Video account internal testing of short drama chain, how will short drama + WeChat change the "direction of the tide"

Recently, WeChat Video Account started internal testing of paid vertical screen short dramas, and many favorable news about short dramas have been released. So in this context, how should practitioners respond? In this article, the author interprets some new actions of WeChat Video Account, you may wish to take a look.

On March 15, WeChat Video Account began internal testing of paid vertical screen short dramas. This move attracted the attention of many parties including short drama producers, investors, distributors, and audiences. Many people in the industry joked that the short drama industry was about to be "rich".

Indeed, in the past few years of the development of the short drama 1.0 era, most short dramas have relied on channels such as Douyin and Kuaishou for streaming distribution. The mounting test of the video account means that the video account will be completely connected with short dramas, especially mini-program short dramas, forming a WeChat ecological closed loop that is beneficial to the short drama industry. This is a new and huge traffic blue ocean for the short drama industry, full of unlimited opportunities.

While the short drama mounting function was being tested internally, news of new functions such as WeChat opening a short drama entrance, developing a short drama player, testing group watching of dramas, and paid heating of linked content also broke out one after another.

Faced with a series of positive news about short dramas in the WeChat ecosystem, how should practitioners view and seize the opportunities?

1. Adding traffic entrances, the short drama exposure received "epic enhancement"

The internal testing of short dramas in the video account is not the first move by the WeChat ecosystem to benefit short dramas.

In fact, as early as the end of February this year, WeChat launched a short drama section entrance in the "Search" function, which aggregated the popular mini-program short dramas. Users can search for keywords related to "short drama" through the search button on the WeChat homepage, and the results page will display the section at the top in the form of a card.

In this section, WeChat has set up multiple categories based on several popular themes of short dramas, including "Sweet Pet", "Fantasy", "Male Frequency", "Female Frequency", etc., which include the latest and most popular short drama recommendations from several mainstream publishers on the market.

The unified entrance + label management make this page a central traffic pool for short dramas in the WeChat ecosystem. All short drama-related traffic will be retrieved, exposed and distributed from it.

In addition to the centralized closing, WeChat has also quietly launched a personalized short drama entrance. In the "Discover"-"Mini Program" entrance, WeChat has added a "Recently Watched" column to display the short dramas that users have recently watched. When there is no viewing record, the default display is the currently popular short drama recommendation.

After clicking into the "Recently Viewed" details page, in addition to viewing records, users can also see the "Best-Seller List" and "Discover" functions, which recommend and display historical hits and recent hits respectively.

Through this entrance, WeChat, on the one hand, enables the exposure of short dramas again through rankings and recommendations, and on the other hand, it also strengthens users' personalized experience and data application in short dramas, which has a positive effect on the continuous viewing volume and long-tail income of mini-program short dramas.

The newly added centralized + personalized dual entrances will give short dramas an "epic enhancement" in terms of traffic exposure in the WeChat ecosystem.

2. The video account function is in beta testing, and the popularity of short dramas is expected to break through the circle

Secondary creation/sliced ​​short video links, users jump to watch the full feature film, this is already a mature short drama promotion logic for short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. But this logic has always been unfriendly to mini program short dramas.

From the perspective of the Douyin and Kuaishou platforms, users jump to the WeChat mini-programs through video links to watch short dramas, which logically means the loss of online users. Therefore, Douyin and Kuaishou have previously imposed multiple policy restrictions on off-site link jumps.

For users, the links for off-site jumps are longer and there are more factors that may lead to broken links. On the one hand, it increases the indirect cost of reaching the main film of the short drama, and on the other hand, it is difficult to record the complete user trajectory and viewing history, affecting the audience's user experience.

WeChat Video Account has hit the above pain points and started internal testing of the short video and short drama mini program. The internal jump of WeChat ecosystem reduces user loss and access costs, and also realizes the internal circulation of short drama users under the WeChat system. This is not only using the WeChat ecosystem to support short dramas, but also taking advantage of the short drama craze to feed back WeChat user stickiness.

Frankly speaking, in terms of video chain promotion, as long as Video Account can replicate the path that Douyin and Kuaishou have already taken, it will be enough to obtain considerable model benefits. However, due to the rich social soil and huge user base of WeChat itself, replication means not only imitation, but also transcendence.

In the "Creator Center" - "Video Monetization Task" portal, video account creators can choose to mount short dramas and add recommendation links of related short dramas in their secondary creation videos. After the video is released, it can not only enter the public domain traffic pool of the video account for exposure and distribution, but also be shared to WeChat Moments and group chats, and help the short drama content fission and spread through the user's own social chain. So far, the public domain + private domain traffic has been connected under the WeChat ecosystem, the gameplay of short drama promotion has become more and more abundant, and the user value application will be unprecedentedly strengthened.

At the same time, for UGC creators of short drama content, Video Account officially launched video monetization incentive tasks and advertising funds to encourage UGC creators to spontaneously promote short drama content. For PGC and traffic providers, Video Account is also testing the function of supporting paid "heating" of sliced ​​videos to provide official support for paid traffic.

With the addition of UGC+PGC, content+advertising functions and incentive policies, it seems that it is only a matter of time before a new round of "short drama fever" is triggered by WeChat Video Account.

But Video Account wants to do more than that.

It is reported that WeChat Video Account is developing a dedicated short drama player plug-in, which includes features such as introduction, selection, introduction of actors and director team, trailer and highlights of benchmark long video platforms, aiming to improve the playback quality and user experience of short dramas. Based on the content support of tens of thousands of short dramas in mini programs, Video Account is already trying to gather traffic from platform + content, and grab the industry "cake" that has long been divided by Douyin and Kuaishou platforms.

It can be seen that the internal testing of multiple functions of the video account is not just a copy of the mature short drama promotion links of Douyin and Kuaishou platforms, but an integration and upgrade of the platform advantages. In 2023, the short drama investment market will exceed 30 billion, and about 80% of the revenue will come from the Douyin platform. Perhaps in the near future, WeChat Video Account will completely change this situation and bring new models and new formats in the field of short drama investment.

3. With social attributes, group watching can help promote the development of short dramas

For mini-program short dramas, traffic exposure only represents the increase of users, while paid consumption is the core user value realization. In this regard, WeChat also released a "big move" - ​​group watching dramas.

As another important function of the recent internal testing of the video account, "Watching dramas in groups" directly targets user payment conversion. This function is just as its name suggests, that is, it imitates the group shopping model of e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, allowing WeChat users to invite friends to group purchase short paid dramas, so that multiple people can watch them together at a more favorable price.

In terms of user portrait, the mini-program short dramas are aimed at the middle-aged user group that mainly focuses on the sinking market. This group happens to overlap with the core audience group of group shopping in terms of consumption preference patterns. Low-price group purchases and grabbing bargains - "group purchase to watch dramas" targets the consumption psychology and behavioral habits of the audience of short dramas.

It can be said that WeChat has really figured out the consumption of short drama content.

From the industry perspective, this feature leverages the WeChat social ecosystem to usher in a new model of viral transmission for the exposure of short drama content and user payment. Through sharing by a large number of acquaintances, high-quality short drama content not only obtains a large amount of free and natural exposure, but also harvests a batch of paid monetization value, achieving a double gain of traffic + consumption; from the user side, the cost of watching short dramas is reduced, and the stickiness and interactivity of users are enhanced; from the platform side, a new user consumption entrance is added to the WeChat platform, strengthening the commercialization capabilities such as advertising revenue and content consumption.

This not only means that the "short drama + private domain" model will cause new waves in the short drama industry, but also means that "short drama + user + WeChat" has achieved a rare win-win situation for all three parties.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, a series of internal tests of WeChat short drama functions represented by the short drama link on Video Account seem to be a simple copy of the successful experience of Douyin and Kuaishou, but based on the huge user base and social capabilities, it is very likely to bring about the "butterfly effect" of the short drama industry.

When WeChat mini-program short dramas realize the dual circulation model of platform self-closed loop + Douyin and Kuaishou external circulation, perhaps the era of short drama 2.0 in the true sense will also officially arrive. In the massive opportunities brought by the transformation, practitioners should seize the opportunity of video accounts, actively embrace and understand the new ecology and new model of WeChat + short dramas, and take advantage of this "huge wealth" in the short drama industry.

Author: Meng Wenyu

Source public account: Media No. 1 (ID: zcfhxy), a pioneer new media in China’s media industry, industry-university-research cooperation.