Over 500 million people are addicted to short dramas, and Douyin, Kuaishou, iQiyi and Tencent Video are competing again

Recently, short short dramas have become popular again among young people. The earthy and embarrassing plots are addictive. This article explains and analyzes the operation logic behind the short short drama market and compares the competitive situation of long and short video platforms. It is recommended for students who are interested in the operation of short dramas and short videos.

"Oh my god, I was so addicted to watching the local dog skits all afternoon"

"Am I the only one who's into such a cheesy little skit?"

"I watched three short dramas of sadomasochism in one go, and I couldn't stop watching them"

…

Over the past few years, people's attitude towards short dramas has quietly changed. The "Crooked-Mouth Dragon King" that was once wildly ridiculed by the crowd has become a thing of the past, and the hit dramas that are both earthy and addictive have suddenly become addictive.

In the first half of this year alone, this track has seen a number of hits: Twenty-Nine, a collaboration between Douyin and Lemon Studios, has surpassed 100 million views in just 72 hours; the short drama Donglanxue on Kuaishou has surpassed 500 million views; The Reason I Go Back to 17 has been viewed nearly 500 million times since its broadcast, with the highest number of views for a single episode exceeding 60 million...

Corresponding to the viewing enthusiasm of users is the blowout on the supply side. According to Datawin's "Micro-Short Drama Market Report in the First Half of 2023", a total of 481 new micro-short dramas were released in the first half of 2023, exceeding the 454 new dramas released in the whole year of 2022, which shows the rapid development of micro-short dramas.

In fact, in addition to short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, more and more platforms and producers are entering the market, including "national teams" backed by state-owned capital such as Mango TV and Migu Video.

Obviously, competition is also intensifying. Major platforms and producers need to compete not only in quantity and quality, but also in traffic.

1. To attract young people, “three minutes” of enthusiasm is enough

For 23-year-old Lin Yaxin, short dramas with an average duration of 3 minutes per episode are becoming her spiritual "food".

Since a friend recommended the popular short play "Don't Mess with White Pigeons" last year, Lin Yaxin has been fascinated by short plays with compact plots. "I used to think that short plays were tacky, the actors' acting was exaggerated, and the stories were old-fashioned. But after getting into it, I found that although most short plays are still tacky, they are really addictive. Plus, each episode is very short, so I can finish a show very quickly. It's perfect for a worker like me."

On the way to work, in the shower, before going to bed, almost all the fragmented time, Lin Yaxin couldn't help but click on the short dramas on the short video platform. She was "crazy" about the sweet love between the business tyrant and Cinderella, the gorgeous transformation of the contemporary desperate housewife, and the painful and affectionate love in ancient times.

"I usually follow several short dramas on several platforms at the same time to ensure that I don't run out of options. Once I'm about to finish a drama, I'll immediately go to social platforms to recommend new dramas." Lin Yaxin told Zinc Scale that short dramas focus on the word "cool". "They are short and fast-paced, so they're exciting and fun to watch. Dramas that are too long usually develop more slowly, and you lose interest after watching them for a while."

Like Lin Yaxin, 28-year-old Miao Yuting was also extremely averse to short dramas. "After all, the short drama market used to be dominated by the crooked-mouthed dragon king." But starting this year, she began to selectively pay for some hit short dramas. "Although most micro short dramas still have clichés and melodramatic plots, there are also a small number of well-made dramas that break the conventional thinking. I think they are worth supporting."

Young people like Lin Yaxin and Miao Yuting are supporting the short drama market. The "China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report" shows that as of December 2022, the scale of short video users reached 1.012 billion, and the average daily usage time of short videos exceeded 2.5 hours per person. The report shows that more than half of the one billion short video users have watched short dramas of less than 3 minutes, instant noodles, etc. in the past six months, and the proportion of users under 19 years old has also exceeded 50%.

Yu Ke, head of Kuaishou Entertainment's drama business center, once said in a media interview that the reason why micro-short dramas are so popular is that the scale of China's entire Internet audio-visual users has reached more than 1 billion.

Zinc Scale noticed that there are more than 280,000 notes about "short dramas" on Xiaohongshu, including many recommendations and lists of short dramas. This may be because the main audience of short dramas currently has a high degree of overlap with the user group of Xiaohongshu.

According to the data of Yunhe, as of August 2023, the top ten of the "All-network Micro-short Drama Domination List" are almost all sweet pet-type micro-short dramas. Taking Mango TV as an example, Tianfeng Securities data shows that its users are nearly 70% female, and users under 35 years old account for more than 90%; therefore, the themes of Mango TV's short dramas are mainly female-oriented and sweet pet dramas.

However, a trend worth mentioning is that the vertical screen "mini program short drama" that emerged last year mainly targets male and middle-aged and elderly users in the sinking market aged 30 to 55, and the themes are mainly counterattack dramas.

2. Long and short video platforms compete again, who will be the home court?

Looking back at the early short drama market, faced with the collision of long video platforms and short video platform user consumption habits, both long and short video platforms have tried to adjust the video length to cope with each other's impact. At that time, short videos wanted to increase the length of videos to increase user consumption time, while long video platforms had to compress episodes to cater to the fragmented consumption trend of users.

It is not difficult to find that short video platforms have a first-mover advantage in the micro-short drama market.

Kuaishou is the earliest platform to enter the micro-short drama market. The establishment of the "Kuaishou Small Theater" entrance in August 2019 marked the official layout of Kuaishou's micro-short drama business, and the establishment of the industry's first leading short drama brand "Kuaishou Star Short Drama".

But it is undeniable that in the early stages of development, the threshold for the entire track was low, and the market was more occupied by micro-short dramas with low production costs and uneven quality. There were very few works with good reputations, and even the "Crooked-Mouth Dragon King" that became popular relied on public ridicule.

As the track's "money-making" ability becomes more prominent, the entry of major long-video platforms has enabled the micro-short drama market to "iterate".

As an early platform, Youku launched the "Fuyao Project" in 2021; Tencent Video launched the "Shifen Theater" at the end of the same year; Mango TV's most prominent move was to centrally operate the short drama business with the "Da Mang" independent micro-short drama APP in 2022.

In the following period, major platforms have upgraded their cooperation rules from time to time. For example, iQiyi officially released the online micro-short drama revenue-sharing cooperation model in November 2022. For content with a single episode duration of 2 to 10 minutes, the CPM advertising revenue-sharing model is adopted; for content with a single episode duration of 10 to 15 minutes, the membership payment revenue-sharing model + CPM advertising revenue-sharing model is adopted; Kuaishou launched the "Drama Star Plan-Revenue-Sharing Track" at the end of last year, and launched the "Star Talent Support Plan" for creators; Youku adjusted the revenue-sharing pricing at the same time; Douyin announced the "Chenxing Plan" for young creators at the recent short drama annual sharing conference.

It was during this period that the rising momentum of long video platforms could not be underestimated. Mango TV successively launched short dramas with high reputation such as "Don't Mess with the White Pigeon", "Nian Nian Wu Ming" and "Xu Yan". Tencent's "Shifen Theater" produced "Please! Don't Spoil Me", which has accumulated more than 30 million yuan in three seasons, and "Auntie's World", the only short drama recommended by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television in the "Excellent Online Audiovisual Works".

Under the competition, short video platforms also "rolled up". The popular short dramas launched by Kuaishou's "Xingmang Short Drama" such as "Donglanxue", "The Princess Is Above", "Kind Heart" and "Remarriage" all came from this period.

At the same time, leading content creation companies such as Wutang Culture and Dongmanshe, as well as film and television companies including Huace Film & TV, Lemon Studios, and Happy Twist, have also gradually made the creation of micro-short dramas more refined.

The data changes in investment costs are more intuitive. According to Mirror Entertainment, compared with the previous investment scale of 100,000 or 200,000 yuan for shooting a short drama, many creators are now willing to increase the investment cost to several million yuan, and even the investment amount of some short dramas can be compared with some small-scale long dramas. For example, the previous "Please, Don't Spoil Me" has a cumulative investment of more than 20 million yuan.

At a salon on the theme of "Talking about the 2.0 Era of Micro-Short Dramas" in early September, producer Chen Xinjie also mentioned that mini-program short dramas are now also on the road to becoming high-quality dramas, with the cost of a single drama soaring from the original 20,000 to 30,000 to an average of 300,000 to 500,000.

The revenue is also considerable. According to "New Waner", the daily recharge consumption of paid short dramas on all domestic platforms is about 60 million yuan. During the National Day holiday, the peak has even exceeded 100 million yuan. Data from June showed that the average daily payment for that month was about 40 million yuan.

Therefore, as more and more platforms enter the market, on the one hand, overall competition intensifies, and pressure on each platform follows. On the other hand, the quality of short dramas rises, which attracts more users to consume. In the competition, the strategies of long and short video platforms are different, and it is difficult to determine the winner for the time being.

3. If you want to realize cash, buy volume first

Overall, the micro-short drama market is still in the "cake-making" stage, but the monetization model is relatively mature, including the profit sharing mentioned above, as well as advertising placement and live streaming sales.

According to incomplete statistics from Mirror Entertainment, more than 20 short dramas have earned more than 2 million yuan in revenue this year. Among them, the current revenue share of "Provoke" has exceeded 20 million yuan, and the revenue shares of "Blind Heart Daughter" on Tencent Video, "Love Locked for Three Lifetimes" on Youku, and "Wind and Moon Change" co-broadcasted by Mango TV and Sohu Video have all exceeded 10 million yuan. There are also many works with cumulative revenue shares exceeding 5 million yuan.

The 2022 Douyin short drama "Unfamiliar Lovers" adopted the brand's exclusive naming and customization business model for the first time, and converted a single episode into sales of 2,500 to 5,000 for the brand.

"In fact, the entire track is still in the exploratory stage and is not very stable, but the proportion of commercial implants is gradually increasing." An industry insider from a short video production company told Zinc Scale.

However, only a few have accumulated revenue of over 10 million.

It is worth mentioning that for the newly launched mini-program short dramas, in order to "realize", they must first "buy traffic" - placing information flow ads on media platforms or seeking account cooperation to attract users to jump to the mini-program to watch dramas. Douyin, Kuaishou, and Video Account are the main battlefields for buying traffic for this type of mini-program short dramas.

The above-mentioned industry insider pointed out that "as more and more players enter the market, the cost of buying traffic will become higher and higher."

According to Entertainment Capital Theory, the head of a mini-program short drama company "must release at least one new drama every day, with an average box office of around 3 to 5 million yuan per drama, and a monthly income of around 100 million yuan. However, at least 80% of this 100 million yuan in revenue must be used to buy traffic."

On the other hand, relevant regulatory efforts are also quietly increasing.

In April this year, the mainstream platforms of micro-short drama mini-programs, WeChat, Douyin, and Kuaishou, launched heavy-handed rectification actions one after another. The three platforms removed more than 2,400 micro-short drama mini-programs in total. Among them, WeChat issued the "Announcement on Further Standardizing the "Micro-Short Drama" Content of Mini Programs" on November 25, 2022. On April 15, WeChat officials once again inspected and handled the illegal micro-short drama mini-program accounts. According to platform and user complaints, a total of 1,956 non-compliant mini-programs were handled, and 139 micro-short drama mini-program main body registrations were completed.

This means that although the micro-short drama market has considerable financial potential, it is not easy to get a share of the pie.

Author: Li Xuanqi

WeChat public account: Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu)