Recently there is a type of short video from the vibrato fire to the B station, the first part of the content of the di si male protagonist because of various magical reasons to go to a small family as a door-to-door son-in-law, and then by the wife and the elders in the family all kinds of sneering, but followed by a high identity of the big guy, suddenly kneeling on one knee to the male protagonist, the male protagonist identity is revealed, and the face is punched in the face of a group of snobbish villains.
This is the short video of "Son-in-law" detonated by the crooked god of war. Although this kind of short video is both earthy and awkward, but the factors such as playing a pig and eating a tiger, a dick silk counterattack and other factors are in the middle of the netizens' cool point, many people can't stop watching it, shouting on the head.
The explosion of earthy short video advertisements has given the industry a thought, since the short video shot with the network text as the background can get the heat, then it is not feasible to directly shoot this network text IP into a micro-short drama? There is a common view in the industry that the short video of online text IP in the form of advertising is actually a preposition of the effect of its film and television adaptation, and the test of this market can reduce the risk of IP film and television.
The purpose of the cooperation between Kuaishou and Qutoutiao is this. On September 3, Qutoutiao's Mi-reading announced a strategic cooperation with Kuaishou on the development of short drama IP, Mi-reading provided Kuaishou with short-drama content adapted from the platform's original popular novel IP, and Kuaishou gave short-form drama more traffic support and publicity assistance.
Will short video platforms usher in the era of micro-short dramas?
Abandoning the sense of immersion and watching the drama is also fragmented?
According to the report data released by Quest Mobile, as of June 2019, the penetration rate of the short video industry has reached 72%, and the monthly per capita use time has exceeded 22 hours, an increase of 8.6% year-on-year, but the monthly per capita use time of online video, online reading and mobile games is declining year-on-year.
Behind the erosion of other content user time by short videos is a change in user habits and preferences.
Taking drama chasing as an example, for young people who are active on social media, when a new drama is broadcast, they will not open the positive film at the first time, but first go to Weibo, Douban and other social media to explore word of mouth. For film and television dramas that are too fierce, they will generally pass directly. At the same time, the length of the series has also become an important influencing factor for young people to chase the drama, a netizen said that in the past, it was always half chased and abandoned, and now it can only accept TV series with less than 30 episodes.
This is the general psychology of young audiences. According to data released by iQiyi, the abandonment rate of long dramas is relatively high, and for TV series with more than 45 episodes, the audience abandonment rate in 2016 was 47%, 50% in 2017, and as high as 56% in the first quarter of 2018.
The length of the episode also directly affects the level of word of mouth. According to the statistics of southern weekend reporters, as of June 27, among the 109 episodes that started broadcasting in 2020, the average score of episodes below 20 episodes was 6.5; the average score of 21 episodes to 30 episodes was 5.8; and the average score of more than 30 episodes was 5.5.
I have to admit that user time is becoming more and more scarce, and patience is also reduced, which not only leads to netizens' habit of watching at double speed, jumping to watch, and even abandoning the drama as soon as the plot is injected with water, but also showing the characteristics of chasing dramas in social media fragmentation.
Some time ago, "Thirty Only" exploded, "Xi Ti" more than 700 Weibo hot searches, on Douyin can often brush the relevant content of TV series. An office worker who is keen to chase dramas said, "Usually busy at work, there is not so much time to watch dramas episode by episode, and you will know what was played yesterday when you brush Weibo on the subway in the morning." When I arrived at the company, my colleagues were also discussing it, but few people actually read the whole content."
Fragmented drama chasing is not a favorable signal for long videos, and converting the key bridge sections in the play into hot topics can certainly attract the audience to chase the drama, but more and more users only look at the hot spots on social media to meet their needs for chasing the drama, which may lose their enthusiasm for the main drama.
However, this just brings imagination space to the formation and shooting of micro-short dramas, if a drama can brush up the dispensable branch content, highly condensed, short and concise, and self-contained, perhaps more able to meet the needs of users to fragment the drama.
From this point of view, short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou will become the best carriers for the broadcast of short drama content.
Short drama IP can only take the earthy route?
In fact, micro-short dramas have been related works since 2017. For example, iQiyi's "Life Has Taken a Toll on Me", Tencent's adaptation of the webcomic of the same name," and "Don't Think Strange: Video", jointly invested by Station B and Rabbit Culture, most of these micro-short dramas are remarkable in terms of content quality and playback.
But there is one point, at present, no blockbuster has been able to break through the circle and become a phenomenon-level work. On the contrary, the novel advertisements of the son-in-law class have become popular on short video platforms such as Douyin, and the response has been fierce through the secondary creation of station B.
Does this mean that free-to-play novels are better suited for adaptation into miniseries?
It is undeniable that Mi Reading and Kuaishou jointly developed short drama IP, which is beneficial to both sides. On the one hand, free reading APPS such as Seven Cat Novels, Tomato Novels, and Rice Reading Novels can usually only obtain revenue through advertising, and there is a more complete commercial chain behind the short drama IP. On the other hand, the homogenization of short video platforms is becoming more and more prominent, and micro-short dramas will be used as an important supplement to short video content to make the content more diversified.
However, the logic of developing short drama IP and novel advertising diversion is different, and the circle of the Son-in-law series just brings some doubts to the film and television of these non-network big IP.
The popularity of novel advertisements did not begin with "son-in-law". Last year, many users found that every time they brushed vibrato and kuaishou, they would be attracted by some earthy information flow advertisements of "the overbearing president fell in love with me" and "Cinderella counterattacked and hung the scumbag". At that time, in addition to the slightly contrived performances, the biggest feature of these information flow ads was to leave suspense and guide watching users to download free reading apps like Mi-read.
When it comes to the Son-in-law series, the reason why "Crooked Mouth God of War" is more popular than the previous information flow advertisement is not only because the pompous, contrived and magical nature of the performance is "upgraded" to a higher degree, but also because the user accepts the "embarrassment". In other words, many users are going to "awkward", which has a kind of ugly psychology.
Therefore, once the micro-short drama no longer releases itself and becomes "serious", its response may not be like a sand sculpture advertisement, which is easy to fall into embarrassment.
Of course, if you abandon the earthy taste and awkward performance, the short drama IP will eventually rely on the quality of the content, from this point of view, the quality of the online text on the free reading APP has to be used to spit it out. Under the video of these crooked advertisements carried by Douyin or Station B, you can often see someone commenting that these ads looked up, and the result was really to search for novels to see, and then they were "poisoned" by the novels.
The short drama IP is based on these novels, so the watchability of the novel may also affect the effect of Kuaishou and Mi-reading jointly developing the short drama IP.
Can Kuaishou pull the fun headlines?
At the March 15 party this year, qutoutiao's phenomenon of pushing false, gambling and other illegal advertisements was exposed, resulting in the removal of its APP from the app market.
This time the crisis of public opinion is, in the final analysis, a commercial crisis.
Since its listing in the fourth quarter of 2018, Qutoutiao's advertising and marketing revenue has accounted for about 95% of total revenue, especially in the third quarter of 2019, advertising and marketing revenue once accounted for 98.20% of total revenue. The excessive dependence on the revenue structure of advertising revenue and the cost pressure brought about by continuous subsidies have made Qutoutiao continue to lower the advertising threshold, and various three-no products and betting sites have flooded the platform.
From a business point of view, only by solving the profit dilemma of Qutoutiao can we fundamentally curb the "comeback" of false advertising. Therefore, Qutoutiao develops short drama IP and bears more heavy value.
But can Mi Reading become a new source of profit for Qutoutiao? A lot of this still depends on The Fast Hand.
Last year, Kuaishou launched a new feature section "Kuaishou Small Theater", according to the "2019 Kuaishou Content Ecology Report" released by The Kuaishou Big Data Research Institute, the Kuaishou Small Theater has included 1722 sitcoms, with a cumulative number of movie viewers as high as 110 million, with an average of 15,000 people watching each one.
As a head platform with more than 300 million daily active users, the 15,000-person playback volume is actually not conspicuous on Kuaishou, and an embarrassing fact is that the more word-of-mouth and quality short dramas, the more unsatisfactory the playback data seems to be. Taking "No Wonder: Dictionary 2" as an example, on August 26, "Don't Think Strange: Dictionary 2" produced by Rabbit Culture was first released on the Kuaishou platform, according to the currently updated episodes, "Portrait" has the highest number of likes, 2.2w, and 1855 comments, but the subsequent data is not as good as one episode.
Although the short video platform is more suitable for the distribution of short dramas, the emergence of explosive models still depends on luck. Of course, this is only the second, whether Qutoutiao can alleviate the revenue pressure by shooting micro-short dramas depends on whether the micro-short drama business model is opened or not.
At present, there are three main ways to monetize micro-short dramas: platform procurement, short video paid sub-accounts and plot advertising implantation, etc., of which sub-accounts are the mainstream, in July this year, Kuaishou also announced that it will increase investment in the procurement of short drama copyrights, and first promote the sub-account policy. However, although the ledger model has been relatively mature in the field of long video and network, it is still in its infancy when applied to the short video industry.
On the one hand, long videos have formed a stable membership payment model, but micro-short dramas will not be able to cultivate users' awareness of payment for a long time. This is the limitation of the value of the micro-short drama itself, few people will open a membership in order to watch a few short dramas; on the other hand, in the advertising implantation, the short drama itself is limited in time, if a three- or four-minute short video is also mixed with 30-60s ads, users are likely not to accept.
At the end of 2018, Beimu Film launched its first micro-short drama "My Waste Wood Superpower", which had a rating of 9.0 on station B, but the company did not make money because of it. Zhang Yanxi, CEO of Beimu Film, said, "The production cost is not high, and the recycling method is the brand implantation of TCL, which can only be said to cover the cost."
The profit model of long videos has been explored for nearly 20 years, and now it can only rely on the support of paid members, and micro-short dramas must also go through a similar and more difficult process. In this process, the revenue pressure of Qutoutiao will continue.
Similarly, for Kuaishou, it is also unknown whether micro-short dramas can prosper in the content ecology of short videos.
Crooked Road, the Internet and the new media of the technology circle. This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.