The price of one video is nearly 350,000 yuan. The short drama company does not compete with investment but with numbers.

The short drama company "Hao You Neng Ling" uses a free model to attract audiences, enhance its brand, and promote paid viewing.

Short drama companies that do not want to work for the platform for free are working hard to explore new ways of playing.

Some people bet on brand short plays and cultural and tourism short plays, while others choose to operate platform accounts, trying to get rid of their dependence on mini programs and gradually explore a new path.

Recently, two new accounts appeared on the Xinbang Douyin data tool Xindou’s fan growth list:

"Finger Short Drama" gained 1.58 million followers in 30 days, and "Sparse Shadow Short Drama" gained 1.38 million followers in 30 days, with a total of 2.96 million followers. Both accounts belong to the leading short drama company Touch Culture, which can provide viewers with paid viewing services for short dramas.

Taking "Finger-Break Short Drama" as an example, the account has currently launched a total of 58 paid short dramas, among which "White Moonlight Strategy Manual" costs 2.4 yuan to unlock a single episode, and 62.4 yuan to unlock all episodes. As of press time, the cumulative playback volume of "White Moonlight Strategy Manual" has exceeded 140 million times.

Unlike short drama expert accounts such as "Jiang Shiqi" and "Yizhilu" that focus on personal IP and offer free viewing of short dramas, this type of account is more of an official account of a short drama brand. Most of the short dramas online are paid short dramas, and the operating entities are mostly short drama companies. There are many types of short dramas and no fixed performing experts.

Liu Yuyan, deputy general manager of Judian Short Drama, told the editorial department of Xinbang that this type of short drama account is called terminal native in the industry. At present, the main way to monetize short dramas is to pay to watch them on mini programs, and monetization through official accounts is an additional monetization channel. In his opinion, "if this model can be developed, it will be very powerful."

Will short play numbers become a popular trend in the short play industry? What is the current development status of short play numbers? How will short play numbers develop in the future?

With these questions in mind, I used the Xinbang data to retrieve a batch of short drama numbers and talked to many people in the industry.

1. The highest number of fans is 9.58 million, and the short drama companies collectively set up accounts

At present, many short drama companies have begun to deploy short drama accounts on content platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili.

The short drama account with the most fans comes from Kuaishou's "Ai Qing's Women's Theater". As of now, the number of Kuaishou fans of "Ai Qing's Women's Theater" has reached 9.58 million, and a total of 17 short dramas have been uploaded, among which "Remarriage" has a cumulative playback volume of up to 980 million. "Ai Qing's Women's Theater" is mainly aimed at women over 30, and the subject matter style is closer to the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law drama in traditional long dramas.

Kuaishou is the earliest content platform in the industry to develop short dramas, and has produced a large number of popular short dramas such as "The Princess Is Up". (Extended reading: "From sharing 150 million yuan to attracting Stephen Chow, content platforms are crazy about short dramas")

In the first half of this year, short drama companies such as Baichuan Chinese Network and Judian began to operate short drama accounts on Bilibili. Bilibili users can watch the full versions of short dramas such as "Dragon Year: Returning Home in Glory" and "Hot and Hot: Gorgeous Transformation" by charging their accounts. The current monthly charging price ranges from 50 yuan to 128 yuan.

The platform with the most short drama accounts is Douyin. According to incomplete statistics from the editorial department of Xinbang, the major short drama players in the industry have already deployed short drama accounts on Douyin.

"Hao You Neng Ling" is the official account of Hao You Neng Ling, a short drama brand under Ningmeng Pictures. In 2023, Hao You Neng Ling quickly became famous in the industry with the boutique short drama "Twenty-Nine" starring the star Yang Rong. Currently, the number of fans of the Douyin account "Hao You Neng Ling" has reached 5.22 million.

"The Queen is Here Theater" is the official account operated by Longyi, the company to which "Queen of Short Plays" Xu Yizhen belongs. Recently, "The Queen is Here Theater" launched its first paid short play - Xu Yizhen's new short play "Boss Nan Goes Big This Time". (Extended reading: "Queen of Short Plays" Xu Yizhen: I don't sell products, I want to win awards at film festivals with short plays | New List Interview")

"Tinghuadao Theater" is the official account of Mi Meng's short play company Tinghuadao. Tinghuadao is a star production company in the short play industry, and has produced hit works such as "Pei Zong Wants to Become a Stepmother Every Day", "The Black Lotus Manual", and "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s".

On May 16, "Tinghua Island Theater" officially began operations and launched two works, "The Night Will Dawn" and "Phoenix Flying".

Short drama companies such as Dianzhong behind "Meet Good Dramas", Jiuzhou behind "Jiuzhou Short Drama Recommendations", Huasheng behind "Luochen Theater", Touch behind "Finger-Between Short Dramas", and Shanhai behind "Shanhaixing Theater" are also frequent visitors on the short drama hot list.

Taking Douyin short drama accounts as the research object, we found that this type of short drama account has two major characteristics:

First, there are already many high-follower accounts for short dramas.

Mainstream short drama players have not only arranged their short drama numbers, but each one is more exciting than the other.

Among the short drama accounts on Douyin, the one with the most fans is "Hao You Beng Ling". Although the number of fans of individual accounts of other short drama companies is not as good as that of "Hao You Beng Ling", they have formed a matrix account.

According to incomplete statistics from the editorial department of Xinbang, Dianzhong has operated at least 5 short drama accounts, with a total of 10.46 million fans. Jiuzhou, Touch, and Tianqiao have operated 3 short drama accounts, with a total of 9.37 million, 8.86 million, and 1.59 million fans respectively.

In addition to laying out the matrix account, short drama companies also launch short dramas online at a very high frequency. The number of short dramas launched online by Jiuzhou's "Boss Li Shao", Touch's "Fingertip Short Dramas", and Tianqiao's "Youth Short Dramas" reached 63, 58, and 79 respectively.

In terms of operations, the short drama accounts have not changed their nature. In addition to broadcasting short dramas for free through live broadcasts to attract audiences, the short drama accounts release short videos very frequently.

By frequently posting short drama segments, many accounts have posted more than 6,000 videos. As of press time, the cumulative number of videos posted by "Luochen Theater" exceeded 9,000.

Second, short drama accounts are divided into two models: free and paid.

Currently, most of the short drama accounts online are paid short dramas, but some short drama accounts, like the Short Drama Master Account, provide free viewing services to the audience.

Most short drama companies with traditional film and television backgrounds have chosen the free model.

The most typical one is "Hao You Neng Ling". At present, "Hao You Neng Ling" has released a total of 10 short dramas. Except for the last two episodes of "Twenty-Nine" which require payment to watch, most of the short dramas can be watched for free.

Most of the short plays currently online, such as the "9527 Theater" jointly launched by Stephen Chow and TikTok and the "Goddess Theater" by the team of well-known director Guo Zhenyu, can also be watched for free. (Extended reading: "Stephen Chow's first short play is online: the first episode has more than 10 million views, and Xu Zhisheng has become a hot search")

Some short drama companies also choose to deploy both paid and free services, including Tianqiao, Maiya, Mitang, and Liangliang, which have independently operated free short drama accounts. Most of these short drama accounts will not upload the full version of the short drama, but attract viewers to pay to watch it through trial viewing.

According to "Xin Waner", the short drama payment market has fallen for 10 consecutive days recently, one of the reasons being the diversion of traffic from the original end. Currently, some short drama companies in the industry have begun to acquire video accounts and film and television accounts through MCN, and then changed them into short drama accounts for the release of their own short dramas.

2. Over-reliance on investment? Can short drama accounts solve the industry's pain points?

Why operate a short drama account?

Long Yi founder Long Ge explained that he hopes to put all the short plays shot by Xu Yizhen on the "Niangniang Lai Le Theater" to make it easier for viewers to find and watch. "Of course, I definitely hope to create a Xu Yizhen short play label."

The more core reason is a huge pain point in the short drama industry: the monetization method is too single and highly dependent on paid investment.

Chen Ruiqing, founder of Dianzhong Technology, once said in an interview with "China Entrepreneur Magazine" that the investment costs of short dramas on mini programs and short video platforms now account for more than 80% of the total cost. Generally speaking, marketing costs only account for 15% to 30% of the total cost of a movie.

Wang Hongli is the chairman of Yunyan Culture Group and one of the earliest players to enter the short drama market. Most of the large companies he has come into contact with are unwilling to make mini-program short dramas. "Horizontal screen short dramas are public domain logic. The platform provides free traffic and finally shares the profits; mini-program short dramas are private domain logic. They must rely on a large amount of traffic on platforms such as Douyin and WeChat to attract users to watch and pay. When Douyin stops providing traffic one day, what do you think will happen to those mini-program short drama platforms?"

"Mini programs are still too limited, and there are huge business uncertainties." In Wang Hongli's view, mini program short dramas are more like a staged historical product. In the future, mini program short dramas may refer to the horizontal screen short dramas of iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video and Mango TV. The traffic is provided by the platform, and the producers mainly earn the short drama share.

Based on this logic, short play numbers may be an attempt by short play companies to explore business possibilities.

Mi Wei, head of MiHuoli, believes that "it is unreasonable to let the platform take all the money, so you will see that the industry is now beginning to try to implement payment, which may be a direction."

So, are short play numbers useful?

Different from the traffic logic of mini programs, short drama accounts follow the account management logic, and their commercial value also revolves around the account.

The first is the traffic value of the account itself.

Unlike mini programs that cannot retain viewers, the audience attracted by short drama accounts can settle down. Currently, the number of fans of short drama accounts ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions, which can not only attract traffic to the short drama mini program, but also increase the number of views of paid short dramas on short drama accounts.

For example, the number of 500-person Douyin groups opened for short drama accounts such as "Fingertip Short Dramas", "Mountain and Sea Star Theater", and "Capacity-Stirring Short Dramas" are 19, 20, and 80 respectively, which can contribute traffic to the launch of new dramas on the short drama accounts.

At present, there have been many paid short dramas on the short drama account with over 100 million views, among which "Twenty-Nine" has a cumulative view of 830 million times, and "The Night Will Dawn" has a cumulative view of 420 million times.

The second is more business possibilities for the account.

Talking about the value of the short drama account, Zeng Minghui, the person in charge of Haoyoubenling, believes that the commercial value of the "Haoyoubenling" account is very high, and "it is theoretically completely feasible to monetize it through advertising or e-commerce." At present, "Haoyoubenling" has successively tried three monetization methods: advertiser orders, short drama payment, and live broadcast with goods.

According to the data from Douyin Star Map, the price of a 1-20s video of "Hao You Neng Ling" is as high as 268,000 yuan, and the highest price of a video is 348,000 yuan. In the past 90 days, "Hao You Neng Ling" has released more than 5 Star Map videos.

In fact, not only "very capable", many short drama accounts have given star map quotations and are trying to monetize through advertising.

Paying for short dramas is the most direct way to monetize short drama accounts. Brother Long mentioned that "Boss Nan Goes Big This Time" was the first short drama launched by Longyi. "'The Queen is Here' is a new account with few fans, but the recharge flow was more than 20,000 yuan on the first day and more than 60,000 yuan on the second day. The platform told me that for a new account with few fans on the native side, this is an absolute hit."

Brother Long said that in the future all of Long Yi’s short plays will be released online at the “Niangniang Lai Le Theater”, which will be a long-term operating channel.

As for live streaming sales, although many short drama accounts have opened Douyin showcases and even put goods on the shelves, there are not many typical cases at present.

It is worth noting that short drama accounts do not have the personality attributes of short drama masters, so it may be more difficult to monetize. In addition, unlike MCN agencies that specialize in making accounts, short drama companies are mostly better at shooting short dramas and may not have sufficient operational capabilities, which objectively limits the value mining of short drama accounts.

Overall, it has been preliminarily verified that short drama content can be used to attract fans, accumulate account assets, and then use the account as a base to explore various monetization possibilities. As for how much value the short drama account can bring, it remains an unknown.

But what is certain is that as long as short drama companies continue to invest their energy in exploration, short drama numbers will most likely become an important part of the short drama business model.

Author: Yun Feiyang;

Source: WeChat public account "Xinbang";