Image source @ Visual China
The text | in the table (ID: excel-ers), the author | Zhou Xiao and Wang Huimin, editors | Fu Xiaoling, Min Zhi
In the past year, whether we analyze social platforms, game communities, or review long video platforms and music communities, we can't avoid a "public enemy" - short videos:
In the unified caliber of different platforms, short videos are like a terminator, and "no one survives" everywhere they go.
So, is this really the case? We pulled out all content platforms in a unified manner and conducted a comprehensive analysis of regression data on MAU, DAU and user duration.
From the results, short videos do have an impact on live broadcasts, long videos, and the music industry; but they have a positive impact on information, social networking, e-commerce, local life and online reading.
Remarks: 1. Regression analysis is through data modeling to study whether there is a definite relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variable, and the direction and size of the correlation relationship.
2. In this study, we construct a univariate quadratic regression equation Y=aX+b, where the dependent variable Y is the user duration (or DAU, MAU) of the short video, and the user duration (or DAU, MAU) data of other industries is X, that is, through the mathematical model, look for the rise of the short video industry, whether there is an impact on other industries, and the size of the impact.
3. If the coefficient is positive, it means that the short video has a positive promotion effect on it, and if it is negative, the short video will have a negative impact on it.
At the same time, through the analysis of the theoretical framework of consumer and producer behavior, we found that short videos have an impact on other industries through substitution and collaboration, and the specific degree of impact is divided as follows:
So, how exactly is this achieved? This article will start from the perspective of microeconomics and communication science, and carry out specific analysis.
01 Whether the content is a substitute or a synergy, how to determine?
Starting from the content attributes, we can simply divide the content of these platforms involved in the analysis into two categories: one is leisure and entertainment content, such as short videos, long videos, live broadcasts, and music; the other is specific functional content, such as social, e-commerce, local services, games, information, and online reading.
The relationship with people can be summarized as competition and cooperation, and the relationship between content and content can also be simply summarized as substitution (competition) and synergy (cooperation).
The so-called short video content, the impact on other content - substitution or synergy, is actually the result of the common choice of consumers and producers:
Maximize the utility of consumer choice.
Producers choose to maximize returns.
As far as content consumption is concerned, there are two factors that affect the maximization of utility: one is the degree of satisfaction that consumers can obtain after consuming a certain product, and the other is the consumer's budget expenditure. Let's analyze them one by one.
In terms of satisfaction, from the survey of short videos and other leisure and entertainment content, substituted into the "5W" theory of communication (as shown in the figure below), in the process of communication subjects, content, channels, and audiences, the short video model has obvious advantages:
Focusing on ordinary users, it can stimulate users' carnival and pursuit;
In unit time, the content that users can choose is richer;
Wider base of communication audience and wider scope of dissemination;
Has a unique advantage of preserving local spreads.
As a result, the number of likes and comments on short video content is generally higher than that of other leisure and entertainment content, that is, the communication effect shows that consumers prefer short videos.
When consumers watch short videos, they certainly can't watch other casual content, such as long videos. From this point of view, short videos have a strong substitution for other leisure and entertainment content, and the curve of no difference between the two is flat, which belongs to the substitution relationship.
In contrast, the relationship between short videos and functional consumption content is more inclined to complementary products. Because functional consumption content itself is in strong demand, entertainment content cannot be replaced, but can explore new consumption space through mutual collaboration.
For example, the emerging grass planting e-commerce, through the short video content planting grass, and e-commerce link conversion, forming a complete transaction closed loop, the marginal replacement rate of the two is close to zero.
After analyzing the degree of satisfaction, let's look at the cost.
Because consumers have limited budgets, they can only buy a certain number of goods, and price is an important reference factor at this time. With the change of price, users will alternate between different modes to form a cross-price elasticity of demand.
For example, demand cross-price elasticity can be understood as the price of pork is getting higher and higher, you may choose to buy cheaper chicken as an alternative.
For the leisure and entertainment category that belongs to the alternative relationship, when the price of a party such as a long video rises, consumers will choose short videos with higher cost performance. The functional consumption content and short video are strongly complementary, and the needs of the two are not in conflict, and there is no alternative.
In summary, short videos affect consumer choice through the advantages in satisfaction and price, and then produce either strong substitution or strong synergy for leisure and entertainment content and functional consumption content.
And this point, there is a similar principle on the content production side - with the least cost, to achieve the greatest benefits.
In terms of revenue, the alternative leisure and entertainment content has its own advantages and disadvantages:
Long video and music production, easy to form a scale effect, longer life cycle, but the production cycle is long, the market investment is large, the market response is slow; short videos can quickly detonate the topic, the short-term input-output ratio is large, but the life cycle is short, and the timeliness of a single video does not exceed one week.
In this context, the cost of realizing the benefits is also an important consideration for producers.
For now, under the influence of the epidemic and regulatory factors, the film and television industry has not eased into a cold winter. This may force long video and music producers to abandon the original market and turn to short videos, prompting producers to replace other leisure and entertainment content with short videos.
As for functional consumption content, based on the underlying logic of content production between the two, short videos directly attract users through content, and functional consumption content meets practical needs by providing practical functions to attract users, and there is basically no substitution problem at the production end.
Based on the above analysis, we will substitute and synergize short videos for other content and rate them as follows:
The specific logic is:
For the leisure and entertainment model, the substitution effect of short videos is greater than the synergy effect, and the negative impact and impact are obvious;
For functions and consumption patterns, the synergy effect of short videos is greater than the substitution effect, and the impact is positive.
Let's take a closer look at the analysis.
02 Under the logic of strong substitution scenarios, this trades off
If a person's day is simply divided into three eight hours: sleep 8 hours, work 8 hours, and live 8 hours, content consumption must occur in "life 8 hours". The "8 hours of life" is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation in both time and space.
So, under such a scene logic, how is the impact of short videos on long videos, music and live broadcasts on the consumer and production ends concretely reflected?
Consumer thinking has changed, and long videos have been passively beaten
In terms of long video consumption, in my opinion, when I was in college a few years ago, opening a movie would have a sense of ritual appreciation. Nowadays, watching movies involuntarily drags the progress bar, and it is impossible to tolerate the slow pace.
Under the consumer thinking of pursuing pleasure and stimulation at a faster speed, the longer the variety show and the longer the water-injected long video series, the short video is replaced by a large number of short videos that "directly enter the most exciting parts and quickly intracranial climax in a short time", which seems to be beyond reproach.
Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent and CEO of Penguin Films, once pointed out, "An important reason for the popularity of short videos is the injection of water into long video content. ”
The truth is also true, as he said, more and more users are beginning to get used to chasing commentary or edited versions of long video content on short videos.
Driven by the "traffic = money" demand formula, the film and television content interpretation of short video platforms and related content creation have increased year by year.
According to Kasi data statistics, in 2021Q3, Douyin TOP30 rose in the fan rankings, and film and television commentary accounts accounted for 6 seats.
Users flock to see short videos, and the length of users of long videos is naturally affected. As shown in the chart below, after 2019, the per capita single-user time of long video platforms continues to decrease.
In April 2021, the long-form video platform, which felt threatened, issued a joint statement to protect film and television copyrights, legally defending the rights of unauthorized editing. Subsequently, a large number of secondary creation videos on the Jitter platform were removed.
However, this did not relieve the threat of short videos, because Jiddy quickly began to "buy, buy and buy" OGV content, while increasing the short drama self-control, in order to seek a demand for film and television editing, two creative audience replacement.
According to the "2021 Kuaishou Short Drama Ecology Report", The Kuaishou Small Theater includes more than 20,000 short dramas, of which more than 2,500 short dramas have exceeded 100 million plays, and more than 210 million daily short drama active users.
Of course, long videos also have counterattacks, trying to sneak into the hinterland of short videos by launching platforms, short dramas, etc.
But as far as the results are concerned, the only thing that really goes out of the circle is iQiyi's "Life Has Done To Me"; and all kinds of short video APP, not to mention, after all, many you may not have heard, they were killed.
From this point of view, the threat of short videos to long video platforms may be the norm for a long time.
Divert the stream first and then intercept the stream, and the live broadcast is attacked by the back
Compared with the substitution of long videos on the table, the replacement of live broadcasts by short videos is similar to "boiling frogs in warm water", taking game live broadcasting as an example:
In the early days, short videos and live broadcasts had complementary relationships. For example, through the editing of the highlight clip of the PO anchor on the short video platform, users can be attracted to jump to the live broadcast platform and watch the live broadcast.
In this regard, live broadcast platforms such as Huya and Douyu are of course happy to see their success, and also encourage anchors to absorb fans in external PO videos. It can be seen that many of the game short video celebrities who are more popular on Kuaishou are signed anchors of Douyu and Huya.
At that time, the live broadcast platform relied on the coordination of converting the public domain traffic of short videos into the private domain traffic of its own anchors, and at the same time developed and drained the flow, it also realized the income generation of the platform and the anchor.
However, with the launch of the live broadcast function on the short video platform and the vigorous support of platform anchors, the two have changed from collaborating partners to competitors.
Taking Kuaishou as an example, through the short video to live streaming within the platform, according to the game live broadcast data released by Kuaishou in July 2019, its game live broadcast daily active users reached 35 million, exceeding the sum of Douyu and Huya.
In contrast, after 2019, the pressure on Huya and Douyu has doubled, not only the growth rate of revenue has slowed down, but the number of paid users has also declined.
In addition to games, live broadcast types such as shows and theaters, and the relationship with short video platforms, are also similar paths: from collaboration to substitution (not described here).
The ability to earn money has become unbeautiful, and the anchors of live broadcast platforms have also begun to leave and turn to short video platforms. For example, Kuaishou supported with 20 million traffic to poach the YY platform elder anchor Wu Di Li Ge.
In short, from the consumer end to the production end, short video has formed a strong substitution and weak synergy for live broadcasting.
Music demand, supply, one by one
Compared with the above two kinds of leisure and entertainment content, the relationship between music content and short video is relatively complicated.
As far as the consumer side is concerned, the impact of short videos is divided into two types:
For music lovers, short videos have a strong substitution effect. For example, Tencent Music mentioned in the 2021Q1 financial report that the competition of other pan-entertainment platforms has led to the temporary loss of some mild users.
For moderately and severe music lovers, the substitution effect of short video content on music is weak. However, short videos are on the production side, by enriching music content, to eliminate this problem.
As we all know, the production end of music content provides two kinds of star copyright music and independent musicians' original music, and short videos are broken.
As far as original musicians are concerned, the biggest problem they face is that the revenue is generally not high. According to the "2019 Report on the Survival of Chinese Musicians", 68% of musicians have an average monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan; musicians with a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan account for less than 5%.
In response to this situation, short video platforms have introduced more competitive ways to earn revenue, specifically:
Kuaishou launched a new copyright settlement standard in March last year, which can be directly settled according to the completion rate and quickly arrived;
Douyin piloted the "Douyin Musicians Billion Yuan Subsidy Plan", allowing more than 80% of signed musicians to receive music subsidy income.
According to an interview with Zhang Zhiyuan, songwriter of "The Most Beautiful Boy on This Street", its revenue on the short video platform has accounted for 60% of the company's copyright revenue, exceeding the TME audio platform.
Attracted by better immediate revenue, according to Fastdata data, 80% of musicians in 2021Q3 will choose short videos for promotion.
For a long time, the impact of short videos on music copyrighted by record companies is actually collaborative diversion.
The simple explanation is that the user finds good music through short videos, and then goes to the music platform to search for the corresponding songs.
Up to now, many songs have become blockbusters due to the reinterpretation of short videos. For example, "The Wind Rises", "Mohe Ballroom", etc., of which "The Wind Rises" rushed to the second place in the "Cool Dog TOP500" list.
But nowadays, short video platforms are not willing to divert traffic for music platforms. Douyin and Kuaishou have accelerated cooperation with music copyright companies and built their own music platforms to intercept users.
In the face of increasing substitution from both the production and consumer ends, since 2019Q2, the average number of monthly uses and usage hours of online music APP users have continued to decline.
In order to cope with the "erosion" of short video platforms, Tencent Music and Kugou Music Kai also began to support music-based short video creation to make up for the content ecology. For example, Kugou Music has launched a vertical screen MV, which can slide up and down to watch short videos without destroying the music listening experience.
This has had some effect. The data shows that the daily video views of 2021Q3QQ Music reached 100 million, and the daily independent visits reached 1.8 million, achieving triple-digit growth.
However, the fundamental logic of short videos to replace weak collaboration with music still has no fundamental change.
In summary, in terms of exporting as a time to consume fragments, short videos, whether they are production or consumption, have a strong substitution effect on long videos, music and live broadcasts that are also leisure and entertainment content, thus presenting a situation of "one trade and the other".
However, in terms of complementary functional consumption content, it is a different scene.
03 "Just need" is difficult to shake, but can not fight to join
For other leisure and entertainment content, short videos that are almost "to the death virus" and functional consumer content often collide with the spark of evolution.
User portrait deviation, integrated with information tricks
You may often brush up on the hot news reports on Douyin, mistakenly thinking that the short video platform has become an important news information broadcasting place, but in fact, it is not.
The data shows that the users of consumer information are mainly middle-aged and elderly men. This is a big deviation from the short video user portraits dominated by young people.
At the same time, the demand for consumer content of the two is also different, short videos are mainly leisure and entertainment, and information is to understand current events and increase insights. Therefore, from the perspective of consumption, the substitution of the two is medium and weak.
Contrary to substitution, short videos are highly complementary to information.
On the one hand, compared with the traditional form of graphic information display, users prefer the presentation of short videos; on the other hand, in terms of content production, an almost "live broadcast" video spreads faster than traditional forms of graphics and texts, and the content is more three-dimensional and rich.
Based on this, the major information platforms even before the outbreak of short video platforms, opened the pattern of integration with short videos.
For example, at the end of 2014, Xinhua Launch launched a "second video"; in September 2016, the Beijing News launched "Our Video" to present information in the form of a short video.
In addition, there are professional information short videos such as Pear Video, an information platform launched in November 2016.
When the rise of Douyin and Kuaishou, authoritative official accounts such as People's Daily and CCTV News, as well as various media, have also settled in.
Through in-depth mutual synergy, it can be seen that with the growth of short video usage time, the average daily use time of comprehensive news and other information content has also increased significantly.
The strong synergy effect of short videos is more deeply reflected in the game industry.
Short video publicity, the new purchase of game providers
At the consumption level, it is difficult for short videos to replace the game itself, after all, no matter how long the video is brushed, it cannot get the game experience. Instead, watching other players' highlight moments can stimulate their own interest in playing games.
Such demand, coupled with the traffic of short video platforms, allows game providers to explore new buying entrances.
Previously, due to the operation of channels such as the Android mobile app store, Apple Store, and TapTap, the publicity channel was monopolized. Gamers have to contribute most of their revenue to channel operators – 50% of the Android App Store and 30% of Apple's channels.
Under the huge share of expenditure, manufacturers have become the "hit workers" of channel providers. The miserable game providers can only look at external channels. The short video channels with huge traffic dividends and low-cost customer acquisition are one of them.
According to Dataeye monitoring data, in 2020, the cultivation game "The Strongest Snail" announced the re-injection of short videos, and the maximum number of materials released in a single day was 1500 groups. Among them, Douyin was online for 7 days, and the total exposure of its hashtag videos exceeded 3.7 billion.
Under the "centralized bombardment" of unified and diversified video content, the game "became a hit", less than two weeks after its launch, the flow exceeded 200 million, and the product gameplay and publicity mode have also become a model in the industry.
Such feedback effect makes short video publicity more and more favored by game vendors.
In the figure below, APP Growing data shows that the proportion of video forms in game purchases is the largest, and it has gradually increased - from 53.1% in 2020Q1 to 78.8% in 2021H1.
Under the coordinated publicity of short videos, channel costs are reduced and conversion rates are increased, and game providers can spend more money on game research and development, and promote the positive development of games from the supply side.
Social platforms: public domain, private domain state two poles
Generally speaking, mobile social networking is divided into two types: private domain social and public domain social, the former is represented by WeChat, QQ, etc., and the latter has Weibo, Xiaohongshu and so on.
How much private domain social networking is just needed, just look at WeChat to know, so short videos are not alternative to it.
However, due to the limited time of a single user, short videos do have some impact on private domain social networking. As shown below, the total user time of the Toutiao and Kuaishou systems increased from 12% in 2017 to 24% in 2020, while the user time of the Tencent system decreased from 54% to 40%.
In order to regain the attention of users, private domain social platforms have made efforts to make short videos - such as WeChat has opened a video number, QQ has also built-in points of view, trying to increase user stickiness through internal collaboration.
Taking the WeChat video account as an example, since its launch on January 22, 2020, it has iterated 33 times in one year and added more than 40 new functions. Under strong operation, by the end of 2020, the video number DAU will reach 280 million.
In March 2021, the public account and the video number were opened in both directions to achieve traffic coordination. With the extension of the private domain to the public domain, the platform has also been able to explore more diversified monetization forms.
According to the 2021 WeChat Advertising Ecology Partner Conference, there are thousands of video accounts that advertise and promote every day, of which more than 40% continue to reinvest, and the monthly growth rate of the overall advertising consumption scale exceeds 50%.
From this point of view, the synergistic effect of short videos on private domain social networking is much greater than the competitive effect.
However, for public domain social platforms, this does not seem to be the case.
Taking Weibo as an example, as an open social platform, there are three main types of content consumption of Weibo by users:
1. Media and entertainment, providing vertical content ranging from public opinion gossip to professional knowledge to meet the entertainment needs of users;
Second, social communication, for a certain topic, everyone can freely comment and communicate;
3. News information, providing instant news, official attitudes, statements by parties and other content.
For the first two types of content, short videos have a strong alternative. The third type of content, because the two types of platforms are competitive, similar content has a strong competitive relationship.
In addition to the substitution of content consumption, the distribution mechanism of Weibo has also accelerated the substitution effect of content production.
Weibo implements a head- and topic-oriented distribution mechanism, which makes the proportion of head accounts under each vertical content relatively large.
According to Clarey data, under the 9 main vertical contents such as maternal and infant parent-child, celebrity, fashion, and beauty, the content of the Weibo head account ranks first, far exceeding Jitter.
Such a centralized content system not only promotes the trend of buying traffic to create a head, making the real ROI of advertising suspicious, but also leads to the Matthew effect and compresses the income space of small and medium-sized creators.
The "interest-oriented" algorithm mechanism of short videos can not only give small and medium-sized creators more traffic exposure, but also achieve more accurate advertising push. In this way, it seems self-evident who the advertiser will choose.
It can be seen that in terms of business, from 2018 to 2020, the number of advertisers on Weibo continued to lose: from 2.9 million to 1.6 million.
Lagging financial data also verifies the situation. Whether it is KA or SME revenue, the growth rate has continued to decline since 2018, and that is when short videos are rising.
What's more, after 2020Q1, SME advertising revenue showed a negative growth trend. The side also illustrates the raid of short videos on the performance advertising market.
In the face of the impact, Weibo has also responded - launching short videos to enrich its content ecology and retain advertisers.
However, due to the fact that the distribution mechanism has not changed fundamentally, after the layout of short videos, algorithm recommendations are lacking, and the synergy effect on advertising ROI is limited. Under the weak synergy, Weibo failed to reverse the poor advertising revenue.
E-commerce and local life, from simple diversion to closed-loop transactions
Compared with the above industries, e-commerce and local life are just needed. Watching short videos instead of "buying, buying, eating and eating", it is impossible to think. On the contrary, the grass planting culture relying on short videos has gradually risen, further shortening the transaction chain and highlighting strong synergy effects.
The logic behind it is that KOL can dig out the diverse needs of users by planting grass on the content of short video platforms. After that, under the higher exposure and feeding efficiency, the huge traffic pool and high viscosity users of the short video platform were converted into purchasing power.
Seeing this, the e-commerce platform not only lays out its own short video, but also actively cooperates with the short video platform to divert traffic for itself.
According to Ai Media Consulting, the conversion rate of short video with goods is as high as 40%. In 2020, the GMV that jumped to e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Taobao through Douyin alone will exceed 300 billion yuan.
However, such a strong fertilizer water flowed into the field of outsiders, the short video platform could not sit still, and began to do e-commerce closed loop against the trend:
Product side: Douyin vigorously supports the brand side of the vertical product, expands and refines the SKU;
Supply chain side: Kuaishou launched the Kuaishou Alliance in May 2020 and launched the small shop star function in October 2021; Douyin built a live broadcast base to cut off third-party links except Taobao Jingdong;
Payment end: Douyin acquired the payment license in October 2020 and launched the payment system through the red envelope campaign during the Spring Festival in 2021.
Under a series of layouts, short videos have gradually departed from the dependence on third-party e-commerce platforms.
The data shows that the GMV contributed by Kuaishou Xiaodian in 2021Q3 has accounted for 90% of the total GMV of the platform.
The synergy with short videos has tapped the new consumer demand of the e-commerce industry to a certain extent, and further stimulated the growth potential of the field. With the short video platform entering the e-commerce, the entire industry pattern may face a reshuffle.
This, in terms of local life, has a similar trajectory.
On the Jitter platform, vertical fields such as food, tourism, and leisure and entertainment have gathered a large number of talented people to explore the store content. Its synergistic effect on local life is reflected in the fact that watching these local delicacies plant grass, users will often change their hearts and actions, through the jitter to buy coupons, go to the store to pull grass.
But the short video platform itself is not satisfied with just planting grass, but began to expand the entire transaction chain:
In July 2021, Douyin increased its local life and tested "Heartbeat Takeaway" to create the third takeaway platform after Meituan Hungry. In August of the same year, Heytea and KFC moved in successively.
On December 27, 2021, Kuaishou and Meituan officially announced strategic cooperation, and some catering categories have been launched, and other local life-related services have been followed up.
After entering the local life, it remains to be seen whether the short video platform can grab some of the cake.
Expand your online reading monetization pathways
On the consumer side, it may be difficult for users of short videos and online reading to have a common discourse.
One has become accustomed to passively accepting content under the long-term algorithm feeding; one actively engages in immersive reading and enjoys the baptism of the soul. It's hard for them to understand each other, let alone like what the other person likes, so substitution is weak.
However, short video book introduction and book commentary, although not a substitute for online reading, can have a certain synergistic impact on online reading.
Taking the book recommendation video as an example, the video display mode can attract users' curiosity about the content of the book with vivid pictures, thus driving the reading demand of the original work.
On TikTok, for example, the book recommendation tag (#BookTok) has been viewed 5.8 billion times by April 2021, which has spawned new bestsellers, and some authors' works from decades ago will explode due to recommendations on BookTok after a long period of disappearance.
At the same time, it also affects the innovation of the entire publishing industry's marketing landscape. For example, the official website of Barnes & Noble Bookstore has opened a special page called "BookTok", which is dedicated to displaying the most popular books on TikTok.
In an interview with The New York Times, the head of Barnes & Noble's book business, said: "We have never seen any other social media platform that can produce such a crazy cargo effect, selling tens of thousands of books a month." ”
In addition, the synergy of short videos to online reading is also reflected in the adaptation of IP short dramas and the expansion of commercialization channels.
As shown below, in September 2020, the free online text platform MiYan reached a strategic cooperation with Kuaishou to develop IP adaptation short dramas. The first online "Power Pet Diao Fei", the total number of plays on the whole network exceeded 400 million, and it repeatedly topped the top of the hottest list of the Kuaishou Small Theater in a single day.
Such an IP incubation model, for the network text platform, can avoid the traditional IP adaptation of movies, TV series, incubation cycle is long, generally takes 3-4 years; heavy capital investment, often invest hundreds of millions of shackles, open up new ideas for IP incubation. For short video platforms, it solves the content source of short dramas and accelerates the development of platform short dramas. There is good synergy between the two sides.
brief summary
If, through the book "Entertainment to Death", Neil Bozeman, who criticizes human beings who are willing to become an entertainment vassal, is still alive, it must not be imagined that more than 30 years after the publication of the book, the world has evolved short videos, which are more "to death" entertainment mediums than television and any previous carrier.
Under the common choice of consumers and producers, short videos strongly replace other leisure and entertainment models, quickly occupying people's fragmented time, and creating new consumption space through the synergy of functional consumer content, such as e-commerce and online reading.
People voluntarily participate in the process of short videos changing the content ecology, and whether these changes bring endless happiness or intellectual disasters caused by entertainment; whether they are more convenient lives, or consumerism traps, perhaps yet to be written by another Neil Bozeman.