The popularity of long dramas has returned, but their commercial value still crushes short dramas?

Long dramas have reignited the film and television market. They have the ability to break through consumer circles and create national topics: unlike short dramas, which are fast-food, quickly produced, and quickly launched to the market. However, the commercial value of both is immeasurable, so brands often spend a lot of money on marketing. Recommended for Internet friends to read.

The popularity of long dramas is returning.

In the first twenty minutes, the heroine experiences marriage, is framed for cheating, is buried alive by her husband, and is "reborn" to lie dormant with a new identity. This is Youku's new drama "Ink Rain and Clouds".

It is reported that "Mo Yu Yun Jian" is the fastest-growing drama on Youku in 2024, with a market share of up to 31%, making it the top hit in the summer season. The drama starts with the heroine in a desperate situation, and then makes a comeback, and is known as "a drama that relieves stress for all people" and "a breast-friendly drama".

With the fast-paced and strong-conflict attributes of a short drama, as well as an excellent script and talented actors, the huge success of "Ink Rain and Clouds" is reasonable and logical.

Behind the continued popularity of "Mo Yu Yun Jian", the long drama is reigniting the film and television market.

Since May this year, "Joy of Life 2" has returned strongly, setting the highest popularity value in the history of Tencent Video on its first day of broadcast, becoming the first TV series to enter the platform's hit club on the first day of broadcast; then the mini-series "My Altay" has brought a city to the forefront and turned it into a new engine of cultural tourism; in June, new dramas such as "Mo Yu Yun Jian" and "Rose Story" have frequently appeared on hot searches...

It seems that long dramas still have the ability to break through consumer circles and create national topics. In contrast, although short dramas are gaining popularity, it is still rare to find a script that can cause such a large-scale heated discussion.

Since last year, a large number of short plays have become popular on various platforms. Short plays have suddenly become a "good business" that is passed on by word of mouth. Even Feng Yuanzheng, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and an actor, said in an interview with CCTV that short plays must be fast food, written quickly, produced quickly, put on the market quickly, and make money quickly. Short plays will definitely become a trend in the future.

But Feng Yuanzheng also believes that "the vitality of new things that are quickly pushed into the spotlight remains to be verified."

Whether it is a long drama or a short drama, the key to maintaining its vitality lies in its commercial value. After all, only when the players in the link can make money can the industry complete the business closed loop and last forever.

1. Customized skits

The commercialization of short plays is more reflected in being "customized".

Regardless of the platform, brand-customized short dramas are the most mainstream form. At the beginning of last year, Hansu and Jiang Shiqi, a top talent under the MCN agency Silver Earth, customized several short dramas such as "Dressing for Growth" and "You Will Be Famous Eventually", and immediately took over the traffic and attention brought by the short dramas through the Douyin live broadcast room, successfully making the Red Waist Set, which focuses on anti-aging effects, a hot product, with a monthly GMV of over 100 million.

The Douyin Cloud Marketing 5A Theory System divides users into five groups, from A1 to A5. Among them, the A3 group of people who click, search, and structure brand content multiple times have become an important indicator for measuring the effectiveness of short dramas. Hanshu's success is largely due to the accumulation of a large number of A3 people.

Subsequently, more and more brands began to customize their own short dramas on Douyin, among which beauty brands were the most willing to spend money on it.

Whether it is domestic brands such as Hansu, PROYA, and OSM, or international brands such as Shiseido, SKII, and Estee Lauder, they have all invested in making their own customized short plays.

In addition, e-commerce, 3C, and beverage categories have also become new forces in the release of short dramas. For example, the short drama "I'm Bound to the Love System" co-produced by OPPO and Kuaishou will design the OPPO phone into a magical love system to promote the plot, and the cumulative number of views of the whole drama has reached 240 million; Cha Baidao closely follows the traffic of Jiang Shiqi and cooperates with him in the form of title sponsorship to customize the short drama "Love Has Hundreds of Freshness"...

Internet e-commerce companies prefer to customize short dramas on Kuaishou: JD Auto exclusively sponsored "The Journey Home", Tmall exclusively sponsored "I Opened a Bar in the Song Dynasty" and other three short dramas, and Meituan sponsored "The Character of a Wife"...

In general, by customizing short dramas, brands/platforms insert hard or soft advertisements into the content of the short dramas, mainly making money by attracting consumers to the live broadcast room to buy products, and then earning some commission from user content payments.

However, as more and more brands start to make customized short plays, the market supply has increased greatly. The cost and actual benefits of brand investment are not optimistic.

For example, Hanshun, which was the first to reap the benefits of short dramas, no longer makes short dramas. According to multiple media reports, Lv Yixiong, the founder of Shangmei Group, said in a WeChat Moments that Hanshun basically stopped making short dramas after November last year. The reason is that "when many beauty brands in the country followed Hanshun's example and squeezed into the short drama track, the supply of short dramas increased 20 times, the price doubled, and the effect dropped 40 times."

Lv Yixiong also said, "All the brands that entered the short dramas since August last year are just trying to make money. There is not a single successful case. They are all just giving money to Douyin."

Obviously, the short drama industry has not escaped the 80/20 rule. Brands must be willing to spend money on the quantity, quality, and streaming costs of short dramas in order to gradually build brand assets through short dramas. Each of the above steps requires dual guarantees of manpower and material resources.

2. Long dramas exploring multiple commercialization paths

Unlike short dramas, the core competitiveness of long dramas lies in the long-term supply of high-quality content. At the same time, the innovation of business models is the key force driving the development of the industry.

Yilan Business has found that brand-based sponsors are eager to try and are determined to buy into the hit dramas.

Different from short dramas customized for a single brand, long dramas with excellent scripts and strong casts often have 30 to 40 sponsors. Three popular dramas recently: Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Yuehong Chapter won 56 advertisers before it was broadcast; Rose Story officially announced 34 brands before it was broadcast, and 10 advertisements were implanted in the first episode, with 41 co-branded brands; Ink Rain and Clouds has accumulated 40+ brand cooperations, setting multiple commercial records in Youku's 24 years.

Not to mention the drama king "Celebrating Yu Nian 2" which returned some time ago, which has about 8 advertisements per episode, and has a variety of variety show sponsorship words such as "joint sponsorship", "leading special", and "special cooperation" appearing on the gathering poster. The title sponsor "Chun Zhen" also received the ridicule of "the first big breast master" from netizens.

Why do so many sponsors still prefer long dramas?

Over the years, long-running dramas have established a business model centered on "membership subscription + advertising services". At the same time, the content system of long-running dramas has also been firmly established in terms of high-quality output, blockbuster forging, and diversified genre expression. Long-running dramas have more opportunities to iterate the "membership subscription + advertising service" model and explore diversified commercialization paths.

Membership subscription is the main source of income for major long-running drama platforms. Starting from 2023, Youku, Tencent Video, and iQiyi have successively upgraded their original high-level memberships to SVIP and added more relevant rights. They also set up advanced screening activities for popular dramas, allowing consumers to pay to watch the dramas in advance.

In terms of advertising services, the platform has iterated more marketing methods, using variety shows and extra episodes to carry users' emotional needs for hit dramas, create new topics, and trigger long-tail traffic;

For example, Youku launched the "Youth Special Project", which uses the form of life-style content to echo the content of the drama, extending the user's viewing pleasure from the main drama "Youth Song" to the outside world; "Ink Rain and Clouds" added a post-marriage extra episode for the male and female protagonists, which has been on the hot search since the extra episode shooting stage, creating momentum for the ending...

In the view of Yilan Business, short dramas can only complement long dramas. In the long run, it will not be easy for short dramas to take away the commercial "cake" of long dramas.

3. Long drama vs. short drama, which one has more commercial value?

To explore the commercial value of long and short dramas, several issues need to be discussed.

First, is the content sufficient to support users’ continued consumption?

Whether it is a long drama or a short drama, users paying for content is the most direct monetization model. From the perspective of content, mainstream short dramas are naturally "customized" by brands, so the content they can create will be more limited. Brands that mainly focus on fast-moving consumer goods and 3C digital products will inevitably limit the content if they want to create short dramas around their own brands. Coupled with the high requirements of short dramas for a fast pace, the repetitiveness of the content will become more and more apparent over time.

Compared with short dramas, long dramas are more likely to come from big IPs that already have a certain amount of traffic. The annual list of long dramas released by long drama platforms every year is a struggle between IP and the main creative team. At the same time, in terms of the form of content expression, long dramas can imitate short dramas, such as "Mo Yu Yun Yan", which emphasizes fast pace and strong conflicts; or they can express the theme of the script in a slower and calmer narrative way like "My Altay", which has more diverse content creation space.

Second, which payment method is more cost-effective?

At present, Douyu's short dramas are mostly charged in the form of individual episodes, which is a more simple form, while long dramas are a means to promote new platform members and member consumption. After users recharge a platform membership, they automatically unlock the rights to watch long dramas on the platform. The monthly fee for a single platform is the same as or even lower than the price of buying out the entire series of some short dramas, which is more cost-effective. At the same time, for some popular dramas, if users want to unlock the plot as soon as possible, they can consume it on their own, which is more flexible.

Third, what kind of drama can bring returns to sponsors?

Sina Technology once reported that, taking mini-program short dramas as an example, under the streaming model, more than 80% of the box office revenue was shared by traffic platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, while the four links of copyright, production, production and streaming distribution shared less than 17% of the gross profit. An MCN agency content production practitioner told Yilan Business that the current basic cost of brand-customized short dramas is about 500,000 yuan or more. Some media reported that the cost of Douyin's customized short dramas has reached the million-level. Last year, this threshold was only 100,000 yuan.

Under the "bombardment" of a large number of brand-customized short dramas, the audience may gradually become "desensitized" to this new form of marketing. It is extremely unlikely that brands will be able to recreate the miracle of Hanxuan leveraging billions of traffic at the beginning of last year.

The threshold for sponsorship of long dramas is often higher. For a drama that is about to become a hit, the sponsorship slot often starts at one million. For a long drama, the investment in a hit is indeed large, but if the main creative team and the script have a good chance of winning, it can definitely attract some traffic. For classic dramas such as "The Legend of Zhen Huan", long-tail traffic also has great value. Even in the past few years, many brands such as Heytea have co-branded with it.

At the same time, betting on low-budget dramas with potential has become another option for brands to gain profits. The long drama commercial market is showing a situation where top dramas are booming and mid-range dramas are missing. If brands can bet on low-budget dramas, they can get high returns at low cost.

For low-budget dramas, the creative team is often the key to attracting traffic. The hit "Hunting Ice" in the first quarter of this year is a typical example: "Hunting Ice" is the first drama broadcast by the male lead Zhang Songwen after the hit "Kuang Bi", and Zhang Songwen played a villain again, which attracted much attention; the female lead, "Huawei's second princess" Yao Anna, who starred in a drama for the first time, has attracted a lot of discussion.

IV. Conclusion

In summary,

Short dramas prefer soft advertising, integrating advertising with content to make its content distinctive; long dramas prefer hard advertising, and advertising basically has no impact on the content of the drama.

Short dramas have passed their initial bonus period. If you want to make money, you need to strive for quantity, and the risk of getting nothing in return cannot be ruled out. Long dramas can predict traffic in advance from IP and the main team, but the possibility of investment not keeping up with returns also changes at any time with these two factors.

From a brand perspective, customizing short dramas is more about controlling and creating content, while sponsoring long dramas is more about predicting the IP and the creative team. Neither is an easy job. In contrast, a high-quality long drama may have the ability to cross cycles.

Author: Li Yan

Source: WeChat official account: "Yilan Business (ID: yilanshangye)"