New business derived from short dramas: editing videos, posting links, earning commissions...

In addition to short video platforms, the short drama market has also continued to heat up, not only attracting many content organizations to create content, but also starting to derive new gameplay. Nowadays, the gameplay of "short drama distribution" is on the rise, and has become an area of ​​concern for many organizations and creators. How does this gameplay work? Let's take a look.

A new way to play short plays is here.

Last year, the popularity of many hit short dramas such as "The Princess Is Here" and "Mad Mind" drove the continued popularity of the entire short drama market.

Industry insiders said that the short drama track is now more popular. In the past, the cost of shooting a short drama was about 30,000 yuan, but now the cost of shooting a short drama has increased by about three times, starting at 100,000 yuan. Many traditional film and television companies and production bases that have entered this track are "high-profile", with higher investment and higher content quality.

The attitudes of the players in this hot track are polarized. Some practitioners have found new business opportunities in this track: instead of shooting short dramas, they distribute short dramas and earn commissions from content distribution.

How does this gameplay work? Is it a new trend?

01 Short drama market is making waves again

The short drama attracted attention in the industry in 2019. After more than three years of development, how is the overall market environment?

A set of latest data shows that on Kuaishou, more than 260 million people watch short dramas every day, with more than 42 billion views a year; the number of daily deduplicated users of Douyin short dramas is also over 100 million.

At the same time, in addition to short video platforms, the hot short drama market has also attracted the attention of major Internet companies. Recently, there have been reports that Baidu Qimao may launch a new short drama business called "Qimao Micro Short Drama" and "September Theater", and Xiaomi has also launched a short drama product "Duohua Short Drama".

The continued popularity of the short drama market has not only attracted many content agencies to create content, but also started to derive new ways of playing. Recently, according to Xinbochang’s observation and industry insiders, the way of playing “short drama distribution” is on the rise and has become an area of ​​concern for many agencies and creators.

It is understood that the specific gameplay of short drama distribution is to obtain the content authorization of the short drama, and through secondary editing and creation, guide users to pay to watch the complete short drama content. This gameplay is also called "short drama mounting", and the current link is mainly completed through mini programs.

Xinbochang has learned that the mini programs for distributing short dramas include Zebra Short Drama, Grape Micro Drama, Come and Watch Videos, Kyushu Short Drama and Oriental Theater.

(Source: Internet)

Relevant accounts can obtain the authorization for the short drama through the above mini programs, and then produce the corresponding traffic-generating content and publish it on their own accounts, hang the mini program under their videos, and guide users to enter the mini program to watch the complete series. After the user enters the mini program through the account's video and pays, the account can obtain the corresponding commission. The commission ratio given by the above five mini programs is 80%.

As for this gameplay, the threshold is not high. For example, Oriental Theater only needs more than 1 fans to apply for distribution qualifications, while Zebra Short Drama, which has the highest fan requirement, requires an account with more than 1,000 fans.

In addition, among these five mini programs, only Oriental Theater is responsible for the distribution of short dramas on the Douyin platform, while the other four are responsible for the distribution of short dramas on the Kuaishou platform. For the time being, we have not learned that Xinbochang has any mini program that is responsible for the distribution of short dramas on two platforms, or other than Douyin and Kuaishou.

It is understood that Kuaishou is an early entrant into the short drama market and is currently the most prosperous platform for the secondary creation of short dramas. Most of the related accounts are named "××× Film and Television" and "××× Small Theater". The video length is generally 1-5 minutes, with very prominent characters and plots, ups and downs, and hot traffic.

For example, the number of followers of an account named "Aju Film and Television Editing" on Kuaishou has reached 1.35 million. In addition to posting videos, when the new broadcast site clicked on the homepage on the afternoon of February 24, it was found that the account was live streaming a short drama, but the number of viewers in the live broadcast room was not high. A total of 116 works have been published so far, with a total of 51.47 million likes.

02 A more violent gameplay?

It can be seen that this distribution model has the same logic as the earlier novel promotion, game promotion, and live broadcast room slice distribution, which is to use authorization to spread the volume, allow a large number of accounts to distribute, and increase the traffic and paid income of short dramas.

Therefore, those MCNs that promote novels, games, and live broadcast rooms have become the beneficiaries of this gameplay.

"This has no flow of goods, and is more brutal than live streaming slicing." The head of an organization said that because this type of content has a wide audience, in addition to film and television editing accounts that can be distributed, some accounts that promote grass-roots content can also be promoted. He also said that in addition to short videos, private domain traffic and live broadcast rooms can also participate, "any form is acceptable."

For example, when the new broadcast site entered the "Yijian Zhuiju" live broadcast room, it was playing a modern urban short drama, and the live broadcast room showed that 53 people were watching. Soon, a link "Click me to watch the full episode" popped up in the lower right corner. The first 7 episodes were free to watch, and starting from the eighth episode, you need to pay to watch. Each episode requires 88 points (points: RMB = 100:1), which means that the cost of a single episode is 0.88 yuan, less than one yuan.

For another account, you have to pay starting from the second episode, and the cost per episode is 12 Kanbi (Kanbi: RMB = 10:1), which is a little over one yuan per episode.

Overall, the cost of a single episode of a short drama is around one dollar.

In addition to mounting, institutions that obtain short drama authorization will also do secondary authorization, using some teaching and apprenticeship accounts to expand the distribution traffic pool.

The head of an institution revealed that they cooperate directly with the film producers and have a large number of popular accounts that can directly provide the materials and copyrights of the short dramas, and then edit and distribute them. The cost is not high, and they have greater autonomy and controllability.

The rise of short drama distribution is not only due to its low threshold, easy operation and direct monetization method, but also because short dramas are becoming more and more popular and more and more users are willing to watch and pay for them. Short dramas have the characteristics of "high density + fragmentation", which can better meet the fragmented needs of users than long videos with an average of dozens of minutes.

At the same time, popular short dramas are mostly based on themes such as domineering presidents, wealthy daughters in trouble, time travel and rebirth, and son-in-law. Backed by the mature Internet celebrity IP development market, they can quickly capture the lower-level users while maintaining continuous output in content.

In addition, in the past two years, platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin have launched a number of high-quality short dramas, and many high-quality short drama masters have established a firm foothold in this track. Users are still developing the habit of consuming short dramas, which provides a basis for the promotion and paid gameplay of short dramas.

03 Is high-quality content moving towards “self-reliance”?

Although mounting is a new way of playing that has only begun to gain popularity this year, it is essentially the content distribution of short dramas, which is used to attract traffic and convert them. Similar models have existed before this.

At the 2023 Baidu Knowledge Heroes Conference, Wang Changgui, founder of the MCN agency Yungong Xunyin, mentioned in his sharing that the production and sales logic of short dramas on long video platforms is often that the short drama creators slice the dramas into slices and place advertisements on major platforms. After users click on the ads, they will directly jump to the mini program, and then guide users to pay in the same way as the mounting gameplay.

Wang Changgui said that under such a model, short drama producers may have to set aside a budget of 500,000 yuan for each short drama.

With such a high budget, coupled with the high production costs of the short drama itself, it seems difficult to make a profit.

But in early 2019, when micro-short dramas became popular in the entire content market, long video platforms represented by iQiyi and Youku launched a profit-sharing policy, while short video and medium-long video platforms represented by Weishi and Xigua Video directly used money to purchase copyrights, greatly alleviating the anxiety of short drama organizations about monetization.

In 2020, Kuaishou and Douyin, two leading short video platforms with more than 100 million daily active users, also launched corresponding profit-sharing policies, and the development momentum of short dramas has become increasingly fierce. Data shows that in the first half of 2022, more than 800 companies have registered 2,859 short dramas. It should be noted that only 398 short dramas were registered in the whole year of 2021.

In the short video market that has now entered the stock stage, the surge in content will undoubtedly make the creators who have always followed the profit-sharing policy face a situation of "too many monks and too little porridge". Attracting more traffic and exploring new monetization channels have become new development issues. Therefore, mounting gameplay with lower costs than advertising has emerged.

Behind this gameplay, we can see the gradual traffic anxiety and the decline of platform support dividends in the short drama market, which also allows everyone to see the feasibility of paying for content.

Compared with the ridicule that Bilibili faced for its failed attempt at paid video content in 2021, the emergence of short drama mounting gameplay, as well as the payment effects and top IP performance of Kuaishou and Douyin short dramas, may also be sending a strong signal to the market: the content payment model is feasible in the field of short videos or medium videos, and is beginning to support a group of distributors in the downstream of the industry.

Then, the market for short dramas may be much larger than we thought.

Author: Xiaolongguo, Aligu

Source: New Broadcasting Station (ID: New_bc)