Compared with last year's "Hurricane" and "Three-Body Problem" and other big dramas at the beginning of the year, this year's Q1 drama market is generally regarded by the industry as "not hot". But who would have thought that these dramas would roll up in the sky in terms of attracting investment.
A very surprising industry phenomenon is that in 2024, only more than two months have passed, and three dramas have won the number of advertisements in the history of drama investment promotion on their platforms ("investment promotion history crown"), they are:
"South to North" - a total of 298 advertisements, 41 brands, and an average of 764 wide, the highest single episode is 8 wide, and the online exclusive broadcast platform is iQiyi.
To Love for a Long Time - a total of 143 advertisements, 24 brands, and an average of 446 wide, the highest single episode is 7 wide, and the online exclusive broadcast platform is Youku.
Flowers" - a total of 300 advertisements, 42 brands, an average of 10 wide, a single episode up to 12 wide, online exclusive broadcast platform for Tencent**. The above data**: Douban netizens come to see the month to sort out).
In the past industry tradition, drama investment often can't beat variety shows, and the above often has more than 40 brand cooperation in a drama, and the volume of a single episode of 7 or even 12 is wide, which proves that drama investment is ushering in a new situation that equals or even surpasses variety shows.
Although at present, from the industry to the public, the attention to the "number of drama advertisements" is not high, and the three investment history crowns at the beginning of the year have not caused much discussion, but Rhino Jun feels that this is definitely a major event worth paying attention to in the industry. The mystery of the "advertising soaring" of the New Year's drama with poor popularity, it is enough to read this.
The birth of the three "historical crowns" of Aiyouteng
2024 is likely to be a turning point for drama investment.
At first, when "Flowers" first aired in January, its amazing gold attraction of advertisements everywhere was hotly discussed, but the industry generally tended to think that it was an "isolated case". Unexpectedly, it didn't take long for dramas such as "South to North" and "To Love for a Long Time" to exceed expectations.
The investment promotion of "South to North" is very suitable for detailed study.
Obviously, there is a gap between the popularity of "South to North" compared with the popular dramas at the beginning of the year (the degree of discussion has not completely broken the circle), but the investment performance it has come up with can be described by the word "amazing".
If you have opened this drama on iQiyi, you will obviously feel the advertisements of "South to North", just the wonderful moment at the beginning of the first episode, there are already Chun Zhen 0 additions, vivo·s18, the new 9th generation Camry, and 999 cold spirit The four owners will broadcast the "Synopsis" for you.
Coupled with the 8-second Little Sunflower advertisement, the 8-second RIO advertisement, the 28-second Xiaoman creative advertisement and the 5-second Vantage advertisement at the end of the film, "South to North" has achieved the achievement of "8 Wide in a Single Episode" in the first episode.
Looking at all 39 episodes, "South to North" has remained stable at an average of 764 Guang, the total number of advertisements reached 298, and the number of cooperative brands reached 41, almost equaling the 2024 "Merchants Drama King" "Flowers" (300 total Guang, 42 brands), and created the best in the history of iQiyi in terms of these data.
In the case of failing to create such a huge discussion heat as "Flowers", "South to North" almost tied the former in terms of investment promotion, and there are roughly two reasons:
At the micro level, the financiers may value the comprehensive ability of "South to North" to attract TV audiences with train group portrait period dramas, and to call on young audiences with starring actors such as Bai Jingting and Jin Chen; At the macro level, this proves from the side that advertisers now prefer to launch hot dramas, especially for big nodes like the Spring Festival, and they dare to continue to invest in New Year's dramas.
"To Love for a Long Time" is also a model of investment exceeding expectations.
Although starring Yang Zi and Fan Chengcheng, the top domestic entertainment players, "Love for a Long Time", which focuses on sweet pets + youth, is not a project with a super-head volume on the platform, but the advertising data it finally created is enough to be called Youku's "super head".
According to Douban netizens to see the month, the total number of advertisements in the whole drama of "Love for a Long Time" has reached 143, and the average number of advertisements in the episode is 446 and 24 cooperative brands, this set of data seems to be inferior to the above two dramas, but it is still "historical" in the dimension of the Youku platform, breaking the platform record of Youku's average advertising and average advertising duration in one fell swoop.
Compared with "South to North", the target audience of "Love for a Long Time" is more skewed towards young audiences, so the brands that choose to launch the show are also mainly brands that focus on the young market, such as Dove who placed the pre-roll ads in episodes 11-14, and Jin Lingguan who placed pre-credits in episodes 16-23. "To Love for a Long Time" can achieve this good investment promotion result, which seems to further show that this is the overall investment environment of the drama series in 2024 is getting better.
Finally, let's talk about "Flowers".
In fact, Rhino Jun has already done a very detailed dismantling of the investment promotion of "Flowers" in the old article "The Secret of Flowers", and I just want to mention its small theater at the end of the film.
At that time, the audience who was chasing "Flowers" could perceive that the end series of advertisements around the small boss of the cigarette stall Jing Xiu was implanted very silky, and the fireworks scenes such as playing chess and eating melon seeds continued Wong Kar-wai's aesthetics, almost creating a new genre of implantation aesthetics. Rhino Jun believes that compared with the soaring number of investment promotions, this kind of "implanted aesthetics" innovation is more far-reaching and inspiring to the industry, and it is worth paying more attention to and learning.
The opening drama is not as hot as in previous years
How did advertising win?
Finally, let's talk about why.
Regarding the repeated records of investment promotion in dramas, we have already talked about the specific reasons for the respective projects of "South to North", "Love for a Long Time" and "Flowers", but what are the common reasons for the fact that "the popularity of the New Year's drama is not as popular as in previous years, but the advertising has won"?
First, let's look at the industry megatrends.
As everyone has seen or vaguely perceived, the drama market is indeed in a boom period in recent years, and the dramas on various platforms that are becoming more and more high-quality are attracting more and more attention from the first stage, which makes brands more willing to chase the footsteps of the public and invest more marketing budgets in this track.
Focusing on the level of dramas at the beginning of this year, advertisers obviously trust the siphon effect of hot dramas on various platforms at the beginning of the year and the Spring Festival, even if it turns out that the popularity of these New Year's dramas is not ideal, but the "action signal" of the current brand actively launching dramas is quite obvious.
Then there is the problem of brand placement "changing the track".
It is very obvious that when advertisers launch long-term platforms, there are more and more cases from variety shows "changing hands" to dramas, which is likely to be due to the general lack of popularity in the current variety show market, and brands are increasingly "prefering" dramas when investing in platforms.
Typical cases such as Mengniu Chunzhen, who named "South to North", have been more frequent guests of variety shows in the past. There is also the mobile phone brand oppo inserted in the title of "Love for a Long Time", and the 999 series of pharmaceutical companies that frequently appear in major hit dramas during the Spring Festival.
There is also the drive of the "28 effect".
In fact, at the beginning of the year, these three dramas can become the "champion of investment history" of Aiyouteng, and another reason is that advertisers now prefer to focus on the platform's super-head dramas, forming a contrasting situation in which the head dramas are waterlogged to death and other dramas are drought.
For example, during the Spring Festival, when "South to North" was crazy to make money, the dramas broadcast at the same time as it were not so lucky, such as "Fireworks People", 30 episodes were all "naked" without a wide range of "naked broadcasts", and "Our Translator" only got 1 brand cooperation of real me mobile phones at the end of the whole play, and the advertising gap between the head and waist is still a world of difference.
Having said so many reasons, good and bad phenomena, but in the end, we should be sure that the three "investment history crowns" at the beginning of the year have greatly boosted the confidence of the whole drama industry to increase the investment of projects, and Rhino Jun feels that he has seen that the next "history crown" is beckoning to the industry.
There is an old saying, "Records are meant to be broken", in view of the overall improvement of the current investment momentum of dramas, we have reason to expect that there will be more dramas in 2024 to challenge and break the investment record of Aiyouteng dramas.
For example, the blockbuster project "Celebrating More Than Years 2", which fans have been waiting for for many years, and the topic work "Fox Demon Little Red Lady", which is adapted from top animation IP, are there great possibilities for ** "Flowers" to become the next "investment drama king" in 2024?