remind you of the company's safe harbor statement in connection with today's conference call. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this conference call are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current plans, estimates and projections, and therefore you should not place undue reliance on them. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements.
For more information about potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K. With that, I will now turn the call over to Charles Zhang. Charles, please proceed.
Thanks, Huang Pu, and thank you to everyone for joining our call. For the third quarter of 2019, although there is still much uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, both of our total revenue and our bottom line exceeded our prior guidance, mainly driven by our online gaming and search businesses, as well as the continued cost-saving initiatives that we are pushing through in our Sohu Media and Sohu Video segments. Sohu Media is making a comeback as a mainstream media platform with an enormous amount of high-quality original content and various events. These premium features further enhance the reputation of Sohu Media and its sub-brands, and further strengthen our overall competitiveness. For Sohu Video, we continue to deliver unique and high-quality dramas and other shows to our users. We also are integrating various social functionalities into our products to help users build and find their own unique social community.
We also strictly kept our budget under control and are actively exploring new ways to diversify our revenue streams in cooperation with advertisers. In the 3rd quarter of 2019, Sogou experienced healthy growth, and its search revenue continued to grow faster than industry average. Besides, Sogou consistently focused on integrating its language-centric AI capabilities to fully support innovations in search, mobile keyboard, and smart hardware businesses. Changyou, although performance continued to be stable. In addition to the solid results delivered by TLBB PC and the Legacy TLBB Mobile, TLBB Honor, a new mobile game launched during the quarter, also performed well. Before I go into more detail about our key financial results, please be reminded that since Changyou Cinema Advertising business ceased operations, this release is related to continuing operations only and excludes results from Changyou Cinema Advertising business.
For the third quarter, our total revenue was $482 million, up 9% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. If on a non-GAAP constant currency basis, total revenues would have been $13 million higher than our reported revenues, which would be a 12% improvement year-over-year instead of 9%. Net brand advertising revenues, $46 million, down 19% year-over-year and up 5% quarter-over-quarter. Search and search-related advertising revenues, $288 million, up 13% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. Online game revenues, $108 million, up 13% year-over-year and 6% quarter-over-quarter. Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited was $17 million, decreased by 26% compared with that of the second quarter of this year.
Excluding Sogou and Changyou, the non-GAAP net loss was $53 million, decreased by 31% compared with a year ago, and decreased by 22% compared with the second quarter of 2019. Now let me go through some of our key businesses. First, our media portal business. In the third quarter of 2019, we continued our comeback as a top-tier media platform that generates and distributes premium content. In particular, we strengthened our influence in a number of verticals, including technology, finance, fashion, and others, which constitute our sub-brands. During the quarter, we successfully hosted the fifth China Drone Photography Contest, which attracted more than 600 participants hailing from over 150 cities nationwide. This contest not only enriched our content library with a large number of high-quality photos, short videos, and vlogs, but also gained a lot of attention and interest from both users and advertisers.
In the fourth quarter, we will continue to launch high-profile and influential events such as the AI Summit and Sohu Fashion Awards to further take advantage of our brand and credibility. Continuing to cooperate with third-party writers via Sohu Hao and encouraging them to contribute in-depth content. Overall, the number of registered writers on our platform, Sohu Hao, has increased steadily. On the product side, we are actively focusing on ways to improve our recommendation algorithms and refine the social features. The social function not only helps attract more users and increase user stickiness, but also encourage users to share comments to improve interaction. As a result, users are building their social networks within the Sohu News App and contributing more high-quality UGC content. During the quarter, as I mentioned before, the macroeconomic environment is still fairly challenging. We have seen budgets shrink across industries.
In response, we implemented stricter cost and expense controls, improved resource utilization, and focused on monetization and revenue growth potential. For example, through the fifth China Drone Photography Contest, we provided various marketing solutions to our advertising clients that were supported by our in-depth understanding of their needs. With this effort, we expect the financial losses of Sohu Media to further shrink in the coming quarters. Moving to the Sohu Video. During the quarter, we further developed our two-engine strategy by building up the distribution of long-form content through our theater model and distribution of short-form video clips, user-generated content, UGC content, through our recommendation plus feed model. With strict budget controls and continued efforts to improve monetization, we were able to reduce the operating loss to $20 million, which was a solid improvement from the loss of $27 million in the same quarter last year.
We expect to continue improving the bottom line of Sohu Video in the coming quarters. For the video content, following the successful broadcast of Well-Intended Love Season 1, we started shooting the Season 2 this quarter, benefiting from our brand advantages of idol romance dramas. The second season has seized advertisers' attention and began to secure advertising dollars. While for reality shows, we launched the third season of Send 100 Girls Home, "Send 100 Girls Home" translation is really funny. A reality show featuring white-collar women. We improved the interaction between viewers and enhanced the distribution of the show by initiating a related topic in our product through which users can generate and post short-term content, mostly in vlog format. These initiatives have both been well received with audience and advertisers. We also kept upgrading our product.
Through user-friendly functions and personalized features, users can easily find the content and content providers that they are interested in, content providers can generate and distribute UGC as well as access followers more quickly and effectively. As a result, the content providers and users are able to interact more closely and quickly, therefore build out their own social networks. Next, turning to Sogou. In the third quarter of 2019, Sogou experienced healthy growth and maintained its position as China's second-largest search engine. Search revenue continued to grow faster than the industry average. During the quarter, mobile keyboard reached 464 million DAUs, up 14% year-over-year, reinforcing its position as the third largest Chinese mobile app in terms of DAUs, according to our research.
With respect to Sogou's recommendation service that leverage the mobile keyboard, revenue ramped up quickly and it's on track to become the second growth engine following search. In terms of AI, Sogou consolidated its language-centric AI technologies to fully support innovations in search, mobile keyboard, and smart hardware businesses, and further reinforced its differentiation, advantage, and leading position in the sector. Moreover, in October, Sogou renewed its cooperation with WeChat. Sogou service will continue to be the preferred search engine on WeChat for third-party search services to access external internet content. Lastly, for Changyou, for the third quarter of 2019, Changyou's overall financial performance continued to be stable, and online game businesses performed well. Its revenue and profit both exceeded prior expectations.
For PC games, Changyou launched a new expansion pack of TLBB PC, and roll out this year's second promotional event to sustain player engagement and stabilize the in-game consumption. Changyou will continue to focus the core strategy to maintain user engagement and maximize the longevity of the legacy PC games such as TLBB. For mobile games, revenue from legacy TLBB Mobile increased slightly in the third quarter, mainly thanks to new content that was introduced during the quarter, which helped to drive higher player involvement. Besides, Changyou also launched TLBB Honor, a new MMORPG mobile game due to less expensive game content. However, since the game content is not particularly extensive, its revenue contribution and profitability are not comparable with legacy TLBB Mobile. Going forward, MMORPG mobile games will continue to be Changyou's strategic focus, while some casual and strategy games are also under development for a diversified product portfolio.
Now I will turn the call over to Joanna, our CFO, who will walk you through our financial results. Joanna?
Thank you, Charles. I will walk you through the key financials of our four major segments for the third quarter of 2019. All of the numbers that I will mention are all on a non-GAAP basis. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures on our IR website. For Sohu Media Portal, quarterly revenues were $25 million, and quarterly loss was $31 million. For Sohu Video, quarterly revenues were $22 million, and quarterly loss was $20 million. Excluding Sohu and Changyou, non-GAAP net loss was $63 million, compared with a net loss of $77 million in the third quarter of 2018, and a net loss of $68 million in the second quarter of 2019. For Sohu, quarterly revenues were $350 million, up 14% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. Net income was $41 million, compared with net income of $28 million in the same quarter last year.
For Changyou, quarterly revenue including 17173.com were $111 million, up 9% year-over-year and down 4% quarter-over-quarter. Changyou posted net income of $34 million, compared with net income of $67 million in the same quarter last year. For the fourth quarter of 2019, we expect total revenues to be between $435 million and $470 million. Brand advertising revenues to be between $40 million and $45 million. This implies annual decrease of 21%-30%, and a sequential decrease of 3%-14%. Sohu revenue to be between $290 million and $310 million. This implies annual decrease of 3% to an annual increase of 4%, and a sequential decrease of 2%-8%. Online game revenue to be between $95 million and $105 million. This implies annual increase of 1%-12%, and a sequential decrease of 3%-12%.
Non-GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited to be between $12 million and $22 million. Non-GAAP loss per fully diluted ADS to be between $0.30 and $0.55. GAAP net loss attributable to Sohu.com Limited to be between $17 million and $27 million. GAAP loss per fully diluted ADS to be between $0.45 and $0.70. Excluding profit and loss generated by Sohu and Changyou, non-GAAP net loss to be between $45 million and $50 million. GAAP net loss to be between $48 million and $53 million.
For the fourth quarter 2019 guidance, we used a presumed exchange rate of RMB 7.1 to $1, which compares with the actual exchange rate of approximately RMB 6.91 to $1 for the fourth quarter of 2018, and RMB 6.99 to $1 for the third quarter of 2019. Please be reminded that we won't take questions regarding Changyou's privatization proposal in the Q&A session. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we would now like to open the call for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask questions, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. The first question comes from the line of Eddie Leung from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask the question.
Hey, good evening. I have two questions about the media business. The first one is about the advertisers spending. Are we seeing more pressure on our small and medium-sized enterprises or more on our key accounts? If you could remind us of the revenue mix between SMEs and key accounts for our media business, that would be great. Secondly, could you also talk a little bit about your top advertiser industries and how are they trending? Thank you.
Yeah. This is Charles. Yes, the macroeconomic situation had a larger impact over the key accounts compared with the SMEs. The auto industries and some key IT sectors are under pressure, while the fast-moving consumer goods products are more resilient and it's less impacted. In terms of percentage, I think it is 25% or 30%. 25% of revenue are coming from the media SME. Around 70% from the brand. Even among the brands, you will see that some key sectors like auto is really affected by the fast-moving consumer goods companies. Those are less affected.
Got you, Charles. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Thomas Chong from Jefferies. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thanks management for taking my questions. I have a question regarding the online video sector. Can management comment about the regulatory environments these days and how we should think about our timing, our profitability? Should we expect it's a profitable business next year? Any color would be great. Thank you.
The regular, in terms of media business, well, the regulation has been ongoing. There is not much major events that have an impact on the regulation side. We are looking at the media advertising business, the loss will continue to be less, it will shrink. I think as we just reported, it is $31 million, right? Loss. Still far from reaching profitability on its own. Combined with the video and also with the contribution from Changyou and Sogou, the Sohu Group, the profitability we are already achieving $17 million non-GAAP loss. Give us a couple of quarters and we should be able to reach profitability on a group level.
Got it. Thank you, Charles.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Alicia Yap from Citigroup. Please ask the question.
Hi. Good evening, Charles and other management. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two quick questions. Number one is, Charles, related to the Sohu Media. Can you elaborate a little bit, besides the photography content, what other contents are also the high-quality original content that you refer to that results to a comeback and a strength in the Sohu Media? Will that improving content quality translate to higher revenue opportunity? Have you seen the higher demand from advertisers on this improved content? Second is, just wanted to follow up on the Sohu Video, I guess, from a lot of different peers.
They were commenting about, because of the National Day, where the kind of 3Q, 4Q, some of the content got delays or affected by this tightening regulation. Just curious, have you seen any easing of the regulation last two weeks, given now we passed the National Day celebration and also passed the Congress meeting? Any anticipations of the relaxings of the video content in the coming weeks or any comments about next year, in terms of further tightening? That would be great. Thank you.
Okay. First of all, the Sohu Media, not just in the Drone Photography Contest that contribute a lot of photographic video vlogs, but the overall Sohu Media, first of all, we have this Sohu Hao, we have actually over 600,000 Sohu writer accounts, where all these writers contribute to post their content on the Sohu Hao. Among the 600,000, there's a lot of in-house accounts of Sohu's own accounts that cover Sohu Technology, Sohu Finance, Sohu Fashion. Internally, basically to just manage better and for our own authors to write better articles, to report more accurately, and also to really become very professional, to report industry events with more in-depth analysis. That's the overall improvement of our content generation.
We continue to improve the algorithm so that Sohu News App to basically to match the right content with the right individuals. That's overall the content improvement. Another feature is really, as a media platform, we consider activities to be content generation source. We have this forum, like a 5G forum or upcoming AI forum, and we have this Sohu fashion event. All these events, and also recently the Sohu School Girls Beauty Contest and all those kind of things. Those are just good ways to generate good content. Opportunities for brand advertisers to sponsor those events and together with their routine advertising on our platform. They are more likely to be competing for deals because of Sohu's unique events, so that the money will probably move towards Sohu instead of a competing platform.
These are the ways that how we, even with the worsening of the macroeconomic situation, we were able to achieve a flattish or even a kind of increase of brand advertising. On the video side, as we said, that we have this double engine or twin engine strategy. One is really the theater long format video. On that part, we really keep our pace really slow because this year, in order to control cost, we really spend less on new drama creation. We have such a library of dramas that we either purchased or we produced over the years. By better personalize those content to people. We actually being able to have a flattish or even some increase of the subscriptions income of the Sohu Video.
We do delay our two dramas, and now after the National Day, in Q4, we look forward to launch two dramas. Regulation-wise, it's eased a little bit, but it has less impact to Sohu because we are now rely more and more on some short videos and some social network functions of the Sohu Video instead of purely depend on the long form of extensive videos or dramas. Yeah. To answer your question.
Okay. Yes. It is. Thank you so much, Charles.
All right.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask questions, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.