Image source @ Visual China
Text | Rhino Entertainment, author | Fat Department, editor| Park Fang
The long video raiders of Douyin and Kuaishou are iterating.
Several recent events are noteworthy. The first is the end of the Douyin variety show "Because I Am a Friend", which is one of the key actions of Douyin's self-made variety shows since last year, showing the characteristics of the short video platform in the incubation of variety content, and the "Baichuan Variety Season" that will be launched has also received a lot of attention before.
It seems that this can be related to the events of Douyin and Kuaishou breaking into the hinterland of long videos in recent years, in fact, it should be considered that the ideas and playing methods of this round of short video platforms to do long videos are not the same.
If the logic of the long video in 2020 is the heavy volume play of betting capital, now it has focused on the characteristics of short videos, showing the new logic of heavy ecology and light volume as a whole, and focusing on creating the final comprehensive video framework.
In this process, the competition of long and short videos gradually no longer pursues the gains and losses of one city and one place, and enters a longer and more intensive concept competition.
Jitter fast layout of the whole ecological chain, what kind of long video to do?
The war between long and short video platforms is fundamentally about the competition for user coverage and use time. In 2020, the two content forms have successively entered the stage of slowing down development and seeking new growth points, and have formed a pattern of attacking instead of defending by attacking into the hinterland of the other side, forming a short-term connection at the content level.
This is also the reason why Douyin and Kuaishou entered a round of copyright hoarding around 2020. The two sides can be said to have entered a capital war. Short videos with better profitability and outstanding cash flow advantages came up with real money in exchange for content.
But the problem with this strategy is that, whether it is self-made development or copyright purchase, Douyin and Kuaishou need to pay a high amount of time and content costs, referring to iQiyi's annual content expenditure of 20 billion, the catch-up action is expensive and inefficient, and it is difficult to match the content and production advantages accumulated by long videos; the second is that it is inconsistent with the viewing habits and platform cognition of short video users.
Short video platforms need their own ideas and operating models to cut into long video content, which is the first round of efforts to bring awareness to various platforms.
Since the end of 2021, it should be seen that the strategy of short videos to long has begun to receive a certain amount of positive feedback from the market. "To You, My New Business Card" created for Zhang Yixing achieved 160 million plays, greatly exceeding the volume of long content of Douyin in the past; the Kuaishou Screening Hall also achieved a daily playback of more than 300 million during the Spring Festival, and the search demand doubled compared with before the launch.
You may be able to see some changes in the way of its jittery long video force. In terms of vibrato, whether it is "Because it is a friend" or "To you, my new business card", there is a strong binding based on the personal identity of the star, and the interaction between the topic and the fans in the station is better, which can be considered to be the part of the variety show that is closest to the logic of the short video for development.
The copyright content accumulated on the watermelon video, if you search on Douyin, you will find that you can no longer watch it in the station but will jump to the watermelon video page. On the one hand, this may be based on the drainage consideration of the latter, on the other hand, it can also be considered that the linkage between this part of the content and the content in the Douyin station is relatively limited.
It is worth noting that these contents do not all come from kuaishou's copyright cooperation, including "The Biography of Zhen Huan", "The Promotion of the Princess Princess" and other content will be found to jump to the Fengxing, LeTV and other small program pages, which is undoubtedly a new way of circumventing the weight of copyright purchase.
If you look at the entire video industry, these platforms that face the increasingly weak competitiveness of Aiyouteng have formed an alliance situation around Kuaishou to a certain extent, and the traffic and content of both sides can be taken from each other to help short video platforms gradually strengthen long video resources and capabilities.
Heavy ecology and light volume have become the common logic of Douyin and Kuaishou in this round of content power. Compared with 2020, the action of short video platforms to force long videos is no longer to rely on copyright hoarding and fight hard with Aiyou Tengmang, but to pay more attention to the combination of content and platform ecology, including commercialization capabilities, and choose the platform path of cutting into comprehensive video.
During this period, long video platforms have shown similar thinking. The pattern of the dispute between length and shortness has thus changed.
Traffic vs content, who will go first into the future of integrated video?
Looking at the strategy of aiyou tengmang to develop short content in the past two years, it is more obvious that it has shifted from the strong support for various vertical categories of PUGC content to the focus on the development of short dramas.
On the one hand, this has the impact of policy changes related to PUGC content, but on the other hand, this actually has the same thinking from the two sides competing for resources head-on to combining their own ecological advantages. Taking Mango TV's big mango plan as an example, in 2020, it will focus on supporting the creator ecology, and last year the focus has been on the development of short dramas and micro-comprehensives, and the accounting rules have been updated at the end of the year.
At the beginning of this year, the industry attention of the love of Youteng Mang's short drama can be considered to be this kind of force entering the payback period. Rhino Jun has previously analyzed that these 10-minute horizontal screen short dramas and 3-minute vertical screen short dramas with jitter are obviously different, and the operational logic such as the sub-account model, theatricalization, and IP are also deeply combined with the long video operation mode. Short dramas have become the main offensive direction chosen by the long video platform for the jitter position.
The demand for power from both sides has not changed. Whether it is seeking growth points in the short term, long videos trying to make up for traffic and monetization capabilities, short videos hoping to enhance user stickiness and content appeal with content, or long-term development direction of building comprehensive videos, all determine the long-term competitive relationship between long and short.
The adjustment of strategic thinking and tactical actions has gradually entered the second stage of the dispute between long and short.
Both sides may gradually realize that high-intensity operations and large-scale arms races far from the comfort zone can only lead to high energy consumption and low efficiency, and such a hot war is difficult to sustain, both from the perspective of willingness and platform status.
The actions of the current long and short platforms can be regarded as the self-adjustment and thinking of this protracted war phase. At the same time, the change of the objective environment is also a key indicator for reference by both sides.
For long-form video platforms, providing better quality content is the core competitiveness, and we must concentrate on responding to user doubts and improving content capabilities, and the two project meetings that have previously attracted the attention of the industry have released a clear signal. This is also why its power short dramas will tend to do 10 minutes of horizontal screen content with higher production difficulties, which means to build a stronger barrier on the frontier.
For short video platforms with traffic advantages, there is actually no shortage of long video audiences on the site, but topical content is needed to complete the conversion. The possible advantage of this round of growth is that with the development of the mobile terminal market for long videos in recent years, the problem of thinking that small screens watching long videos does not meet user habits is actually changing, and Jitter has also been making efforts to improve its technology and capabilities.
It should be considered that this round of action by both sides is mainly a strategy to open new growth points in the short term and break through the "wall" of long and short content, and the focus of the force is to make up for the shortcomings of resources and capabilities in all aspects of platform traffic, content, operation and commercialization.
At present, this is bound to be a longer-term process, and there may be more local battles in the process, forming several platforms that are more and more similar to each other, and accompanied by a series of changes in terminal equipment, communication technology, audience demand and Internet entertainment methods, resulting in the next generation of audio-visual products.
Facing this long-term race, long and short video platforms are learning to accumulate physical energy and achieve survival and development on the integrated video track to retain the position and speed of the future sprint stage. Who can laugh to the end depends on every node of development from now on.