Text | Mirror Entertainment, author | Li Zijiu This year’s summer drama series has both highlights and challenges. From the cliff-top lead of "In the Clouds" to "The Story of Rose" being hotly discussed across the Internet, the hot start of the summer season has raised market exp

Text | Mirror Entertainment, author | Chestnut Wine

This year’s summer drama series has both highlights and challenges.

has led from a cliff with "In the Clouds" to "The Story of Rose", which is hotly discussed across the Internet. The hot start of the summer season has raised market expectations, but challenges are coming one after another. From an internal perspective, the traditional dominant themes have ended in a low-key manner, and the integration of multiple themes and elements has deepened. The underlying point is that the market's "cool" point has changed; externally, the Olympic Games and the game market have been diverted, and the summer movie season has performed poorly. , and also made the industry sweat for the summer release of the series.

Fortunately, dramas such as "The Journey to the West" and "Bianshui Past" have withstood the pressure and have been on a gratifying popularity curve one after another, writing a good ending for the summer season of the drama. Behind the ups and downs of the drama market, the differentiated content arrangements of each platform reflect their respective strategies. After rounds of drama competition, competition among video platforms is also quietly brewing a new industry pattern.

has hot spots and dark horses. The core strategy of is to stabilize the traffic pool.

From the perspective of market perception, this summer season does have a trend of opening high and going low. The influencing factors include the Olympic Games and the release of "Black Myth: Wukong". The competition for attention and interference from external factors have made it more difficult for high-frequency fermentation in the drama market. But even so, this year's summer drama series is still remarkable. Although popular themes such as Gudu failed to produce new phenomenal works, the drama market has still completed the output of many explosive points and stabilized its market. This wave of traffic.

Looking back at the start of the summer season, in order to increase the upper limit of the high-end period, the video platform deliberately arranged some major dramas in the content arrangement to warm up the entire schedule. "Celebrating More Than Years Season 2" and "Fox Demon" were the first to rush. Works with high expectations such as "Little Matchmaker: Red Moon" live up to expectations.

Then, the summer season officially started, and Youku’s “Mo Yu Yun Jian” quickly showed its status as a dark horse, sweeping the market immediately after its launch. Not only did it set a new Youku record for the fastest drama to reach 10,000 hits, it also dominated multiple charts. Data from the Beacon Professional Edition shows that the playback volume of the feature film "In the Clouds" exceeds the second and third place by 70%. During the same period, "The Story of Rose" broadcast by Tencent Video became another hot spot, setting off an upsurge of "meme" and discussion across the entire network, and the summer season as a whole got off to a hot start.

In the middle of the schedule, the Olympic Games, which attracted national attention, began to take away market attention. At this stage, the drama market has indeed faced its biggest challenge in terms of schedule. In terms of content arrangement, the platform no longer chases popular hits. Instead, it relies on the multi-point arrangement of vertical content, starting from segmented tracks, and stabilizing Stay in the basic market of drama series.

Dramas such as "The Ballad of Ice and Snow", "Young White Horse Drunken in the Spring Breeze" and "The Strange Story of the Tang Dynasty: Journey to the West" have become the main force in creating differentiation in the middle of the summer season. The distribution of fantasy, martial arts, suspense and other vertical content has stabilized The overall popularity of the drama market. Even among this, iQiyi's "The Strange Story of the Tang Dynasty: Journey to the West" gradually relied on its high reputation to get out of the anti-growth popularity curve. Maoyan Professional Edition data shows that the show was once trapped in the Olympic Games. Create a new peak of popularity.

Later, in addition to dramas such as "Sifang Pavilion" and "Liu Zhou Ji" that continued to be popular in the market, Youku's "Once Upon a Time in Bianshui" was launched, becoming another hot spot for the summer drama series, and the end of the schedule also reached a new climax. A perfect ending. Judging from this popularity curve, the summer season of drama series, which faced many challenges, has actually stabilized its own traffic pool. Behind the scenes of

, it can actually be seen that the content style of the platform has been adjusted. Rather than betting on blockbuster content that is more uncertain, a safer approach for video platforms is to produce vertical and waist content. Especially now that the membership mechanisms of various platforms are becoming more mature, activating the activity of paying users has become even more important. Judging from the results, each platform has also delivered good results this summer. Yunhe data shows that on the premise that the effective broadcast volume of drama series has declined year-on-year, the effective broadcast proportion of member content of the entire network has increased from 54% last year. % rose to 63%, and the impact of member activity on the content market is further deepening.

The "cool" point of the market is changing. The first to see and implement early wins.

The intuitive manifestation is that the market orientation in drama creation has been significantly enhanced. Although the overall number of new releases during the period has declined, the market demand for each platform has The capture ability is improving. On the surface, this year’s summer season shows a trend of declining traditional dominant themes, but in essence, new hot content captures the “cool” changes in the market more quickly and quickly implements them into the content.

Specifically, the popularity of "In the Clouds" largely depends on the high-density reversal, fast pace and the refreshing feeling of revenge, and these points are also the popular elements of many short dramas nowadays. In other words, the success of "In the Clouds" lies in the creative team's insight into the potential changes in market consumption habits, and along with this change, a narrative method that is more in line with the market was used in the creation of "In the Clouds" . This unfolds a two-sided narrative perspective of one person, which not only presents the content point of "girls help girls", but more importantly, the process of self-redemption, which is undoubtedly an innovation.

Similarly, "The Story of Rose" can trigger a large-scale discussion in the market. In addition to the addition of the sister's "beautiful face", the direct impact of gender relations and married life on the market, more importantly, "The Story of Rose" captures To the core of female self-awakening, this is the core element throughout the entire play. In this process, whether it is a joking hot meme like "Who is in Beijing?" or a content that arouses public opinion like "I am completely and absolutely in charge of me", it is revealed that women are in the process of self-expression. Bringing impact to the market.

From this perspective, although "Mo Yu Yun Jian" and "The Story of Rose" are two completely different themes, the underlying driving force behind the explosion is actually similar. They are both exploring the current social language. Under this situation, what kind of "big heroine" does the market need? In terms of feedback effects, the play does give good answers.

Similarly, among dramas that are more oriented towards the male channel market, "The Tang Dynasty's Journey to the West" and "Bianshui Past" scored high scores of 8.6 and 8.1 respectively on Douban. The key lies in the quality of the content of the dramas. of deep cultivation. The former has once again raised market expectations based on the previous work, while the latter has broadened the scale of content expression through the fictional "three slopes" in an overhead way. It is difficult to completely attribute the victory of the subject matter.

This also means that the decline of the traditional dominant themes of summer movies may not be accidental. It is difficult for routines and templates to prevail in the current content market. As a kind of content projection of reality, dramas also put forward higher requirements for the creative market. On the premise of improving content quality, insight into needs and capturing changes in the market’s “cool points” need to be placed in a higher position. Platforms that have taken the lead during the schedule have already tasted the benefits of this layout idea.

The "result" of long-termism, video platforms are brewing a new pattern

Looking back, in the process of industry development and in the environment of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, major video platforms have been pursuing long-termism for some time. The summer season is an important node for each platform to release blockbuster content. Although it cannot fully represent the content layout of each platform, we can actually see the phased results of each platform's strategy through the works produced during the summer season.

Yunhe data shows that Tencent Video has the largest number of new releases this summer. Its strong film library storage capacity and wide coverage of content are undoubtedly one of Tencent Video’s advantages. Behind this, Tencent's high-yield strategy is to use content cooperation models such as "master control", "co-creation" and "purchasing" to strengthen the cooperative relationship between the platform and creators. At the same time, the platform relies on the ecological operation of long-term IP, which is another fulcrum for its content creation. "Qing Yu Nian Season 2" and "Sauvignon Blanc Season 2" in the schedule are all products of long-term IP operation.

iQiyi focuses more on in-depth development and intensive cultivation, and expands content development space based on the platform's underlying revenue model of "one fish eats more".This summer, iQiyi continues to improve the layout of Mist Theater while focusing on the penetration of platform content in multiple tracks. Dramas such as "Little Couple", "Lone Boat" and "Nine Prosecutors" performed well in their respective tracks. . "History of the Tang Dynasty: Westward Journey" opened low and moved high, which further proves the platform's meticulous polishing of segmented content. The costume group portraits under the dramatic interpretation once again moved the market. Moreover, similar to the "Wind Rises" series on the same track, the show also tried to link up with offline during the broadcast. "The Strange Stories of the Tang Dynasty: Journey to the West" VR National Trend Immersive Theater was simultaneously launched in Beijing, Hunan and other provinces city.

In contrast, Youku has gained momentum in this summer season with its many hit dramas. According to data from the Beacon Professional Edition, during the period, Youku occupied 5 of the top 10 online drama series broadcasts. Among the top 5 online drama dramas, the platform also had three dramas on the list. Due to the impressive popularity, netizens even used "The Legend of Zhen Huan" to make jokes like "Niu Hulu·Pants Concubine Returns to the Palace". The deep attribution behind it can also penetrate into the content strategy of the platform. Relevant data shows that in the past five years, Youku has broadcast the debut works of 294 screenwriters and 38 directors. This data actually reflects Youku’s platform tone of encouraging content innovation. At least for now, cooperation with emerging forces has boosted the development momentum of the platform to increase production and disrupt operations.

Now that the summer vacation has ended, after the content competition, market attention has been re-divided, and the gap between top video platforms has a tendency to further narrow. In this process, each platform has entered a new stage of development based on long-term "results", and competition among video platforms is also brewing a new industry pattern. At present, news has spread in the market that the third season of "Tang Dynasty Chronicles" will start filming. Tencent Video has also recently released the latest slate of upcoming dramas. The 2025 series slate just released by Youku is also attracting attention. A new round of competition is about to begin, we might as well wait and see.