Long and short videos in 2024

As 2024 draws to a close, we look back at the development trajectories of long and short video platforms this year, how they have shaped our cultural consumption, and how they have sought new growth points through competition and cooperation. This article deeply analyzes how long video platforms embrace the short drama market through misaligned competition and self-transformation, and how short video platforms open up new horizons in business ecology and content innovation.

At the end of each year, when we take stock of the past, the popular TV series and movies of the year will become the coordinates of many people's memories. Looking back at the year 2024 that is about to pass, the popular TV series that everyone is watching and the time when I watched short videos alone will emerge in front of my eyes. Whether it is the collective memory condensed by long videos or the social phenomena reflected by short videos, they are deeply intertwined with everyone's life.

Therefore, we review the performance of long video and short video platforms over the past year at this time of year, which is also to preserve a circle of annual rings for the entertainment industry. In 2024, long video platforms have worked together to get out of the "zero-sum game" dilemma through staggered competition. Each platform has its own outstanding performance, and is more courageous to reform itself, collectively embrace the short drama market, and actively adapt to the changes in user content consumption habits. While consolidating the basic market, it is also expected to break the industry ceiling.

Short video platforms are not only trying to explore the possibilities of the business ecosystem, but are also opening up the next lush new world through internal incubation. Whether it is Hongguo Short Drama, which has over 100 million monthly active users, or Keling and Jimeng, which have ignited the enthusiasm of creators, the expansion capabilities of short video platforms have exceeded our imagination.

The battle between long video and short video platforms is no longer a life-and-death battle. Instead, they are leveraging their respective strengths while learning from each other to jointly meet the spiritual needs of audiences at different levels and in different scenarios. The entertainment industry has also gained an inexhaustible growth momentum due to such healthy competition.

1. Ancient idol dramas are on the decline, and realistic topics are taking their place. Long video platforms are accelerating the dehydration of dramas.

First, let's look at the overall performance of the long video drama market in 2024. According to Yunhe data, the effective playback volume of feature films on the entire network has experienced negative year-on-year growth for three consecutive quarters this year. In previous years, the summer season was always a golden period for the emergence of popular dramas, but this year it was cold due to the National Olympics. The market has been "cold" for several consecutive months since June, operating below 300 million for 5 months, and only slowly warmed up in November.

Ordinary viewers have no idea about the shrinking TV series market, but they should be able to feel that there are more flops this year. Although the annual report of Yunhe Data has not yet been released, Douban's "Visual Group" has already had "data experts" review the performance of this year's popular TV series, which can be used as a reference for market conditions.

According to this "civilian report", as of December 15, there were 48 dramas with an average of more than 20 million effective broadcasts per episode during the popular broadcast period of Yunhe, 24 with an average of more than 30 million, 5 with an average of more than 50 million, and only "Joy of Life Season 2" with an average of more than 100 million. Compared with the figures of the same period last year, it can be seen that not only the "water level" of hit dramas this year has decreased, but the number of popular dramas has also decreased - in 2023, there were 6 dramas with an average of more than 50 million per episode during the popular broadcast period, 30 with an average of more than 30 million, and 60 with an average of more than 20 million.

From this, we can conclude that although the top dramas are still "powerful" this year, the "mid-tier dramas" that support the entire market and form stickiness for long video audiences have collapsed. Although the degree is not as serious as the film market, it is still worthy of vigilance for the entire industry. Despite this, there are still some dramas that have become "top" by virtue of their innovative themes. For example, "Eternal Night Star River", which pioneered the track of cyber costume light comedy, attracted young audiences who grew up in the gaming era, showing the ability of long videos to continue to evolve.

From the perspective of platform distribution, among the 24 dramas with an average of over 30 million views per episode during this year's popular period, 8 were exclusively broadcast by Tencent Video, iQiyi and Youku had 6 each, and Mango TV had only one, "People in the Alley", which still failed to break the platform balance in the drama market.

From the perspective of subject matter, ancient puppet dramas are undoubtedly the hardest hit area for dramas to "flop" this year. Among the top 10 episodes played during the popular period of Yunhe last year, ancient puppet dramas occupied 7 seats. Series such as "Longing", "Long Yue Jinming" and "Lotus Tower" have achieved both good ratings and good reputation. Among the top 10 of Yunhe this year, there are only three ancient puppet dramas left: "Traveling with the Phoenix", "Mo Yu Yun Jian" and "Longing Season 2". If last year was a "collective rejuvenation" of the ancient puppet market, this year the ratings code of "well-known IP + traffic actors" is no longer valid. The emergence of fresh and sweet short dramas has also accelerated the audience's aesthetic fatigue of the "transfer of love" to ancient puppet dramas.

This year's two "dark horses" of ancient idol dramas, "Mo Yu Yun Jian" and "Jiu Chong Zi", let us see the possibility of "taking the short and making up for the long", but whether "long dramas are short dramas" is the panacea for revitalizing ancient idol dramas still needs further observation. In contrast, the explosive success of "Celebrating Yu Nian Season 2" shows that male IP is breaking through the adaptation dilemma and exploring a replicable successful methodology. The launch of the year-end finale "Da Feng Da Ye Ren" is expected to become another iconic work on the road of male dramas.

The collective retreat of ancient idol dramas from the hit drama list means that more modern dramas have entered the mainstream audience's field of vision this year. Dramas such as "Flowers", "The Story of Roses", "South and North", and "I Am a Criminal Policeman" have successfully penetrated the user circle and triggered heated discussions among the people, showing the unique advantages of long videos in setting social issues and resonating with public emotions, which is difficult to replace with fragmented and fast-food short dramas. The retreat of ancient idol dramas and the "filling" of realistic dramas mean a more benign and sustainable content ecology for both the drama industry and long video platforms.

Like last year, suspense dramas are still a hot track in the drama market this year. At the end of the year, it triggered a climax driven by "I Am a Criminal Police", "White Night Dawn" and "Hunting Crime Picture Book 2". From "Tang Dynasty Weird Stories 2" to "White Night Dawn" and "Hunting Crime Picture Book 2", the IP operation of suspense dramas has been ahead of other types. From the early orthodox reasoning to the "suspense + realism" in the past two years, suspense dramas have become more and more humane, and at the same time, they have a deeper sense of the times, and have more connections with social issues and collective emotions.

Not only that, new genres such as ancient costume suspense, documentary criminal investigation and even cross-time and space criminal hunting ("The Sun and the Stars") have emerged as popular masterpieces, further broadening the subject selection boundaries and audience groups of suspense dramas.

Last year, the 12-episode "The Long Season" became the biggest surprise in the drama market, and this year, the 8-episode "My Altay" won the highest score among domestic dramas and also brought about a wave of cultural tourism. In addition, the 10-episode "New Life" and the 15-episode "Misplacement" also proved the feasibility of mini-series "small for big". iQiyi even launched the "Microdust Theater" to explore more possibilities of mini-series.

Starting with "The Bad Kids" and "The Silent Truth", long video platforms have been trying to take a creative route different from mainstream long dramas in the "experimental field" of suspense dramas through short and sharp volumes and carefully designed narratives. However, in recent years, the platform has mainly made "point-like breakthroughs". Not only has it just begun to move out of the limited track of suspense dramas, it also urgently needs to establish a mature mini-series creation system to find a place for it in the content matrix.

Under the fierce impact of short dramas, long video platforms are also accelerating the speed of "dehydrating" dramas to cope with the audience's increasingly scarce patience for chasing dramas. The Lighthouse Professional Edition "2024 H1 Drama Market Insight Report" shows that in the first quarter, dramas with less than 12 episodes accounted for more than 10%, dramas with 25-32 episodes accounted for 8.7%, and dramas with 33 episodes and above accounted for 14.2% as a whole. Near the end of the year, a long video platform even announced that it would no longer accept self-produced and customized dramas with more than 16 episodes in 2025.

While reducing the volume, this year's long dramas have also begun to move closer to short dramas in terms of narrative efficiency, information density, and editing techniques. In the first 10 minutes of "Mo Yu Yun Jian", the heroine experienced a cycle of life and death, and from death to life, leading to a revenge story line that the audience can't stop. "Nine Layers of Purple" has a compact and lively rhythm and a volume of more than 30 episodes to support the plot framework that traditional long dramas need 50 or 60 episodes to unfold. There is reason to believe that in the future, there will be more and more such "long and short fusion" works.

Last year, Tencent Video made great strides on the road of "theaterization". Not only did the "X Theater" that came out of nowhere take the lead, but the "Bench Unit" and "Firefly Unit" also debuted with surprising masterpieces. We found that the branding that long video platforms have been striving for in the past few years is entering a new stage. Not only is it gradually "de-typified", but it also pays more attention to the unification of content style and the cohesion of target audiences. "X Theater" has the banner of "one play, one style". This year, iQiyi launched the "Dust Theater" with the main focus on extreme image presentation. Although Youku's "White Night Theater" is deeply involved in the suspense track, it is more like connecting real-life themes of different time and space with "suspense +".

The iteration of the "theatricalization" strategy of long video platforms is also in response to the rapid changes in the audience's psychology of chasing dramas. After all, it is difficult to ensure the emergence of excellent works and polish the brand time and time again by simply focusing on a single type. The style exploration of "one drama, one style" and the focused creation that closely follows emotional appeals can keep a brand fresh and vibrant.

Looking back at the year 2024, which is about to pass, long videos still play an indispensable role in our cultural consumption - from the nostalgic whirlwind set off by "Fang Hua" across the country, to the crazy power struggles in "Joy of Life 2". Judging from the list of excellent works gathered on major platforms, we believe that 2025 will also be a fruitful year for long videos. Taking Tencent Video as an example, the "better to have nothing than to have something bad" X Theater will be updated again in 2025. The suspense short drama "The Beginning of Man" is expected to become another hit mini-series, and the highly anticipated "Lychees in Chang'an" by book fans is also expected to make costume historical dramas usher in a highlight moment again.

2. Short video competition enters a new stage. Short dramas and AI are expected to alleviate "e-commerce dependence"

In 2024, we have witnessed the successive collapse of influencers on various platforms, but this has no longer affected the content ecology of short video platforms. Although the top platforms still need top anchors to support the scene and bring popularity during the Double Eleven period, the competition in short videos has already entered the next stage.

On the one hand, it is a competition in the internal circulation ecology of the business. How to maximize the efficiency of traffic within the platform, whether it is Douyin, Kuaishou or Video Account, is still in the process of trial and error; on the other hand, it is to use the short video platform as a springboard to leap into the next blue ocean - short dramas, AI videos. This will be another new long-distance race that is no less than the short video battle.

At the end of last year, we observed that Douyin began to get involved in the deep waters of traditional e-commerce "low-price good goods" and met Pinduoduo on a narrow road. This year, Douyin has gone through this "detour" with the most flexible posture and the fastest "trial and error" speed. According to media reports, in 2024, Douyin will make "price power" the highest priority task and will promote small and medium-sized and white-label merchants as the core. However, because their advertising budgets and GMV growth are not as good as those of brand merchants, Douyin's e-commerce GMV growth has continued to slow down - from 50% in the first quarter to less than 20% in September.

Obviously, Douyin's information flow and shelf model are not as efficient as Pinduoduo's product flow in recommending low-priced goods. Fortunately, Douyin realized the problem in time and shifted its resources back to brand merchants and large merchants on Double Eleven, successfully preventing the further "deceleration" of GMV. In the upcoming New Year's Goods Festival, Douyin once again took the lead in advance, with the purpose of retaining high-quality sources of goods.

Kuaishou also moved the New Year Goods Festival forward to late December in order to lock in the supply of goods and the consumer minds of its "old friends". After all, the growth rate of Kuaishou's e-commerce GMV has also slowed down this year. As its user base has become more down-to-earth, it faces a more direct confrontation with Pinduoduo.

The good news is that Kuaishou's internal circulation ecosystem is reducing its reliance on e-commerce business. In the third quarter, online marketing services increased by 20% year-on-year, and the marketing revenue of paid short dramas increased by more than three times. It can be inferred that Douyin, which has 120 million monthly active users of Hongguo short dramas, should have more considerable revenue from this. The rapid development of short dramas not only means that short video platforms that have encountered growth bottlenecks have successfully leaped into another vast blue ocean, but also alleviated their "e-commerce anxiety" to a certain extent.

We don't seem to see such "e-commerce anxiety" in Video Account. In Tencent's third-quarter financial report for 2024, the Video Account e-commerce business was only mentioned in one sentence as "Video Account Store upgraded to WeChat Store." Because we always believe that "using the private domain to leverage the public domain, and then using the public domain to amplify the private domain, this is the most advantageous part of WeChat", Video Account has not focused on creating top anchors such as Brother Yang and Simba, and is not keen on full-scale promotions such as Double Eleven and New Year's Goods Festival. It just quietly upgraded the Video Account store to a WeChat store, further opened up scenarios such as official accounts, video accounts, search, and mini programs, and continued to contribute to the WeChat transaction ecosystem.

As a national social system, WeChat has always been a trump card in the hands of video accounts. Once the internal ecological links are connected, it will have the opportunity to become a surprise weapon to overtake others. When Douyin and Kuaishou were cheering for the New Year Goods Festival, a function update of WeChat achieved "a little effort to achieve a great result".

Recently, WeChat Store launched a grayscale test of the "Send Gifts" function, which allows users to send the purchased goods as gifts to friends through chat. The choice to launch it before the Spring Festival shows WeChat's ambition, which is to use social networking to activate e-commerce like sending red envelopes in the past.

We should not overestimate the strategic significance of "giving gifts". After all, Spring Festival red envelopes are a "social currency" that is common to both strong and weak relationships, and can also generate fission effects through WeChat groups. The diffusion effect of "giving gifts" may be much weaker. Nevertheless, when the accumulated video accounts turn to active offensive, how they will stir up the e-commerce world is still worth our high expectations.

In addition to short dramas, AI video tools have become another battleground for short video platforms this year. Kuaishou and Douyin have been racing on this track in just one year. In addition to the two independent AI video tools, Jimeng and Keling, ByteDance also has a "quasi-killer application" called Doubao, and will release a new generation of video generation models in January next year.

Both Douyin and Kuaishou hope that AI tools can become the next growth engine of the platform, attracting the most innovative AI creators with the potential for blockbuster hits, and seize the opportunity before the content iteration cycle arrives. However, although AI videos are in full swing this year, they have not yet become a creative tool in the hands of ordinary users, and the works that have gone viral are more the result of the platform's promotion. The seemingly hot AI short dramas are more of a "promotional film" to demonstrate the capabilities of the tools. Apart from being fresh and curious, they have not yet formed a lasting appeal to the audience.

In contrast, AI-powered adaptations of various old domestic dramas have been frequently seen on short video platforms, showing a deviation between platform expectations and user preferences. Compared with AI videos that are "created out of nothing", using AI to play with memes is more likely to hit users. However, AI-powered adaptations not only face huge copyright risks, but also faced regulatory measures from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television in December. Before real AI videos are widely accepted by ordinary users, it is still too early to claim that AI will reshape the content ecosystem.

3. The free model changes the ecology of short dramas, and iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video all join the "table"

In the past few years, we have witnessed the transition from a war between long video and short video platforms to a handshake. With the rise of short dramas, the competitive balance between long and short platforms has begun to break. Especially when Hongguo short dramas have grown into a new "explosive" with more than 120 million monthly active users and an average daily usage time of 1.38 hours per person, and when free short dramas try to replicate the counterattack strategy of free online articles, the pressure on long videos based on user payment can be imagined.

However, the long video platforms that "join if you can't beat them" are not passive in their response. In addition to collectively adjusting their revenue-sharing strategies to compete for creators, iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video are also extending their membership model and theater concepts to short dramas, enhancing user stickiness through the integration of long and short dramas and mutual promotion of long and short dramas. Just as the free and paid models have long coexisted in the online literature industry, long video platforms will also occupy their own place in the short drama track.

The speed of iteration of the short drama business model has far exceeded our imagination. In the first half of the year, the industry was still discussing the impact of the rise of the native model on the investment model of the entire industry. In August, the IAA model (In-App Advertisement) had already accounted for half of the market. ByteDance is rapidly enclosing the market through the competition between the two "race horses" Douyin and Hongguo, changing the business ecology of the entire short drama market. From 80% of the cost for investment, trying every means to guide users to recharge and unlock, to working hard to improve the production level and strive to obtain the maximum information flow advertising revenue, the change of business model is also shaping the creative logic of the short drama industry.

Information flow advertising is not the end of the short drama business model. This year, the industry is trying various monetization channels such as brand customization, brand sponsorship, and e-commerce sales. Whether it is an e-commerce platform or a search engine, Internet giants that have encountered growth bottlenecks are using short dramas as a tool to attract new users and promote activation. When free short dramas are everywhere and the phenomenon of "short dramas with advertisements inserted" is becoming increasingly rampant, many users will be more willing to pay for high-quality short dramas.

ByteDance also runs two parallel routes, free and paid. While vigorously feeding Hongguo short dramas, it also launched an exclusive membership card for native short dramas on Douyin, trying to cross the river by feeling the stones of iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video. At the same time, Douyin's "9527 Theater" jointly developed with Stephen Chow this year and "Rose Story Theater" in cooperation with Li Ruotong are similar to the "branded" operation of long videos.

This year, long video platforms that have turned to the "long + short" path have collectively shifted from defense to offense. After all, they have hundreds of millions of paying members and have all kinds of popular dramas all year round. Simply converting the original audience into the audience of short dramas is enough to get on the table. And horizontal screen short dramas that continue the viewing habits of long drama audiences and win with high-information images, excellent production, and group performances will also become the main advantage of long video platforms.

Tencent Video has always been in the leading position in the layout of short dramas among iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video and Mango TV. Last year, the horizontal screen micro short drama "Provoke" set a record of 20 million yuan in revenue sharing. This year, Tencent Video has maintained strong competitiveness in terms of the number of new short dramas and market performance. The record of single-film revenue sharing has also increased to 40 million. In the first half of the year, a total of 9 projects had a box office revenue sharing of over 10 million. Whether short dramas can help long video platforms break the ceiling of membership scale, we can continue to track from Tencent's financial report next year.

This year, iQiyi also rushed into the micro-short drama market, and also planned both "horizontal short" and "vertical short" at the same time. It was obviously a decision made after careful consideration of the "long-short change". In early November, iQiyi released new rules for short drama revenue sharing cooperation, providing progressive incentives based on the effective playback time of members. Although there is still a gap between the number of new releases and the scale of revenue sharing, through the late-stage efforts and platform promotion, iQiyi has already produced a wave of top short dramas, and even shared the same place with Tencent in the Yunhe November short drama effective playback dominance list.

Youku's new short dramas this year are second only to Tencent Video, and it has also produced many works with revenues exceeding 10 million yuan. The updated revenue sharing rules adjust the revenue sharing according to the new user index, which shows its ambition to use short dramas to expand the membership scale. In addition, Youku has also joined hands with Tomato Novel this year. The two sides will deeply explore super IPs, and a number of lightweight online articles have the potential to be adapted into popular short dramas.

Another major trend in the short drama market this year is the popularity of short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people. The emotional needs and consumption potential of "silver-haired users" that have been ignored by the film and television industry for a long time have finally been seen. However, the emergence of short dramas such as "Fifty-Year-Old Nanny Marries a Rich Family" and the news that the middle-aged and elderly people fell into the recharge trap also remind practitioners that quick success and instant benefits will not last long. Only by entering the daily life and spiritual world of the middle-aged and elderly people can we provide more valuable and longer-lasting works in addition to the short-term emotional impact.

The middle-aged and elderly groups deserve to "eat" as well as the young people, rather than being treated as "lambs to be slaughtered". Similarly, whether free or paid, users of short dramas should also enjoy the same high-quality content as users of long dramas. Only in this way can the entertainment industry have new growth to open the next stage.