Tencent’s Yuewen believes that 2024 will be its year of explosive growth; Byte’s Tomato Novel thinks so too. Written by
| Blue Hole Business Zhao Weiwei
If you want to understand the offensive and defensive secrets of Byte Tencent in the long and short drama track, you have to find the answer from the IP battle between the two companies that has lasted for many years.
Four years ago, the war started.
At that time, Byte's free online article model represented by Tomato Novels disrupted the stable paid online article market model represented by China Literature Group. The management team of China Literature changed its shifts collectively. Under the leadership of successor Cheng Wu, China Literature Although it turned a profit, it still couldn't catch up with the growth rate of its rival Tomato Novel. Last year, China Literature changed its leadership again, with Hou Xiaonan taking over.
Four years later, the results are beginning to show.
is the main position of paid online articles. To stabilize its position, China Literature must maintain the basic content of online reading. Although its net profit increased by 32.3% to 800 million last year, its annual revenue fell by 8% year-on-year to 7.01 billion. Wen still faces pressure. In the financial report, China Literature proposed to develop its efforts in short dramas and overseas markets, and these two directions are also the advantages of Tomato Novels.
Byte and Tencent have penetrated each other's hinterland and become the most obvious point in the confrontation.
In contrast, Byte’s Tomato Novel wants more. Taking advantage of the traffic model of free online articles, it not only began to enter the publication e-reading market last year to compete for high-quality users of Tencent's WeChat reading, but also joined forces vertically and horizontally in the long-form drama market, gathering three cooperation partners with Aiyouteng Partners, the intention to build top IP and gain value at the top of the industry chain is very obvious.
This year may be the year to reap results. This is a competition to incubate high-quality content, and it is also a competition of efficiency and speed. Both the
-byte free online article group and Tencent's paid online article group are betting on high-quality online article IPs in 2024, regardless of whether the output result is a short drama or a long series. Whoever can be the first to reap a hit year will win this game. Does
need users or monetization?
Let’s first look at what cards each of us holds.
Tomato Novels’ appetite goes far beyond just online literature. Last year, it also began to enter the publication e-reading market. It adopts an operating model with 100% copyright owner sharing and the platform does not participate in the sharing with cooperative publishers, aiming to promote the e-commerce business of books. A big game of chess. The largest player in this part of the Chinese market was Amazon China, and later WeChat Reading, a subsidiary of Tencent.
According to Qimai data, in the statistics of app store downloads in the past year, WeChat Reading and Tomato Novels are far from the same order of magnitude, with Tomato Novels being much higher than WeChat Reading.
In the statistics of average daily downloads in the past 30 days and the past 7 days, the download volume of Tomato novels is often 10 times that of WeChat Reading. WeChat Reading maintains a scale of more than 10,000, while Tomato The upper limit of the novel reaches a level of nearly 300,000. Although
does not dominate in terms of download volume, what is dramatic is that in terms of average daily income in the past year, WeChat Reading was one level higher than Tomato Novel, which means that WeChat Reading has a higher ability to purchase in-app paid memberships on the c-side. Of course, this is just Qimai Data’s estimated revenue.
Under normal circumstances, both of them have an average daily income of US$20,000 in the app store market. It is obvious that in April last year, November and February this year, WeChat Reading’s revenue reached three peak periods, with revenue reaching twice the size of Tomato Novels.
The reason is that April 23rd every year is World Book Day, which has always been the peak period for marketing and new acquisitions of reading apps, so it is common for income to rise, as is the case for WeChat Reading and Tomato Novels.
However, last year’s Double 11 and this year’s Spring Festival were completely different. The average daily income of WeChat Reading may have increased due to the big promotion, while the average daily income of Tomato Novels was in a state of decline, thus forming a state of competition.
It can be said that in the important content marketing nodes of the past year, WeChat Reading in the Apple mobile phone market surpassed Tomato Novels. At a time when consumption focuses on cost-effectiveness, Apple mobile phone users pay real money to vote, and WeChat reading may be more worth buying than Tomato novels.The essence of
is the difference in their business models.
WeChat Reading focuses on social reading, and the paid membership model is the main way to monetize it; while Tomato Novel’s membership payment model is just a supplement, focusing on free reading, relying on the huge traffic pool of bytes, and monetizing traffic through users clicking on ads. "LatePost" once disclosed that the revenue of Tomato Novels exceeds 10 billion yuan, which is basically advertising revenue.
Under the respective traffic systems of Tencent and Byte, the threshold for WeChat reading users is high, but the monetization efficiency of Tomato novels is high. It is difficult for the outside world to truly get a glimpse of the income of WeChat Reading and Tomato Novel. To a certain extent, the financial report of China Literature Group supports the fact that the income has declined.
WeChat Reading’s products belong to Tencent’s WeChat business group. They are counted as self-operated channels for Tencent products in China Literature Group’s financial report and are rarely mentioned separately. Other self-operated channels for Tencent products of China Literature include mobile qq and qq. Browser, Tencent News, etc., while Qidian Reading, etc. are counted as China Literature’s own platform products.
According to China Literature Group’s 2023 financial report, Tencent product channel revenue, including WeChat Reading, decreased by 42.2% year-on-year to 342 million yuan. The main reason is that China Literature distributes more content through core paid reading products with higher return on investment. , resulting in a decrease in advertising revenue, while the revenue from Qidian Reading, China Literature’s own platform, increased by approximately 40% year-on-year.
In other words, WeChat Reading may become less and less important to China Literature Group, and competition from Tomato Novels may become increasingly fierce.
Short plays and long plays attack and defend each other
"We believe that 2024 will become China Literature's "year of explosion." "In China Literature's annual financial report, it revealed its future key business directions, one is short dramas and the other is overseas markets.
China Literature Group currently has several short dramas with sales exceeding RMB 10 million. At the end of last year, it also launched the "Short Drama Galaxy Incubation Plan", including the "100 IP Cultivation Plan", launched the "100 Million Yuan Creation Fund" and accelerated cooperation with industry partners. Three major initiatives to develop interactive short dramas.
A small-target creative fund of 100 million yuan is enough to attract people's attention. Just a few days before the release of China Literature, Tomato Novel also announced the 2024 "Riding the Wind Plan" to support original online articles. Tomato will also spend 100 million in cash to support high-quality content. It can be said that the desire for upstream IP content sources is exactly the same. .
But the pursuit of short dramas did not happen in a day. Tomato Novels also went through more than three years of exploration.
began to test cooperation with Douyin in 2020, and in 2021, the first micro-short drama "The Moment When the Star Moves" jointly produced by Tomato Novels received a cumulative view of nearly 50 million for the first time. In June 2022, Tomato Novels established a special short drama department. Since then, during the short drama gold rush, Tomato Novels has become the source of many hit short dramas, such as "I Was a Stepmother in the 1980s", etc., and many Tomato Novels have been adapted The short drama was staged on Tencent Video and Mango TV.
Vertical short dramas adapted from web texts are the trump card of Tomato Novels, while long dramas adapted from web texts into IPs are the moat for China Literature. But now that Byte has invaded the hinterland of Tencent IP, Yuewen has begun to learn from Tomato Novels, and Tomato Novels have also begun to harvest. Long video series are moving toward longer-term IP layout, becoming one of the commercialization directions this year.
At the first Tomato Novel Creators Conference last November, official data was revealed that a total of 75 novel copyrights derived from the Tomato Novel IP were sold, and 18 works are in animation development. In 2024, Tomato Novel is expected to have More than 10 works were broadcast. It can be said that Tomato Novel is also waiting for its hit year to create an IP full copyright operation ecosystem. The most obvious case of
is undoubtedly the animation "God of God: God of Mortal Realm". This work is adapted from "I Learn to Kill God in a Mental Hospital" by Tomato novelist Sanjiu Yinyu. It is one of the popular IPs of Tomato Novel and has been used in An animation trailer was released on Tencent Video, and more than 300,000 people made reservations. Tomato Animation and Tencent Video launched the "Reverse Update Reminder Festival" activity, and both parties are sparing no effort for this IP.
Tencent Video has always been an important IP output platform for China Literature. China Literature cited Tencent Video’s most anticipated list as an example in its financial report, including the second season of "Celebrating More Than Years", "Traveling with the Phoenix" and "Dafeng Watcher" All three works are among the top ten. In 2024, the top IPs of Reading and Tomato Novel will compete on the same field and compete on Tencent Video.
In addition to Tencent Video, the well-known IP of the Tomato novel "I Learned to Kill Gods in a Mental Hospital" also attracted iQiyi. Chen Xiao, senior vice president of iQiyi, appeared at the Tomato Novel Creators Conference to promote "Beheading Gods" 》Drama platform, both parties announced that Tomato Novels has become a platinum partner of iQiyi Film and Television IP, and will continue to actively promote the adaptation of high-quality works with Tomato.
In March this year, there was another official announcement that Tomato Novel and Youku had reached a cooperation. The direction is also to dig deep into super IP, promote the implementation of film and television and animation, and enhance the influence of IP. So far, Aiyouteng's three parent video platforms have become the stage for IP adaptation and break-through of Tomato novels.
In the final analysis, adaptations of high-quality IP are the competition barriers for online articles. In the entire industry chain, whether online article platforms are paid or free, only by incubating top IP can we deeply tap the market potential. This is also the competition between Tomato Novels and China Literature. A goal.
Thinking back to 2021, the three Aiyouteng companies collectively attacked short video infringement at the China Internet Audiovisual Industry Summit, and a war of words and rights protection broke out for long and short videos; two years later, Douyin began to reconcile with three platforms including Tencent Video, and began to focus on Explore aspects such as joint promotion of long and short videos and secondary creation of short videos.
Today, the cooperation between Tomato Novel and the three parents’ video platforms has pushed this “reconciliation between long and short” to the next level, becoming a new competition and cooperation relationship in the video market.
still needs to fight hard to go overseas. In addition to the
short drama, going overseas has become the biggest consensus in the digital reading industry, and "global co-creation of IP" has become the biggest ambition of the platforms.
According to China Literature’s 2023 financial report, in overseas markets, China Literature Group’s reading platform webnovel has provided overseas users with 3,800 Chinese translated works and 620,000 local original works. China Literature said it ranks among the top 100 on the webnovel best-selling list. Among the works, 21 works were translated by its AI translation model.
According to China Literature, "AI translation is the catalyst for our large-scale, multi-lingual overseas expansion. It is expected to help us achieve large-scale growth and gradually establish advantageous categories with strategic value in some core areas."
China Literature's The advantage is that it has an early layout. In 2017, it launched the overseas reading platform webnovel overseas, which is the first official platform for the overseas dissemination of Chinese online literature. Officially released data is that in October 2023, the number of visiting users of Qidian International has exceeded 220 million, which is three times that of the same period three years ago.
In 2022, China Literature also created chereads, an English novel product targeting overseas women, focusing on sweet pets and romantic romance works. It once became the top 50 in Southeast Asian countries and regions such as the Philippines and Singapore. But now, this new star The rate of rise is declining. At least in Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia, chereads has not yet surpassed webnovel. There are no surprises in the internal horse racing of
multi-matrix. The pressure from overseas markets comes from competitors. Tomato Novels has surpassed China Literature in overseas markets.
Tomato novel overseas version fizzo was also launched in 2022. The first to attack was Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia. With 11.42 million downloads, it became the most downloaded book application overseas in the third quarter of that year. The selling point of fizzo is the same as that in the domestic market, attracting users with free reading, and then monetizing it with a large amount of advertising.
Qimai data shows that in the Indonesian app store market, the overseas version of Tomato novel fizzo is ahead of the China Literature overseas reading platform webnovel in multiple data dimensions, including in the overall list, application list, etc. Webnovel wins because of its wide layout, being available in 171 regions around the world, while fizzo only has 42.
Reading's strategy in overseas markets is to translate high-quality domestic online articles for focused promotion, supplemented by cultivating local novels to attract local users. Under this model, the IP content advantage of online articles is still its biggest expansion point. Steadiness may be its greatest external characteristic.
With the traffic advantage of ByteDance, especially tiktok’s overseas market, Tomato Novels can quickly expand its competitive advantage by filming fizzo novels into mini-series and releasing them on tiktok.
Last year, the biggest success story for China’s online writing was still short plays. The industry has seen new opportunities. Chinese Online's application reelshort has topped the Google Play and App Store lists many times. In March this year, shorttv, an overseas application owned by Jiuzhou Culture, also ranked first in the U.S. app store download list.
But in fact, it is not easy to make profits in the overseas market of online articles. The overseas short drama market is very differentiated. The audience level and preference direction in each region are different, which requires constant investment in trial and error, and Production costs are much higher than those in the domestic market. The person in charge of Jiuzhou Culture once revealed that its overseas business has not yet achieved profitability. The overseas publication of
web articles has been crowded with giants, and the market is a red ocean. How does Big Brother bring forth the new from the earliest overseas reading? Become a key proposition in competition.
