Big companies are creating a new wave of short dramas

This article mainly tells about how major Chinese Internet companies such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao, Pinduoduo, JD.com, Huawei, Xiaomi, 360, Meituan, etc. have joined the short drama market competition in 2024. These companies have adopted various strategies at different stages to try to occupy the emerging traffic highland of short dramas.

Just after being pushed to the forefront by the myth of getting rich by “making over 100 million in 8 days”, the short drama industry has been caught in a new storm.

In 2024, Douyin and Kuaishou, which started out as content companies, are still working hard to build a pan-shelf space. Douyin launched an independent app called "Douyin Mall"; Kuaishou also opened the first-level entrance on the homepage for the mall and announced that it would invest 10 billion yuan in commodity subsidies.

The e-commerce platforms that have been seized by the market have also paid more and more attention to the content ecology and started to lock in the strategic hinterland of interest e-commerce. Short dramas with unique marketing attributes have naturally become the traffic high ground that major e-commerce platforms are vying to capture.

The second position at the bottom sidebar of the homepage of Taobao, Pinduoduo, and JD App is "Shop", "Duoduo Video", and "Shop". Clicking it will lead to short videos, and short dramas are becoming an important part of them.

However, it is not only e-commerce platforms that have set their sights on short dramas. In the first half of this year, Huawei, Xiaomi, 360, and Meituan also joined the market and invested heavily in short dramas.

In 2024, the competition for the top short drama has become one of the focuses of the war among major manufacturers.

1. Taobao

Among the three major e-commerce giants gathered in the short drama track, Taobao not only introduced support policies for talents, but was also the only platform to purchase from MCN.

On the eve of last year's Double 11, Taobao launched a number of short dramas customized by professional teams, such as "Amazing Stories", "The Imperial Concubine Arrives, Everyone Gets Out of the Way", "Matchmaker Fairy Wants to Fall in Love", etc. In the external market, it also sponsored a number of Kuaishou's top short dramas, such as "Beauty Comes True", "I Open a Bar in the Song Dynasty", "Yuanyang Broken", "Super Office Worker", etc., all of which have star casts.

In addition to investing heavily in content, Taobao has also made a series of adjustments internally.

At the end of 2023, Taobao established a content e-commerce division, merging the Taobao live broadcast and shopping teams, and connecting live broadcasts with short videos and pictures and texts for the first time. At the same time, a short drama section called "Small Theater" was specially opened on the second-level page of the "Shopping" section, which is divided into several subcategories such as new film recommendations, Taobao exclusive short films, in-depth commentary, and selected recommendations, to provide standardized content supply.

At this year's 11th China Internet Audiovisual Conference, Taobao released its 2024 short drama support policy, which will invest tens of millions of funds and over 1 billion traffic support in brand-customized dramas. It will also work with popular IPs, celebrities, top labels, top talents and institutional partners to create high-quality short drama content.

Subsequently, at the Taobao Content E-commerce Festival on March 28, Taobao Guangguang and Taobao Short Drama jointly launched a "10 Billion Taobao Drama Plan", providing support such as cash support, traffic escort, short and direct linkage, and publicity and promotion.

The launch of multiple support plans shows Taobao’s ambition for short dramas, and from the perspective of strategy, there is no significant difference between Taobao short dramas and platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou.

As a second-hand trading platform under Alibaba, Xianyu launched a self-made short drama "Mrs. Fu's Whole-Time Cheating" on March 6, and launched a cool drama co-creation activity in April. It recruited soul directors, acting experts and its own props from the entire network, and gathered the "investment" of tens of thousands of people to shoot a self-made short drama "The Secret Transaction of the Crown Princess", which took the user interaction route.

2. Pinduoduo

Compared with Taobao, Pinduoduo's efforts in short dramas are relatively conservative.

In December last year, Pinduoduo launched the "Duoduo Good Drama Plan", adopting the CPM traffic sharing model to support high-quality short drama content through recommendation weighting and traffic sharing.

As the popularity of short dramas continues to rise, Pinduoduo launched a short drama section in April this year. In the secondary channel of "Duoduo Video", "Short Drama" is listed alongside "Live Broadcast", "Follow" and "Recommendation".

Enter the continuous viewing mode, and after the third and fourth episodes, a short video with products will appear every two episodes. The content is recommended by the algorithm and is related to the user's browsing and purchase history. In addition, the short video also contains product links that can be jumped to.

Most of the short dramas on Pinduoduo are mini-programs designed specifically for vertical screens, and some are moved from other long video platforms. They are more than 10 minutes long and are suitable for horizontal screen viewing.

It can be seen that Pinduoduo has no intention of producing its own short dramas, but rather monetizes them through free broadcasting by "directly recommending short videos with goods."

3. JD.com

If Taobao is the official endeavor, Pinduoduo is the mass line, and JD.com relies on brand owners.

In addition to "UGC content", JD's short drama format also includes "customized short dramas", the content of which mainly revolves around merchants' brand promotion and product sales.

For example, the account of "Hanshu JD Self-operated Flagship Store" started to update short dramas in December last year, and has uploaded six short dramas on the JD platform, including "Dressing for Growth", "Heartbeat More Than a Moment", "A Beam of Sunshine and a Beam of Love", "All Love and You", "You Will Be Famous Eventually", and "Return to the 90s Starting from Scratch". In addition, many brands such as PROYA, Hanshu, C Cafe, and Xiaolu Lanlan have also started to update short dramas on JD.

In April, JD.com increased its content investment, announcing a 10 billion cash and 10 billion traffic investment to attract more original creators and high-quality content organizations to join. During the same period, short drama accounts and content appeared in the information flow of the "Browse" page of the JD.com App.

In early May, JD App added skits to the “Recommendations” tab of the “Browse” page on its homepage. Most of the skits in the information flow did not directly embed product links, but instead used the “Search screen to find the same item” function. On some pages, users can click on the link below the skit to enter the product purchase page.

During the 618 promotion, the PROYA brand launched a customized short play "The Brilliance of the Young Lady" on JD.com's own store, which directly linked to "Ruby Water Lotion" and other products.

However, JD.com has not yet set up a special area for short dramas. All short drama content is in the "browse" channel of video content. Compared with Taobao and Pinduoduo, JD.com's short dramas are still in a "marginal" position.

4. Huawei

Huawei entered the market relatively late, but its entry was as loud as a thunderclap.

On May 22, Huawei launched a new short drama application - Short Drama Collection App, becoming the third major company to launch an independent short drama APP after ByteDance and Kuaishou.

The description of the app is: "Apply the Short Drama Collection to watch a large number of short dramas." Currently, the Short Drama Collection App has been launched for public testing in the Huawei Member Center. According to the task description, the Short Drama Collection App is testing the short drama payment function. This means that in the short drama industry chain, Huawei's layout is relatively biased towards the downstream, that is, the platform end.

Looking at past experience, Huawei Cloud reached strategic cooperation with a number of film and television companies as early as 2021 to jointly promote the development of the 5G digital film and television industry; in 2023, Huawei also carried out in-depth cooperation with Huace Film and Television and other companies in digital copyright protection, film and television production technical standards, etc.; Huawei’s "Huawei Video" is a multi-terminal comprehensive video portal that aggregates content resources from many mainstream video platforms and has established copyright cooperation relationships with many film and television companies.

The above factors have enabled Huawei to have a deep accumulation and rich user resources in the field of film and television content. However, compared with Douyin and Kuaishou, which have already achieved a closed loop and opened up multiple links such as scripts, production, and streaming, Huawei still faces challenges in content supply.

5. Baidu

Baidu has already entered the short drama field when it was in its infancy. In October 2021, Baidu announced its entry into the field of micro short dramas and launched a micro short drama incubation plan called the "Breaking Shell Plan", linking Baidu's ecological resources to incubate high-quality micro short drama content.

On the eve of the 2024 Spring Festival holiday, Baidu App and Haokan Video APP both launched "short drama" channels and put forward the slogan "Watch Spring Festival short dramas for free", using the free viewing of high-quality short dramas as a gimmick to cultivate users' habit of watching short dramas on Baidu App.

In terms of content ecology, Baidu's short dramas mainly follow the route of procurement + self-production. The MCN institutions that have cooperated include Chuangyi Technology, Shenlang Culture, Gumai Jiahe, Xindong Culture, Chongqing Radio and Television and other institutions and film and television companies. Jiuzhou, Dianzhong, Liangliang and other short drama copyright holders have also settled in for cooperation. Today, Baidu App claims to have gathered thousands of high-quality short dramas, covering many themes such as sweet pets, time travel, counterattack, domineering pets, sadomasochism, rebirth, etc.

Overall, Baidu has the advantage of "search and push integrated" traffic aggregation and distribution, from search engines to content information and video entertainment, and has become a traffic field that short drama players cannot ignore.

6. 360

The high salaries offered by 360 for short drama positions have attracted a lot of attention.

In early May, 360 Group released a large number of short drama-related job openings. Among them, the monthly salary of the short drama business manager is between 45,000 yuan and 65,000 yuan, with 15 salaries throughout the year, and the highest annual salary can reach 975,000 yuan.

Image source: Boss Direct

In the industry's view, such high salary packages highlight 360's emphasis on and expectations for the short drama business. However, in fact, as early as 2022, 360 registered the Sweet Shrimp Theater and officially entered the short drama market.

Sweet Shrimp Theater is similar to other short drama platforms, providing multiple viewing and payment modes, including annual VIP, single-episode paid unlocking, and advertising unlocking, etc. It also has a mini program. Now, in the navigation interface of 360 Search, a fixed area for short dramas has been opened. Clicking it will enter a summary page, namely Sweet Shrimp Theater.

Although it has a short play theater, judging from the recruitment information, most of the positions are core positions such as short play business manager, short play investment manager and short play pitcher. 360's short play business may not be involved in the production link, and it is more inclined to connect to short plays to realize traffic.

7. Xiaomi

Almost at the same time as 360 Group, Xiaomi also released information on recruiting short drama screenwriters and producers. Unlike 360 ​​Group, Xiaomi's short drama recruitment positions are mostly short drama screenwriters, post-production, short video planning and editing, etc. The job descriptions of "Product Operation Manager" and "Browsing Information Product Operation" clearly mention that they need to be "responsible for assisting the research, testing experiments and product function development of internal innovation projects (such as videos, short dramas, etc.), and are more inclined to the pre-production of short dramas.

Image source: Boss Direct

Among them, the short play screenwriter position offers a 13-month salary of 20-30K, only requires 1-3 years of work experience, and the educational requirement is only a college degree, so the threshold is set relatively low.

In fact, Xiaomi really has the genes to make film and television content. In 2021, Xiaomi registered the "Shengcang Pictures" trademark and entered the film and television content industry. After the establishment of Shengcang Pictures, it has invested in or released many film and television dramas (online movies), variety shows and short dramas, such as "Hi! Hot Mom", "Strike Black", "Deep in the Murder Case", "The King of Hot Pot", etc. On April 3 this year, Shengcang Pictures' official Weibo released a dynamic saying: "Shengcang Pictures' new high-quality short drama has been completed."

From the information disclosed so far, it can be judged that Xiaomi’s layout of the short drama business is on the one hand to strengthen the marketing of Xiaomi’s various businesses and brand promotion, and on the other hand it may be to use the short drama content to connect the software and hardware advantages of Xiaomi mobile phones, Xiaomi TVs, Xiaomi videos, and Xiaomi OTT (Internet TV), and explore new commercialization paths for Xiaomi’s Internet business in different scenarios.

8. NetEase

In 2022, the NetEase Antelope team (NetEase Antelope is affiliated to NetEase Cloud Reading) in Hangzhou was the first to test the waters of the short drama business. In the short drama industry chain, NetEase Antelope mainly plays the role of the short drama producer, responsible for funding and bearing the production costs, while the short drama shooting and production of the finished product are left to the contractor.

In addition, since it is backed by the online literature platform NetEase Cloud Reading, NetEase Antelope also plays the role of copyright holder, exports novel IP, and is responsible for producing scripts.

By 2023, various forces under NetEase have entered the short drama track one after another. First, NetEase's subsidiary NetEase Youdao entered the short drama overseas business, relying on its signature skill "translation" to help localize the short drama content. In addition, NetEase News expanded its short drama investment and distribution business, and has short drama mini-programs such as "Shuangwaiwai Small Theater", focusing on the domestic market.

It can be seen that NetEase has a comprehensive layout for short dramas, covering the three simplified links of short drama scripts, production, and distribution, and even overseas business. NetEase, which started out as a game company, is strong in content and traffic, and the IP resources of NetEase Youdao should not be underestimated.

9. Meituan

Meituan, which has been continuously enriching its video content since last year, has added two channels, local and theater. In March this year, the Meituan App interface was upgraded and a separate theater section was added. Not long ago, Meituan launched the "Chunming Plan" and started a new round of creator recruitment plan, continuing to upgrade and increase bonuses and traffic support.

10. Conclusion

According to Endata, the user scale of the short drama market has exceeded 500 million in 2023, with young users accounting for nearly 60%, showing an astonishing growth momentum and active user ratio.

On the other hand, with continuous updates and iterations, short dramas are no longer just a simple content product. They now carry more goals for Internet companies, including brand image building, product promotion, product marketing, and increasing the time users stay on the platform.

Such a huge market space and commercial potential, coupled with the advantages of short dramas such as low production cost, short cycle and quick return,

This has led to the current bustling situation in the short drama track.

For large companies, short dramas, as a relatively small investment area, can not only attract a large number of users and bring more traffic and user stickiness to their platforms; they can also further enrich their content ecology by getting involved in the short drama business, meet the diverse needs of users, and try to explore new business models and profit opportunities.

However, as major Internet companies have entered the short drama market, the boundaries of the track have been broadened and the competition has become increasingly fierce. In this wave of short dramas, it is still unknown who will be the leader and who will be the foam on the waves. What is certain is that only exploration and innovation can lead to success.

Author | Cheng Shushu Editor | Li Xinma This article is written by the operator [DoNews], WeChat public account: [DoNews], original/authorized publication on Operation Party, any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.