Shake quickly and snatch the boss .

Visual China.

Text |Fixed Focus, Author |Su Qi, edJin Yufan.

Like this blogger, there are many viewers who are on the short drama, and with their help, since September this year, the "battle report" released by the mini program short drama has frequently swept the circle of friends, and the recharge amount of "Wushuang" exceeded 100 million yuan in 8 days, "Oops!".The queen mother came to work" was launched within 24 hours, and the recharge amount exceeded 12 million yuan.

However, behind the frequent screen swiping of the "bosses", most short drama companies are not as profitable as the public imagines, and the beautiful "battle report" figures do not represent real profits.

Behind this traffic feast, the three platforms that really "make a fortune with silence".

There are traffic platforms represented by Kuaishou and Douyin, and Mini Program short dramas often place information flow advertisements on such channels to attract users to jump to Mini Programs to pay to watch dramas. The common saying in the industry is that 90% of the production cost of a short drama is used to buy volume.

There is also WeChat, the largest carrier that supports mini program dramas, not only the WeChat mini program technical channel fee (the handling fee for short drama recharge and withdrawal) has risen from 1% to 10% of the recharge flow, but WeChat ** account is also one of the main streaming channels for short drama companies.

In fact, Kuaishou and Douyin have long tried shortcuts in a broader sense, and the short dramas at that time were equivalent to high-quality sitcoms, which were guaranteed by the platform and shared by the creators, and users rarely paid directly.

Until this year, the short dramas of the mini program paid directly by users exploded, and Douyin and Kuaishou began to "take it all at both ends", earning streaming fees from the outside on the one hand, and developing short drama mini programs on the other side on the other hand, and launching an independent short drama APP. As for the original high-quality short dramas of Doukuai, they are still retained, and they rely on brand customization to monetize the short dramas.

However, the chaos under the popularity of mini program short dramas has attracted the attention of regulators, and relevant departments have carried out special rectification work on online micro-short dramas, and major short ** platforms have also removed a large number of illegal micro-short dramas, and began to increase the review of short dramas.

As the industry gradually moves towards standardization and order, who can seize more markets on Douyin Kuaishou WeChat?Who can win this battle?The market is waiting for an answer.

When it comes to mini program short dramas, many people think that this is a content-led market and belongs to the category of film and television dramas, but in fact, this is inseparable from the traffic team.

The teams with the most aggressive volume of mini program short dramas are all teams that have done **cps (distribution) before, such as Kyushu and capacity. "They initially filmed the short drama as the first delivery material, and at that time, Douyin opened the link to WeChat, and the short drama content slice advertisement was placed on Douyin, and the user jumped to the WeChat mini program to pay, and the link was smooth, and it exploded all of a sudden. Titan, an investor who has been studying the short drama market for a long time, said.

Because of this, the main delivery channels of Mini Program short dramas are also similar to the **cps channel, among which, the most important is the short** platform, such as Douyin, Kuaishou and **Account;The second is the ** information flow and online text platform, today's headlines, tomatoes**, etc.

The gross profit of a single short drama is generally 8%-13%, and the purchase cost accounts for more than 90% of the operating cost. "The skit industry seems to make money, but in fact, the money is given to the traffic platform. Titan said.

The short drama industry also has to buy volume, if you look at the mini program short drama industry with the logic of skin-changing mini games and information flow advertising, it is easy to understand - the viscosity of short drama users is not high, and it must rely on streaming. In the entire industrial chain, most of the funds have been earned by traffic platforms such as short **, and the short drama industry is playing a game of buying volume. "The success rate and conversion rate of streaming are the key to determining the income of short dramas. Li Yunming, director of the production and distribution department of Xinju Entertainment, said.

The cost of streaming many mini program short dramas is several times the production cost, Li Yunming once spent less than 100,000 yuan to produce a popular short drama, and the recharge flow reached 16 million yuan, of which the cost of streaming accounted for more than 10 million yuan.

According to reports,The core life cycle of most short dramas is only half a month, and they need to be released immediately. Specifically, after a short drama is put on the shelves, the streaming company will first spend 5,000 yuan to test the traffic of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and when the ROI (return on investment) is 118-1.At 2 o'clock, it will continue to invest, and the industry's best comprehensive ROI can reach 17-1.8。However, with the involution of the industry, there are fewer explosive products, and the ROI is gradually decreasing.

There are a large number of streaming companies in the market, and the current short drama track generally recognizes Douyin's huge engine, and many interviewees said that this is related to the larger traffic pool of the giant engine, the finer granularity of crowd tags, and the simpler operation process. According to data, Douyin's massive engine occupies 70%-80% of the short drama distribution market. A Bai, the person in charge of short dramas in an MCN agency, told Dingjiao that the market size of mini program short dramas is estimated to be about 38 billion yuan by the end of this year, and bytes alone will account for 200-25 billion yuan.

However, the users of the three companies have their own characteristics. For example, the audience of Douyin prefers content related to female frequency, mainly sadomasochism, sweet pets, flash marriages, and wealthy presidents, focusing on "romance";Kuaishou's users prefer male frequency content, focusing on God of War, Rebirth, and Travel, focusing on "cool dramas";The user portrait of ** is older, the region is lower, and they are even less sensitive to **.

Li Yunming observed,The popular theme of mini program short dramas changed from male frequency to female frequency in the second half of this year, the number of female frequency explosions is obvious, and many of the original male frequency production teams have also begun to turn to female frequency. Since December, female dramas have accounted for more than 70% of the daily lists of many short dramas.

In addition, there are some unprofessional streaming companies in the market, and if the material is handed over to them for editing, it may encounter piracy problems, which will exacerbate the problem of streaming volume and industry chaos. Li Yunming told Dingjiao that his team has a drama that handed over the "delivery version" to the investment company to edit the material, and the folder contained the alternate name of the play.

Nowadays, as the short drama industry is tightened and regulated, the advertising revenue of various platforms has also declined. According to statistics, the daily advertising consumption of short dramas in the byte system was 50 million to 60 million, Kuaishou was 20 million, and Tencent advertising was about 10 million. But recently, various platforms have been **common**, which means that the traffic business that lies to earn is no longer so easy to earn.

Speaking of short dramas, as early as three years ago, the long** and short** platforms tried to enter the Nuggets, but why did the short dramas really catch fire this year?

In fact, the account-sharing short dramas in previous years and the popular mini program short dramas this year are two different products.

According to Titan, Kuaishou will do more short dramas around 2020, and the producer will use the "guaranteed + shared" model to produce short dramas to provide content for the platform. The number of episodes of these short dramas is generally 20 episodes, and the duration of a single episode is about 2-3 minutes, and there are popular titles such as "The Eldest Princess is on Top".

In 2020, Kuaishou launched the "Starlight Project" to cooperate with creators in the short drama industry with the account-sharing model, and the platform will generally set up hundreds of thousands of cash as guaranteed account sharing funds to provide protection for content creation.

This year, the popular mini program short dramas, mainly on Douyin and Kuaishou, drain traffic to the mini program for a single episode or package payment, the number of works is generally 80-100 episodes, the duration of a single episode is 1-2 minutes, the shooting cycle is shorter, and the cost is lower.

Ah Bai said,Kuaishou was the first to make high-quality account-sharing short dramas, and its original intention was not to directly rely on short dramas to obtain income, but to compete with Douyin for the user's stay time and activity. "Under the circumstances at that time, it is no problem to directly do free boutique short dramas and incubate sitcom talents, because once you pay users, it is easy to lose. ”

Douyin is also the same logic, at the beginning of 2022, Douyin launched the boutique short drama "Twenty-Nine" produced by Lemon Film and Television's subsidiary "Hao Youyi", a single episode of about 3 minutes, a total of 20 episodes, and the last 4 episodes need to be paid.

In the short**platform, users are more likely to brush short** than chase short**, and there is a large amount of free content on the platform, under such logic, Kuaishou Douyin will do paid mini-program short dramas by itself, and the income is not as stable as selling traffic directly. In contrast, both Douyin and Kuaishou have chosen the monetization scheme of brand-customized short dramasShoot continuous short dramas (generally around 10-30 episodes) through short scenes, and implant brand advertisements.

For example, the director's new work "Donglan Snow" of "The Eldest Princess is Up" cooperated with the brand of "Jingdong New Department Store". Douyin expert "Shanshan" cooperated with skin care brand Gu Yu to tell the story of his happy rivalry with the editor-in-chief of the magazine. "Users don't pay for content, and these kinds of skits actually sell goods in the end. Li Yunming said.

In the third quarter of 2023, the company's Xingmang plan short drama investment revenue increased by more than 10 times quarter-on-quarter, and the number of short drama creators in 2022 increased by 35%. According to a number of industry insiders, brand customized short dramas will be the focus of brand planting in the future, and brands may tilt their marketing budgets towards short dramas.

After the mini program short drama became popular, Douyin launched the Hongguo short drama app (now renamed Tomato short drama) in May this year, and Kuaishou launched the independent short drama app Xifan (only available on Android) in December.

Fixed focus found that the content of Hongguo short dramas is relatively rich, there are short dramas, listening books, comics and other types, the highest number of short dramas exceeds 2 million, and there are some non-popular dramas of "short drama stars". At present, most of the high-quality short dramas on the Xifan app software are about 30 episodes, most of which have passed the life cycle, and Kuaishou provides the copyright to the audience for free after purchasing the copyright at a low price, and the highest ** amount is also around 2 million.

The picture on the left is the Xifan app, and the picture on the right is the Hongguo short drama app

Compared with the payment model of short dramas in Mini Programs, there are two main ways to make money for the top short drama apps on the marketOne is the IAA model (pure ad monetization), where users unlock short dramas by watching ads,Kuaishou Xifan app belongs to this category,Douyin Hongguo has not yet placed ads,Industry insiders believe that this is because it is still in the stage of gathering traffic,Advertisements will be added in the future;The other is a hybrid model of IAA (pure ad monetization) + IAP (monetization by user membership fees), in addition to watching ads, users can also buy APP memberships, unlock all the short dramas in the station, and the Hippo Theater app under China Radio and Television belongs to this model.

Compared with the paid model, Titan is more optimistic about the free model, in her opinion, it usually takes more than 100 yuan or even more to watch a short drama after watching it, and once the user knows that there is a free channel to watch the short drama, there is a high probability that it will**. Hongguo is equivalent to making a short drama with the logic of tomato free**, and the scale is expanding rapidly, and now the daily activity is about 500-8 million. The free user pool is much larger than the paid user pool. ”

Ah Bai thinksMaking independent skit apps is a major trend in the future, because most of the traffic of short dramas now is directed to Mini Programs, but Mini Programs also have drawbacks, and the probability of users opening them for the second time is very low, and the homogenization of Mini Program short dramas is serious, resulting in a gradual increase in customer acquisition costs. "At this stage of business development, we must make an app to attract users, and slowly reach and convert them many times. Ah Bai said,

However, the performance of the user volume, open rate, and retention rate of the short drama app still has to be a question mark at present. For the platform, the biggest value of independent APP is that short drama is one of the few industries with exponential growth in the past two years, even if the short drama business does not make money, short drama will still be a track that the platform attaches importance to.

Short dramas are already a "star business", Kuaishou, Douyin, and ** account layout of the short drama industry, by no means satisfied with earning advertising fees, they pay more attention to the overall content and talent ecology, user duration and customer acquisition growth.

Cheng Yixiao, chairman and CEO of Kuaishou, said at the third quarter of 2023 financial report** that the advertising consumption of the paid short drama industry in Kuaishou has increased month by month this year, and the consumption of paid short dramas in the third quarter increased by more than 300% year-on-year and nearly 50% month-on-month. In addition, Kuaishou mentioned in the financial report that the customer acquisition cost of unit users in Q3 this year continued to decline year-on-year, and user retention increased. Although Douyin has not disclosed data, according to the analysis of industry insiders, the overall trend should be consistent with Kuaishou.

However, as regulations tighten, the skit industry is facing a cooling.

Since the special treatment in late November,On the one hand, the Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat platforms have banned the content and accounts of illegal short dramas, and on the other hand, they have raised the threshold for streaming.

On the evening of November 20, Douyin's huge advertising announcement said that including Douyin mini program short dramas and short dramas that jump to other third-party platforms, can only be cast after review. In addition, Douyin also prohibits distribution and proxy investment. Kuaishou announced that it would stop the commercial launch of third-party micro-short drama mini programs on the evening of December 31, focusing on the development of Kuaishou mini programs and Kuaishou's internal links.

The above measures are regarded by the outside world as platforms are tightening their control over the risks of short drama contentAt the same time, it strengthens the short drama payment ecology in the terminal, and keeps the traffic in the station while doing the intra-station circulation. "The platform has to develop in a controllable direction, sacrificing the speed of growth, but it has also become more formal, from disorder to order, which is the only way for the industry. Ah Bai said,

However, cutting off external links and paying in-end, users will watch the short drama directly on the end, the existing business model will be reshaped, and the platform's advertising revenue will decline for a short time.

Another trend in the industry is that many producers have begun to transform into theaters that collect multiple mini program dramas, and these mini program theaters are distributed in the Douyin, Kuaishou and WeChat ecosystems, and the number has reached thousands. "Production companies began to transform after losing money in the production process and turned to lower-cost mini-program theaters, but when the producers thought so, the output of the drama became more and more insufficient, and the market began to grow blindly. The practitioner said.

Now that the review of mini program short dramas is becoming more and more stringent, the short drama industry will move towards a high-quality route next. One signal is that a large number of people in the film and television industry have begun to enter the scene, from the earliest Huace, Ningmeng, Perfect World, to the recent director Wang Jing and actor Gao Yalin to join the short drama.

Standing at the moment, judging from the business model of "short frequency and fast" of small program short dramas, there is a certain degree of difficulty in the high-quality route, and some industry insiders have noticed that when the industry begins to shout the slogan of high-quality products, it is basically difficult to see the battle report, and the number of popular dramas is also decreasing.

However, from the perspective of the long-term development of the industry, short dramas will inevitably move towards the high-quality route, and Bai said that if you want to take ROI to a higher level, the industry also needs to have newer and better content to enhance the paid value of the industry.

Li Yunming also reminded that the real quality is the quality of the story content, not the cost of the product, and the story that the audience likes to see is the foundation of the boutique.

Before the arrival of real high-quality products, the practitioners of mini program short dramas should stabilize the rhythm, lay a good foundation, and wait and see what happens. The industry generally believes that the mini program short drama will usher in a reshuffle in the second half of next year, and at that time, the wind direction of the entire industry will change.

A practitioner said that some of his peers around him, who have transformed from assistant directors, on-site producers, actors, etc., to be producers or directors of mini program short dramas, have returned to their old jobs, "because they don't understand the popular logic of small program short dramas, it is difficult to make money", and some producers also stopped losses and withdrew from the industry in time, "5 were filmed, 3 pounced, and the remaining 2 did not dare to go on".

This also means that the dividend period of the rapid growth of the industry is coming to an end, Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat and the industry ecology are both prosperous and lossy, and before the arrival of industry reform, they have begun to lay out the internal circulation of their own ecology

At the request of the interviewee, Ah Bai is a pseudonym in the article.