Short play Left Right 60 Days

In just 60 days, the short drama industry has entered the era of regular troops. How to make the content high-quality? Will the problems of short dramas in the PC era be repeated in the era of mobile short drama 2.0?

The skit should also talk about the Basic Law.

In less than 60 days, short series have gathered all the elements of a booming business: more money, shorter return on investment, and lower production costs.

According to ByteDance's monitoring data, the annual recharge flow of paid short dramas, mainly mini-program short dramas, reached more than 18 billion yuan. Assuming an investment flow ROI of 1.2, the scale of funds consumed by the short drama industry of ByteDance alone in 2023 will exceed 20 billion. In comparison, the domestic movie box office in 2022 totaled 30.1 billion yuan, which means that the scale of this year's short drama market has reached two-thirds of last year's movie box office.

Under the influence of a larger market scale, more market supervision has arrived as expected. On November 15, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television launched a one-month special short drama management campaign. Subsequently, platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat successively issued announcements to crack down on illegal short dramas and announced some works that have been removed from the shelves recently.

Among them, the mini program short drama "The Black Lotus Manual" became a typical representative. It was reported that the drama had a 24-hour recharge of over 20 million. It took only two days from being a money-making hit to being removed from the entire network. In addition to the restrictions on content and subject matter in the announcement, some platforms also restricted the qualifications for short drama investment.

In just 60 days, the short drama industry has made great strides from a grassroots money-making game to a regular army era. After accelerating into the second half, how can the content be refined? Will the problems of short dramas in the PC era be repeated in the mobile short drama 2.0 era? How can we transform from making huge profits to a long-term and profitable industry?

1. The next web drama?

Short dramas are not a new concept. According to the different playback devices, they can be roughly divided into two stages: the PC era and the mobile era.

In the PC era, short plays were an important form of content for online video platforms in their early stages, such as the 5-minute short play “Never Expected” in 2013 and the 15-minute short play “Diaosi Man” in 2015. Subsequently, with the entry of traditional film and television companies and more funds, online short plays in the PC era entered the stage of high-quality production.

The main actions of high-quality production include: more IP copyrights for top online literature adaptation, better production, and more popular stars. However, the addition of more high-quality elements has also made the initial 5-15 minute short dramas enter the era of 25-35 minute long dramas, and then developed into the main content section of the current long video platform - platform-made dramas.

A typical example is the big IP adaptation of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" on the iQiyi platform. The total number of views of the drama in 2015 exceeded 2.8 billion, setting a record for online drama views and making iQiyi the No. 1 online video platform in the paid model. Relying on the native content of the PC Internet era, self-produced dramas have further grown on long video platforms, and IP reserve capacity has become the key to the competition between iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video's self-produced dramas.

After years of competition, the three major platforms have firmly occupied the dominant position in the industry with their advantages in capital, talent, scale, IP reserves, etc. It can be said that the development of short dramas in the PC era originated from the UGC self-made content of ordinary netizens, and finally ended with the high-quality PGC regular army.

The same situation is also happening in the short drama industry in the mobile era. At present, the short dramas on mini programs that are popular on short video platforms were originally released from the advertising information flow of online novels. Among the short drama producers, information flow video production companies account for 50%, exceeding traditional film and television companies.

However, with stricter supervision and the trend of short dramas becoming more refined, traditional film and television production companies are becoming a new force in short drama production. From the short drama brand "Hao You Neng Ling" under Lemon Studios produced "Twenty-Nine", to the recent launch of "Full-time Househusband Training Program" by Perfect World, to the recent announcement by Huace Film and Television that many short dramas will be launched at the end of November. The signal is already clear enough, and the layout of film and television companies for micro short dramas continues to spread.

However, the only difference is that the main battlefield of short dramas in the PC era was web-based video websites, while the main battlefield of short dramas in the mobile era has become mobile short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. Therefore, the industry is more confident that short dramas are a new form of content, rather than a transitional intermediate state for short video platforms to enter long videos.

An industry insider said: " The change in content form is usually the result of hardware terminal or technological changes. The vertical screen viewing method of short videos has fundamentally subverted the shooting and presentation methods of film and television dramas. Compared with the 1.0 version of short dramas in the PC era, which are mainly short in time, the short dramas in the mobile era are short in two dimensions: time and space."

At the same time, the difference in content distribution methods also determines that the high-quality short dramas are unlikely to follow the old path of PC short dramas in the past. However, how to make better dramas in more and shorter time is still a problem that current manufacturers need to think about.

2. Is IP still the core?

"The core of a short play is still its content. Exquisite costumes, props and quality production can make the viewing experience better, but the room for optimization in this area will easily reach its ceiling soon."

Zhang Heng, a short drama practitioner, believes that "unlike long dramas, where audiences will ferment their feelings about scenes, costumes, and special effects over a long period of time and convert them into traffic, short dramas tend to have a shorter life cycle, and the impact of plot design on traffic conversion is often the main factor."

However, the creation of high-quality content with content as the core also faces new problems. Generally speaking, there are two main directions for content creation: IP adaptation or original creation.

In the PC era, the early self-made original short dramas, after embarking on the road of IP adaptation, became platform-made web dramas for a longer time. In the era of short dramas on mobile Internet, IP adaptation is often the main way to create content for mini-program short dramas.

One reason is that its refreshing routine is easy to standardize and produce, thus improving content production efficiency; the other is that the subject matter of online literature has been verified by market payment, which is conducive to the paid monetization of mini-program short dramas.

Therefore, Chinese Online and Yuewen, which hold a large number of online literature copyright holders with rich themes, have all made their moves. After launching several popular short dramas in China, Chinese Online turned to overseas markets to make money; Yuewen launched a script solicitation order, trying to include short dramas in its IP visualization.

Yuewen has not yet disclosed its specific plans for entering the short drama industry. Logically speaking, it is very easy for Yuewen to make short dramas: it is similar to the logic of paid online reading in the past, and it also has a ready-made film and television production team, online literature works, funds, investment teams and traffic platforms. In theory, it can quickly achieve results.

However, short dramas are a typical To C business, and they also involve some probability factors, so the data will be very sensitive. Listed companies need to disclose business data, which means extremely high risks from a market perspective. In addition, the standard products of "electronic mustard tuber" short dramas adapted from such IPs are often the hardest hit by illegal removal from the shelves.

Some practitioners said that the model of paid short dramas in mini programs mainly comes from two aspects: one is the CPS traffic investment business model, which is more intuitive and effective in content distribution efficiency; the other is the core element of the short drama content - "cool", which effectively takes over the market demand after the tightening of short video and live broadcast supervision in the past.

Once the road to "less salt" and high-quality production is taken, the addiction will be greatly reduced. The former is an amplifier, and the latter is addictive. Both effectively promote the paid purchasing power of short dramas, and neither is indispensable. Without a more efficient content distribution mechanism, the number of people reached will decrease; without the addictive feeling of pleasure, the paid purchasing power will decrease.

So, what can IP bring to the refinement of short dramas?

Yu Huanhuan, the person in charge of short dramas at Wuyou Media, basically maintains a neutral attitude towards IPs: "If it is a top IP or has similar topics on women or current social issues, it can indeed bring stronger traffic to the short drama, and it will also have advantages in marketing and greater commercial value. However, most content IPs, from linking users to content value, are difficult to match for the current platform ecology, especially on the soil of Douyin, a national platform, which is difficult to ferment."

In addition, for content creation, the difficulty of IP adaptation and original creation is different. For short dramas, there are still few IPs that are suitable for the content volume and tone. The popular IPs accumulated in previous years may also become ineffective in the current market. Taking such IPs to modify is tantamount to adding Xiaomi to a rifle. Therefore, it is not ruled out that some original content is more efficient and better.

Of course, some good IPs will indirectly attract artists to join the platform, which directly hits the platform's traffic demand point. The platform's support for artists will drive the number of short dramas played, which is commercially meaningful. It is more important to think about the commercial value of IP based on user needs and the platform's growth demands.

3. Who can grow thick snow on a slope?

The current forms of short dramas can be mainly divided into micro-short dramas from iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, mini-program short dramas, and self-media short dramas from Douyin and Kuaishou, depending on the content platforms.

In comparison, the latter two are the protagonists of this short drama. The traffic of iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video’s micro short dramas is mainly concentrated in the young people in first-tier cities. The mini-program short dramas, relying on the content distribution methods of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou and the stimulating themes, have effectively opened up the sinking consumer groups in third- and fourth-tier cities.

We-media short dramas are exactly in between the two. Unlike mini-program short dramas that pursue a simple and crude To C model in commercial realization, self-media short dramas are mainly based on branding in commercial realization, with customized advertisements for To B, and also have To C account attributes, which can realize traffic realization such as bringing goods.

In addition, as native content creators born on short video platforms, MCN agencies and others also have more advantages in terms of content format and control over the rhythm of short dramas. Combined with the support plans on the platform, it also becomes a good opportunity for transformation.

Changes in the short drama production chain are affecting the competitive relationship between platforms.

In April this year, Douyin and Tencent Video reached a "great reconciliation" and officially announced a copyright cooperation, with the latter becoming the last long video platform to cooperate with Douyin. However, for short video platforms such as Douyin, copyright cooperation for secondary creation is only a means of attracting traffic to long video platforms.

Previously, the emergence of the short drama market was mainly due to the defense of long video platforms and the offense of short video platforms. The collision of user consumption habits of the two platforms has led both sides to try to cope with each other's impact by enriching the length of videos.

At that time, short video platforms launched medium- and long-length video plans to increase user consumption time; long video platforms continued to compress episodes to cater to users' fragmented content consumption trends.

Now, with the popularity of short dramas, the industry has received greater attention. Short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have also begun to find their own "long video" content format. After all, each episode is 2 minutes, and a short drama of 80 to 100 episodes with continuous plot twists can be watched in one go, which is equivalent to the length of a movie on a long video platform. At the same time, short dramas have brought more new people to the lower-level, further expanding the potential paying users of long video platforms.

Long slopes with thick snow require not only a long enough slope, but also wet snow with a high moisture content. The future of the short drama industry is naturally promising, but the opportunities left for practitioners are no longer as mindless as they were in the past 60 days.

Author: Gu Er

Source public account: Xin entropy (ID: xinshangxz)