The Internet has developed from PC to Mobile, and then to today's meta-universe, just like stand-alone games have evolved into online games, and then developed into mobile games, with more and more convenient operation and richer forms. The continuous updating of the network form has also upgraded the content industry that is closely related to it.
In the process of iterative upgrading of the content industry, content creativity has surged up, and the content ecology has never been as prosperous as it is today. Graphics, short videos, live broadcasts and other forms are dizzying; creators, media, Internet platforms, and even viewers regard content as an important traffic entrance and compete for it.
Behind this dazzling content ecological pattern, technology is changing, users are changing, consumer mentality is also changing, consumers from the extensive acquisition of massive information, to the pursuit of valuable "content acquisition", the content track will usher in a new "cocoon" upgrade.
01
Under information overload
Where does content acquisition come from?
Information overload refers to the phenomenon that the amount of information exceeds the user's processing capacity, resulting in a decrease in information processing efficiency.
The rapid development of the Internet, while accelerating the satisfaction of users' needs for personalized and customized information, has also produced negative effects such as explosive growth of information, unlimited spread of media contacts, and fragmentation of user attention. This not only makes it difficult for users to identify truly interesting and useful information among the vast amounts of information, but also makes it increasingly difficult to detonate content.
In order to obtain the effective information they need, users need to spend time, effort, and money to screen and screen, and the price is increasing. These massive and mixed redundant content have plunged society, media and users into the mire of "information overload".
According to the "2022 China Consumption Trend Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by Zhimeng Consulting, when using the mobile Internet, more than 80% of users feel that there is endless content every day; nearly 80% of people say that chicken soup is full of circle of friends, and brushing these contents wastes too much time; and another 76.6% of users think that the information on the mobile Internet is uneven, making it impossible to judge. After the information overload, users do not get more valuable content, but rather "the more information the less they get.".
Under the influence of this information dispersion and "inner volume" anxiety, many user groups have begun to continuously seek to recharge the content of professional fields on the Internet, as well as to broaden the knowledge of other professional fields; in addition, under the influence of objective factors such as the epidemic, the use of efficient social media platforms for learning by student-based user groups has also promoted the transformation of knowledge content from offline to online. The public's consumption preference for content began to gradually shift from pan-entertainment to pan-knowledge.
The report shows that "acquiring practical skills" is the content that can best improve the satisfaction of users when using the Internet, followed by "learning knowledge" and "relaxing and decompressing". This session of netizens from the inner volume to the self-drive, the demand for knowledge and skills content is increasing. It seems that "I will quietly work hard and then amaze everyone" is not only a popular meme on the Internet, but also a true portrayal of contemporary student parties and workers.
Therefore, content creators must not only always have insight into the preferences and needs of users, return to content precipitation from volume stacking, pay more attention to the core value and original essence of content, end the situation of winning by quantity and chaos in the content field, and also pay attention to the user's "sense of gain" of content.
"Sense of gain" is not only to broaden horizons and bring help, but also represents the most enthusiastic desire of users for quality content, with extremely strong value potential. Nowadays, the booming social platforms and users' deep demand for content "sense of gain" have resurfaced the law that content is king.
02
Outside the morphological extension
Where should content consumption go?
From the Weibo short article connecting tens of millions of netizens, to the WeChat public account long text brushing screen circle of friends, to the small red book graphic and text planting grass heat is not reduced; from the audience of long videos gradually diverted to short videos, and then to the concept of medium video proposed... The content industry is constantly iteratively updating.
The first is the resurgence of the long-medium-short video game, and the undercurrent is surging. According to the "2021 China Network Audiovisual Development Research Report", in the market composition of the online audiovisual industry in 2020, short video ranks first with a market size of 205.13 billion, and long video represented by "Aiyou Tengmang" ranks second, with a market size of 119.03 billion, and the market size of short video is nearly twice that of long video. At the same time, the huge scale of short video users has also provided a good audience base for the growth of micro-short dramas and micro-variety shows, and the micro-short entertainment that is heavy on the outlet is also ushering in the first year of the outbreak in 2021.
Although the market scale pressure on long video, but short video can not be blindly optimistic, after experiencing volcanic growth, short video traffic has approached the peak, into the long-term application of thin water and long stream.
When short videos and long videos encountered difficulties on the original track, "Medium Video" saw the opportunity to unveil the pole. In 2020, Watermelon Video first proposed the content form of "medium video", which means video content that is 1 minute to 30 minutes long. If short videos meet the needs of fragmentation, long videos require users to consume a lot of time to watch, and medium videos are stitched up, meeting the needs of users who are both streamlined and have a certain sense of satisfaction.
Nowadays, China Video has become a new battlefield in the field of content, some data show that in 2020, the monthly growth trend of per capita daily consumption time of video platforms in 2020 is obvious, and the demand for 10-20 minutes of video content by users has grown faster, with a growth rate of 10.2%, and the media market dominated by PUGC is currently in a stage of rapid development.
The second is the content payment upgrade to strengthen the monetization ability. The emergence of content payment products is not because of the lack of content, but because of the surplus of content. The rise of online content payment platforms stems from the user's desire and anxiety under the pressure of knowledge surplus, which is an upgraded form of content consumption. Although the process of implementing content charging by traditional media in mainland China is slow, with the development of the Internet industry in recent years, the new media content payment model based on audio, video and live broadcast types has developed rapidly.
Such as audio and video platform members iQiyi, Youku, Tencent, Mango TV, NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music, etc.; knowledge e-commerce platform Himalaya FM, get, social Q&A platform Zhihu, content tipping platform WeChat, Weibo, etc., the scale of paid users of these platforms shows a high-speed growth trend, and the market for high-quality content continues to expand.
The current content payment platform has basically formed a diversified content system with both popularity and specialization, covering multiple fields such as workplace, financial management, and life, and can meet the different needs of people in the field of differentiation. Content payment also forms a gatekeeping and screening mechanism, highlighting high-quality content and reducing the time cost of content selection.
Finally, live streaming is evolving, and a new era in the industry has begun. Over the past year, live streaming has still attracted valuable attention from users, and when this technology-dependent nascent thing is combined with business, everyone is marveling at the economic energy it bursts out. Some people rely on it to get rich, some people rely on it to turn over, and some people are dragged into the abyss by its gorgeous illusion.
At the end of 2021, all kinds of explosive news about the live broadcasting industry are sending a signal: the live broadcasting industry needs to be regulated. Under the constraints of norms, live broadcasting as a channel for brand exposure and sales is still important, no matter how much criticism is received, we must admit that live broadcasting as a channel for brand exposure and sales, its status is becoming more and more important. After the player reshuffle, the relationship between the brand, the platform and the anchor will usher in a new positioning in the change, and the live broadcasting industry will also open a new era.
03
5 new machines with broken content
In 2021, the graphic content represented by Xiaohongshu and WeChat public accounts is still full of creativity, and video is still accelerating; in 2022, the volume of content continues to rise, and the content track also has some new opportunities worth paying attention to.
First, the refinement of short videos. With the continuous growth of short video content and the continuous influx of creators, the threshold for audiences for short videos has risen, which is an almost irreversible process. Short videos are constantly being optimized from the core to the outside, gradually converging with the high-quality level of long videos, and refinement has become the only rule for the future development of short videos.
The upgrade of hardware has prompted short videos to be more exquisite in visual expression, so that short videos have begun to move closer to the look and feel of "blockbusters", and to a certain extent, they have refreshed the established concept of "grounding gas" of short videos. In addition, after seeing more glamorous and catering to the emotional chicken soup of human nature under more filters, this generation of users began to pursue more authentic and informative content that can obtain value recognition and emotional belonging. This has made creators start to think about how to use short videos to express deeper meaning connotations, and the intrinsic value of short videos has been valued and begun to move towards refinement.
For example, after Li Ziqi's silence, another blogger who focused on rural life, Zhang, suddenly entered the public eye. There are more than 300 shot transitions in just a few minutes of video, not inferior to the editing techniques of professional editors and the BGM of nostalgic music styles... With exquisite expression techniques, Mr. Zhang not only photographed the simple pastoral warmth, but also photographed the pure love for life that the youth group is losing. It is this "running account" record that allows Zhang to increase his fans by 18 million in just two or three months.
Second, the continuous attack on the video. Although long and short videos have seized more of the user's time, with the upgrading of content consumption and the diversification of people's mobile Internet scenarios, the content needs of users are still emerging, and the vertical content of medium video has also had new opportunities, and pan-knowledge, pan-entertainment, and vertical IP have become the opportunities in the three specialized areas of medium video.
According to the "2021 China Video Marketing White Paper" survey jointly released by Huge Engine and Zhimeng Consulting, 30.2% of consumers will pay for pan-knowledge videos, and more than 40% of consumers will pay for pan-entertainment content. From the perspective of vertical fields, the most concerned by video users is tourism, workplace, real estate content, followed by "education" and "finance", etc. Excellent vertical IP is attracting a large number of accurate users. In other words, content with personality and characteristics is the key to competition in the video field in the enterprise entry.
For example, as the number one player of China Video, Watermelon Video exclusively signed a high-quality creator in the vertical field to build a diversified ecosystem of content creation that is full of vitality and creativity, covering both breadth and depth of knowledge. In June last year, Watermelon Video, together with Douyin and Today's Headlines, launched the "China Video Partner Plan" to implement double incentives at the two levels of creation and revenue, which also means that the next step may be to achieve multi-party traffic interconnection, which will bring a new situation to the watermelon power video track.
Third, the normalization of live broadcasting. From the rise to the participation of the whole people, the arrival of live broadcasting has only taken less than a year, when the wave of all things can be live streamed with goods prevails, brands should also realize that bringing goods is not the only purpose of live marketing, and it is not the panacea for brand survival. For live broadcasting, we should not only see the goods, but also stand at the level of brand marketing to see things farther away.
Under the trend of "everything can be broadcast", brand live broadcasting is also becoming a way of life and gradually penetrating into various scenarios, and new species of live broadcasting such as live exercise and virtual live broadcast are emerging in an endless stream. The brand's live broadcast ability has also become an important factor in marketing and marketing capabilities, and has gradually become the standard of brand marketing. And for brands, live streaming is not simply for sales conversion, but an important scene and method for incubating new products and building brands, and live broadcasting has also become an important part of the brand content ecology. Brand self-broadcasting quietly rose during this period, not only improving the frequency of live broadcasting, but also lengthening the time of live broadcasting, and even many brands and merchants carried out 24h uninterrupted live broadcasting.
Fourth, the ecology of micro-short entertainment. In 2021, various platforms continue to increase the layout of the micro-short entertainment market, Mango TV's "DaMang Plan", Tencent's "Mars Plan", Youku's "Fu Sha Plan", Kuaishou's "Kuaishou Xinmang Plan", and Douyin's "New Plan" have been launched, and platforms have supported creators and created a short drama ecology with traffic and cash rewards.
Users' attention to this content track has only increased. According to the report, 58.9% of video users have seen micro-short dramas/micro-variety shows in 2021, which shows the huge potential of this market. In the future development direction, the video platform can implement the "theater" operation mode for micro-short dramas, abandoning the moisture of "water-injected dramas", which is conducive to the creation of high-quality products; micro-short variety shows can form a unique matrix effect and resonance effect in communication through "serialization", and jointly complete the value transmission with genetically connected programs.
For example, at the end of 2021, Tencent Video released the industry's first micro-short drama brand "Ten Theater", which is the first time that the long-term video platform has carried out theatrical operation of micro-short dramas. "Ten Theater" will not only meet the multi-dimensional interests of users in different circles through cultural IP, comic comedy, hot-blooded heroes, suspense reasoning, costume food and other multi-vertical short dramas, but also broadcast high-quality content in seasons throughout the year, providing users with wonderful and diverse good content through comedy season, national style season, suspense season, interactive season, etc., which also means that the field of micro-short drama has entered a new stage of content matrix layout and marketing quarterly dissemination.
Fifth, the quality of content payment. The entry of large Internet platforms such as Kuaishou and Station B has opened the second half of knowledge payment, and the purpose of these traffic platforms to launch content payment models is to promote content upgrades and increase monetization points. In the general traffic monetization model, the correlation between content revenue and content quality is not strong enough, resulting in content producers focusing more on marketing and publicity, and content quality is uneven; the content payment model adds new profit points for high-quality content, and encourages more PGC producers to provide high-quality content from the mechanism.
For example, platforms such as B Station and Kuaishou have begun to invite experts and scholars from all walks of life to continue to enter the platform to cooperate and promote knowledge dissemination; well-known domestic universities such as Qingbei Fujiao have also continued to settle social media platforms, and the creative subjects have begun to transition from individuals to professional teams, so that content can move towards professionalism and quality.
Therefore, the key to the subsequent development of content payment is to create high-quality content, reject a broad, unguided, and volume-based content system, but take user demand as the guide, produce in-depth content, improve content acquisition and satisfaction, and combat the negative effects of information overload.
Content is always the eternal demand of human society. In the past, books were the carrier of content, condensing the wisdom of mankind, and spreading the civilization of history, so there was such a famous saying as "everything is inferior, only reading is high". Nowadays, although the environment has changed, the world has changed, people's habits of obtaining content have changed dramatically, and the distribution channels and forms of content have long been different, but there has always been one thing that has not wavered, that is, people's demand for high-quality content and their desire to enhance their spiritual realm.
Therefore, content has always been important, but it has never been as convenient as today's channels for monetization, in the face of such changes, how to grasp the outlet of the content industry? This "2022 China Consumption Trend Report" will provide us with a perspective and representative case study for understanding and looking forward to the future content field.