text | Business Data School, author | Huang Xiaoyi
"The priorities of our customized short dramas are Douyin, Taobao, and Kuaishou." Zhou Ming (pseudonym), a practitioner of mcn agency, said, "Whether it is a single piece or a brand-titled drama, The income we get from Kuaishou short dramas is relatively low.”
Recently, after communicating with creators from many institutions, Business Data School found that the appeal of Kuaishou short dramas is declining due to “lack of money.” In the second half of the
skit, the platform shifted from "fighting for exposure" to "fighting to make money." Against this background, Kuaishou, the "originator of short dramas" that entered the game in 2019, unexpectedly slowed down.
Another short play director He Qi (pseudonym) observed that from the perspective of earning power, has inspired paid short plays and short plays respectively compared to "making money from mini program short plays" and "turning over in short plays of Han Shutou". There are two waves of brand-customized short dramas. Kuaishou short dramas lack their own commercialization hot spots.
He Qi explained that although the profit methods of Kuaishou short dramas are very diversified, not only launching the short drama anchor "Yi Yi Lu", but also introducing third-party paid short drama mini programs and promoting the launch of brand customized short dramas, overall In other words, the highlight of Kuaishou’s short dramas is still the platform-led “Xingmang Short Dramas” and “Drama Star Short Dramas”, which focus on the content itself.
However, entering the second half of the short play, the ability to monetize also determines the activity of the creative ecology.
The attitude of Zhou Ming and others is a danger signal for Kuaishou - once creators invest their energy in other platforms, the content path of Kuaishou short dramas will become increasingly difficult.
01 Kuaishou short dramas and long videos step into the same river?
"In Kuaishou, we mainly cooperate with the platform Xingmang and Duxing to customize short plays. Our customers are Kuaishou platform and other extended platforms; as for Douyin short plays, we do customization by experts, and most of them are Working directly with brands.” Zhang Peiran, vice president and co-founder of
Gangshanghuamcn, told Business Data School that pays more attention to the quality of the plot itself in Kuaishou due to the different customers it delivers, but in Douyin, it will be more Consider how to closely integrate with the needs of the brand.
The reason for this difference is that the business logic of Kuaishou short dramas is very different from other platforms from the beginning.
Generally speaking, platforms provide income to short drama creators in various forms such as vv share, advertiser customization, general advertising profit share, purchase or participation in production, etc. At present, almost every platform is focusing on these paths. Fully rolled out. However, due to differences in platform attributes, different platforms have different priorities.
As a content platform, many short dramas on the long video platform still follow the "tradition" of the procurement system; as a social platform, Douyin short dramas prefer the platform to collect commissions from advertiser cooperation and earn short drama streaming fees. Kuaishou and Douyin are both social platforms. From content, operation to commercialization, they both prefer the long video model.
Kuaishou’s short drama has launched the Starlight Project in 2020. It was the first to operate according to the business model of purchasing + investment + account sharing for long videos, and is deeply involved in all aspects.
From an operational point of view, Kuaishou pioneered the scheduled operation and followed the long video model.
In August 2021, Kuaishou launched the concept of short drama summer season for the first time, and then successively opened short drama winter vacation season, cny new year season, May 1st youth spring season, summer summer season and e-commerce promotions.
film and television works are operated according to schedules. On the one hand, it facilitates all parties to carry out plot planning, production arrangements and promotion operations according to schedule needs; on the other hand, it facilitates the cultivation of users’ viewing habits and provides users with a way to intensively enjoy short plays. experience.
From the content point of view, since the launch of the centralized portal "Small Theater" in 2019, Kuaishou has attached great importance to the coverage of short drama content categories. Similar to the long video platform, it has been filling in subdivided themes such as ancient costumes, modern puppets, and suspense. .
This year, Kuaishou has released "I Open a Bar in the Song Dynasty", "Super Office Worker" and "Wake Up!" "Lord of the City", "Grandpa and Me", "All the Way Home", "Mandarin Duck Broken" and many other short dramas are online, covering different genres such as ancient time travel, workplace, science fiction, and the Republic of China.
Pictures come from Yien
For Kuaishou, rich themes mean that it can rely on precise content layout to meet the preferences and needs of segmented users, such as attracting high-net-worth and female users through traditional themes such as sweet love, ancient style, etc. Watch, and continue to develop innovative themes that meet the needs of different groups of people, such as Generation Z, men, silver-haired people, etc., to further enrich the audience structure.
These practices mean that Kuaishou, like long-form video platforms such as Aiyouteng, has a stronger ability to control the content of short dramas; but on the other hand, it also leads Kuaishou to enter the same commercialization path as Aiyouteng. river.
For example, Kuaishou short dramas will provide special market promotion services for high-quality projects, as well as platform investment services for high-quality dramas. However, nowadays, in the investment promotion process, because the conversion effect of short plays is difficult to verify, in the context of overall consumption recovery, Brands are still very cautious about advertising - marketing budgets are limited, and brands prefer to choose channels with guaranteed returns.
"In our view, it is certainly easier for the platform to provide money and effort than for the brand to provide money and effort." Zhou Ming (pseudonym), a practitioner at mcn agency, said bluntly.
02 Two eras of short plays: attracting new customers and monetizing
Generally speaking, like Aiyouteng, Kuaishou short plays have a strong To C thinking. This is also because the meaning of short plays for Kuaishou from the beginning is to be user-oriented. , use content to attract new users and promote activity.
2022 is a key node. Before that, short dramas competed on user viewing time and user level, which was a new type of content; after that, the myth of mini program short dramas to attract money spread, and the role of short dramas became to make money, which is a kind of business model.
Kuaishou, which has launched short dramas since the end of 2019, has become a "trans-generational" existence.
After Kuaishou went public in 2020, in order to increase its user base, the business suffered huge losses. It invested huge sums of money just in content enrichment and expansion. Incidents such as snatching the broadcast rights of sports events and exclusive broadcasts of concerts occurred. Relying on differentiated content, To attract new users, short dramas are also part of the diversified content layout, and have even gradually become a star business used by Kuaishou to attract new users and promote activity.
At that time, Kuaishou put "short drama excerpts" hooks on major traffic social platforms such as Weibo to attract users to Kuaishou to watch the complete content, thereby completing the new recruitment. These local short drama contents brought a lot of downloads to Kuaishou. Shen users who are in line with the platform ecology.
After 2022, as paid short dramas exploded and Han Shu made a comeback with the help of Jiang Shiqi, Douyin, Taobao, video accounts and various platforms began to increase their focus on short dramas, and hot money poured into the industry. The To B thinking of these platforms is getting stronger and stronger. For example, Taobao short dramas use merchants as customers, Douyin short dramas use brands as customers, and WeChat mini programs use various mini programs as customers.
Although Kuaishou short dramas have always been looking for commercial realization paths, compared with the To B thinking based on realization of latecomers, it is more difficult for Kuaishou to reverse its own To C genes.
In the past, Kuaishou has also tried models such as paid short dramas, customized short dramas, and branded short dramas. It has cooperated with Tmall, JD.com, etc., and expanded its monetization paths through short drama copyright sales and overseas short dramas. For example, Original scripts such as "The Princess Is Here" and "Snow on the East Side" were sold and adapted into audio books, and plays such as "The Reason I Returned to Seventeen" and "Running Wild" were exported to Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea.
But as mentioned above, the content-based operation thinking of Kuaishou short dramas has a higher "self-operated" content, which seems to be inflexible under the urgent monetization needs of the short drama industry.
In January this year, Kuaishou also upgraded the Xingmang short drama cooperation plan, bringing higher financial support, greater traffic support, and more comprehensive business empowerment services to creators.
For Kuaishou, a large amount of platform control means greater dominance over content and quality, but on the other hand, it also means that the monetization process becomes longer and the pressure is on itself.
03 Kuaishou is just short of a hit benchmark
In the second half of the short play, what Kuaishou needs to understand is that it is facing a group of partners and opponents who are eager for hot money.
A short drama mcn mentioned to Business Data Pi that Kuaishou has now ranked third in the content priority of their short drama customization cooperation, and will give priority to Douyin and Taobao because commercialization is stronger.
In the second half of the short play, platforms with strong commercialization capabilities will attract more creators, and the entire ecosystem will become more and more active, forming a positive cycle.
Looking at the current ecology alone, the gap between Kuaishou and other platforms has not yet widened.
First of all, from the perspective of user scale, According to the financial report of Kuaishou short dramas, the daily active users of Kuaishou micro short dramas have increased to 260 million in early 2024; and Douyin short dramas, according to public data in early 2024, the number of micro short dramas The number of daily deduplication users is around 100 million.
Secondly, from the perspective of traffic performance, among the top 50 short dramas played on the short video platform in 2023, Kuaishou accounted for 60%. The total number of Xingmang short dramas online by the end of 2023 will be close to a thousand, of which the number of plays will exceed 100 million. The number of works has reached 326, 68 works have exceeded 300 million, and there are 4 super hit projects with more than 1 billion views. In 2023, there will be 600 short dramas with over 100 million views on Douyin, and more than 12 short dramas with over 1 billion views.
From a purely numerical perspective, Kuaishou and Douyin each win in terms of users and exposure. Considering the differences in statistical calibers between the two parties, it is difficult to truly compare.
But for creators, which platform can make more money is the key consideration.
In Douyin, Jiang Qiqi has become a benchmark for the launch of the platform. After Han Shu’s performance rebounded significantly by investing in short dramas, more and more brands have set their sights on short dramas.
In fact, Han Shu founder Lu Yixiong previously mentioned that brands that have invested in short dramas after November 2023 are all losing money, "all giving money to Douyin." This shows the effectiveness of the benchmarking effect. , we can also see how easy it is for the platform as a channel to monetize through traffic.
Recently, Douyin has teamed up with Stephen Chow to launch a comedy short play theater, and not long ago Douyin’s top brother, Xiao Yang, announced that he will produce short play content, which means that Douyin’s short play ecology is still running fast, and perhaps there will be more and more in the future. There are more and more benchmarks, attracting the attention of brands, businesses and short drama practitioners.
Facing the competition in the industry, Kuaishou is more like a player who insists on long-termism, but it cannot resist the fact that current partners and competitors are speeding up monetization.
Perhaps, Kuaishou also needs to think about how to better combine TO C's skit content production and TO B's branding as soon as possible, launch a hit case, establish a more complete commercial monetization model, and attract more creations Researchers and practitioners are broadening monetization paths in Kuaishou, thereby promoting the prosperity of the entire ecosystem.
