Nowadays, will the short-lived short drama products become the standard entertainment products of this era like movies and TV series?
Overseas markets are accumulating.
The waves of film and television going to sea have been pushed into short dramas this year.
Although short dramas have long occupied a place on the short ** platform, the key to the sudden outbreak this year is the hot speculation in the domestic secondary market, and the second is the sudden increase in the volume of short drama apps with Chinese genes in overseas markets.
In October this year, the A-share secondary market suddenly ushered in a round of "short drama" concept of hot **, Chinese**, Insai Group and other leading stocks even gained more than 125% in a short period of time. The emergence of this concept coincided with a short play, or rather an interactive game called "It's Over!".I'm Surrounded by Beauty" is closely related to the outing of the circle. This interactive game basically copies the bloody plot of the popular short drama: the male protagonist who is in debt and goes bankrupt and runs away, hits walls everywhere in his life, and has to do odd jobs in a restaurant, but is inexplicably pursued by many glamorous women. Players spend about 40 yuan to buy the game, and they can enter the game through the first perspective of the male protagonist, and make different choices in the plot to gain different emotional lines.
Since it was launched on Steam on October 18th, it has been less than a month, and it has almost swept the live broadcast rooms of almost all head game anchors, and the number of related short *** in the main topic of Douyin has exceeded 9500 million times;The national ranking of Steam once topped the list, with 29,302 users giving "recommended" evaluations, and the cumulative sales have already exceeded one million. Despite the fact that "It's Over!".I was surrounded by beautiful women" is essentially a game, not a short drama product that we are familiar with, but this trend still makes many short drama concept stocks in A-shares become the focus of the market in one fell swoop.
Short dramas or micro-short dramas refer to a series of "vertical screen" short dramas with plots, with a single episode lasting 1 to 5 minutes, much shorter than traditional TV dramas, and low production costs, usually on short **platforms or small programs**. In order to attract the audience to pay, these short dramas are often free for the first 5 to 10 episodes, with a tight plot, a lot of twists, and dense cool points, so as to attract the audience** follow-up paid dramas - this is similar to "Finished!".The core of "I'm Surrounded by Beauty" is almost the same.
The "short drama + interactive game" model is quite popular
The explosion of an interactive game adapted from a short drama routine may just be an accident, but if a large number of short dramas successfully "go to sea" and earn the first pot of gold, then this track is completely worth looking at with new eyes.
In "It's Over!At the same time that I was surrounded by beautiful women" became popular, an overseas localized short drama app called "reelshort" under the digital publishing company Chinese** jumped to second place in the free version of the Apple App Store in the United States, and the entertainment list even beat TikTok to win the first place. According to the statistics of the overseas business platform TechCrunch, as of November, the number of Reelshort on iOS and Android has reached 11 million times, and the current global monthly volume of Reelshort is still above 2 million.
Short dramas and dramas that have a good response in overseas markets.
However, due to the fact that the spontaneous discussion about Reelshort on overseas social platforms is not hot, it has aroused some questions about "spending money to buy the list" in the industry. Judging from more objective data, Reelshort's revenue may prove the reality of its popularity. According to Sensor Tower data, Reelshort has always been in the top 20 of the list of overseas application revenue since July this yearSince July, its combined monthly revenue on iOS and Android has exceeded $1.2 million.
It is worth mentioning that Chinese ** holds 4916% of its subsidiary, Crazy Maple Studio, incubated a similar version of "Finished!" as early as 2017I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Girls" and "Chapters: Interactive Stories". However, it is aimed at female players, and it is the first interactive narrative game to successfully go overseas, and it is still in the top three positions in the world in this category, with an annual revenue of hundreds of millions of yuan.
Skit "Past and Present".
Tracing the past and present life of short dramas, you can't jump over the competition between the ** platform and the film and television company, but in the end, the short drama has become an emerging content form covering the whole network, which still needs to be attributed to the rise of the short ** platform.
The earliest skits in China appeared in 2012, and then there was a long period of silence. In 2018, the first vertical screen short drama "Life Started with Me" produced by iQIYI and Haohan Entertainment was launched, each episode does not exceed 4 minutes, a total of 48 episodes, and the final market response is not bad, iQIYI decided to start the layout to create a short drama theater section on the site. Tencent**, Youku**, and Mango TV have all increased the short drama market.
At that time, one of the main driving forces for the enthusiastic participation of the ** platform was the hope that the short drama could attract more paying members, but it was soon found that this idea did not meet the user's consumption psychology at all. Their operations department found that what can drive the popularity of long dramas and increase the scale of membership is the second creation or cutting strip**, rather than unrelated short dramas. Paid members are not to spend money to watch short dramas, and advertisers are not willing to consume marketing quota for short dramas with a very short publicity cycle, which leads to the failure of long-term ** platforms to tap the influence of short dramas.
In 2019, Kuaishou entered the game, Douyin followed up, and the short drama that has long been used as "leftovers" has gradually become an indispensable "main course" on the table. A long-** platform business development person once lamented that Doukuai's investment in short dramas is not the same as that of the long-** platform, "From platform solutions to traffic support, all aspects are encouraging platform creators to create and publish short dramas." We may have cultivated the mentality of users spending money to follow dramas, but in the end, what we gained was Jikuai. ”
Kuaishou is the first platform in China to productize and scale the commercial monetization model of short dramas. According to Kuaishou's just-released third-quarter financial report, paid short dramas have significantly driven the growth of advertising revenue: the advertising consumption of paid short dramas in Kuaishou has increased month by month, with consumption in the third quarter increasing by more than 300% year-on-year and nearly 50% quarter-on-quarter.
According to the user portrait given by Yu Ke, the person in charge of the Kuaishou Entertainment Plot Business Center, there are 2600 million daily active users are frequent visitors to short dramas;At the same time, this huge user scale is very young, with a very high proportion of post-95s and post-00sMore than 70% of these young users are in first- and second-tier cities. This all means that the consumer group of short dramas in China is large, sticky, and relatively active. In stark contrast, since 2019, the proportion of moviegoers aged 24 and under has been declining. Movies are facing the dilemma of losing young audiences, while short dramas are still evolving to attract more users.
As Zhang Chaoyang, founder and CEO of Sohu, recently pointed out, now that content production is becoming more and more market-oriented, everyone has no patience to watch long dramas after too much**short**, and likes to go straight to the point of the storyline, and can't stand the long narrative. This gave the web skit the soil for savage growth.
In the interview, some industry insiders believe that 2020 is the first year of the outbreak of short dramas, and the most popular short dramas in recent years can even sell for hundreds of millions of yuan, and more importantly, the short dramas are produced quickly, and it is easy to promote payment on the user side, "A set of short dramas has a maximum of dozens of episodes, and an average of a few cents per episode." Therefore, there are many paid short dramas that attract users by placing traffic on Doukuai, and then jump to the applet or app**, like short online articles, this is also a business that can borrow user payment or incentivized ** advertising to achieve a quick return on investment.
According to the data released by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the number of micro-short dramas recorded in the whole year in 2021 was only 398, and in 2022, the number of filings has increased sixfold to 2,800. The monthly recharge amount of the short drama industry has increased from 40 million yuan in June this year to 60 million yuan in October. According to industry data**, it is expected to reach 25 billion to 30 billion yuan in 2023. This is equivalent to the rise of a film and television drama market with the same size as iQiyi outside the traditional film and television drama market, and it is still growing.
October 2023 App Revenue Ranking with Chinese Genes. Source: Qichacha
However, with the surge of participants and content, the competition in the domestic short drama market has become more and more fierce, and the problems of uneven content and chaotic operation mode have begun to be exposed. In mid-November, the State Administration of Radio and Television said that it would further improve the normal management mechanism of online micro-short dramas, including speeding up the formulation of the "Detailed Rules for the Creation, Production and Content Review of Online Micro-short Dramas";Optimize algorithm recommendations and improve the review mechanism for advertising pushesStrengthen creative planning and guidance. On December 12, WeChat fired the first shot, requiring short drama practitioners to complete the deposit payment. According to the official notice, according to the "Regulations on the Management of Mini Program Trading Margin", relevant practitioners need to complete the payment before December 17, otherwise relevant functions may be restricted, including but not limited to restricting Mini Program search.
In addition to the regulators and platforms putting forward new standards for content scale, quality and entry thresholds, the industry itself will also derive multiple gameplay methods such as game interactive dramas, e-commerce, and IP from the pure content model, and it is also likely to change the existing payment model and roll up to the free play, and the arrival of the reshuffle period will continue to accelerate. The domestic market cake is still very large, but there is not much time left for small companies to grab the cake, and the overseas market is still a blue ocean.
Different markets, different strategies.
After TikTok, online shopping platforms Temu and SHEIN, the short drama app can become another "Chinese export" product that penetrates into overseas markets, especially in Europe and the United States, and is not simply copying the domestic model. From the content, the production process, to the monetization model, players need to make local changes.
Many workers involved in overseas short dramas mentioned that although overseas markets also have a high demand for fast-paced, multi-reversal, and high-concentration content, content preferences and consumption Xi are often different.
For example, in the European and American markets, users have a strong willingness to pay, but prefer werewolves, vampires, and bosses with local elements. In other words, it will not work to take a shortcut to translate domestic online texts as scripts, and Reelshort's hit short drama "Fated to My Forbidden Alpha" is adapted from the overseas online reading platform kiss of the same name**.
In the European and American markets, the time required for the completion of the localization and complete implementation of the project is on the long side, which often contradicts the vision of the manufacturer to enter the market quickly. Or take reelshort as an example, the platform currently only has more than a dozen short dramas in stock, although there are a large number of Chinese ** online articles as alternatives, but if you want to find local screenwriters and local actors in Europe and the United States to land products, it will take time and 100,000 to 200,000 US dollars in production costs. First, because although the domestic market in Europe and the United States has strong film and television production capabilities, the market system is mature, and screenwriters will not overflow into the short drama market, even in the more than four months of the Writers Guild (WGA) strike in the United States this year, there has been no influx of non-union screenwriters into the short drama market;Second, it is protected by the trade union, and the production cycle of even a short drama with less than 40 episodes will be about eight weeks, and it is not realistic to imagine a large-scale entry into the European and American markets.
On the other side of the high production cost, there is the high consumption power brought by the mature film and television market. Reelshort's short drama monetization model is "advertising + payment", a 60-episode short drama is only free to open the first episode, and it costs 66 gold coins to unlock from the second episode, **All episodes cost 1599 US dollars (about 115 yuan);You can also choose to watch ads to unlock the plot for free, but the number of times per day is limited. For comparison, Netflix now has only 6 ad-supported subscription plans$99 per month, the consumption of short dramas in the European and American markets can be called "luxury".
The largest number of people's skit apps in different overseas markets
In the Middle East or Southeast Asia, the situation is completely different. These two regional markets are similar to the content preferences of domestic users: the male-dominated audience in the Middle East prefers themes such as male frequency cool dramas (God of War, Counterattack), the cultural circle in Southeast Asia overlaps with China and there are more Chinese, and domestic popular themes such as sweet pets, sadomasochism, family ethics, youth campuses, and bosses have huge audiences.
The production capacity of the film and television drama market in the Middle East is limited and there is little competition, but due to the restrictions of religious and cultural beliefs, the broadcast of localized short dramas needs to consider various restrictions. Of course, these problems can also be overcome in the face of the considerable consumption potential of users in the Middle East. According to the latest data from the International Monetary Organization, the per capita GDP of the six Gulf countries is at 4220,000-12480,000 US dollars, far exceeding the benchmark of developed countries (per capita GDP of 20,000 US dollars). Taking the game market as an example, among the 35 million people in Saudi Arabia, there are about 24.2 million mobile game players, and more than 60% of mobile game users are willing to pay, and its mobile game ARPU (average revenue per user) is the highest in the world, reaching 270 US dollarsThe UAE, with a total population of less than 10 million, has 4.33 million gamers willing to pay.
The entry threshold of the Southeast Asian market is the lowest in the eyes of overseas participants, which also leads to the degree of market competition incentives far exceeding those of other regions. Anyue Technology, an online text platform in Guangzhou, launched the short drama App Flex TV in October last year, focusing on Southeast Asia, especially Thailand. Since its launch, Flex TV has long ranked in the top 50 of Thailand's overall list.
The main participants in short dramas going overseas include online text platforms, film and television companies and head ** platforms
The online text company has a large number of mid-waist IPs in its hands, and short dramas have opened the way for their film and television adaptations, and the online text platforms Shanghai Ruogu Information Technology and Dianzhong Technology have all taken advantage of this to join the boom of short dramas going overseas. In addition, short drama companies such as Kyushu Culture, which have run through the profit model of short dramas in China, as well as some film and television production and distribution companies, are crowded into Southeast Asia with low production costs and large audiences.
However, people familiar with the Southeast Asian market said that the disadvantage here is that the overall payment ability of Southeast Asian users is weak, and it is difficult to run through relying on content monetizationIf you do free short dramas, the return ratio will be relatively low, because in advertising alliances such as Google, the unit price of Southeast Asian users is not as high as that of European and American users, "so capable manufacturers still want to break into the European and American or Middle Eastern markets."
Can AI technology help?
The development of new technology is also changing the way short dramas are produced.
In terms of scripts, the scripts of short dramas are short in length and have low requirements for content, and they are also the first content category in the film and television industry to try to use AIGC to create scripts. Chinese ** recently revealed in a survey that in addition to 5.5 million network ** IP, in the field of short dramas, the company's AI large model "Chinese Xiaoyao" can also generate scripts or optimize scripts, and continuously provide short drama IP adaptation scripts.
In addition, there are also a large area of "domestic sales to export" manufacturers who are trying to use AI to directly complete the dubbing, subtitles and even face change of overseas short dramas. On the market, the ** that directly adds foreign language subtitles is 30 yuan minutes, including translation, spinning, proofreading and pressing output and other processes, if you add real foreign language dubbing, it will take 300 yuan-400 yuan minutes, but the cost of a short drama will not exceed 10,000 yuan. Professional film and television companies already have their own AI voice translation products, and the conversion cost of the entire domestic short drama can even be reduced to a few hundred yuan.
The cost of AI face-swapping apps such as Heygen is not high, but it cannot solve the fundamental problem of localization
The cost of face swapping is higher, that is, replacing Chinese faces with local actors in the target market, and most of the market ** for a short drama face swap is more than 50,000 yuan, and the degree of refinement of the results varies. There is also a more ideal way, using the **AI generation software Heygen, combined with AI face swapping technology, to quickly switch language and mouth shapes, and send a large number of successful domestic short dramas overseas. However, this method cannot solve the fundamental problem of plot localization, and the volume is large but the possibility of achieving paid conversion is small.
More importantly, at this stage, using AI to reduce the production cost of short dramas is not the focus of manufacturers' consideration when going overseas, but traffic is the key. Taking a domestic short drama production company as an example, the cost of a short drama can be pressed to 10,000 yuan, and the production cost is only 2,000 yuan, and the remaining eighty percent is used to buy the short ** platform. The same is true overseas, although the bottleneck of local short drama content supply needs to be broken, how to attract target users is equally important.