In 2022, the heat of going to sea is still continuing, and the online text industry is even more so that everyone can see the opportunities in this field, and in the perspective of professionals serving the release of cultural and entertainment products, the hottest track this year is still one of them.
This is the most downloaded online text/manga reading platform from October 2020 to May 2021, with yellow for Korean apps and apps acquired in South Korea, and red for Chinese overseas apps
First, china's online articles that have entered the 4.0 era still have a large number of pain points
China's online articles have been overseas for more than 10 years, and have now entered the 4.0 era of original content going overseas.
The development process of China's online text
Due to the early layout overseas, China's online articles have also gained a large number of readers overseas. According to the data of Facebook's web comic white paper, the number of overseas readers of Chinese nettext will grow to 49.35 million in 2021 with a growth rate of 24.7%.
However, the process of China's online articles going to sea is not as smooth as we think, and The first thing Chinese manufacturers have to face is the neighboring countries that have also been very fierce in their overseas layout in recent years.
South Korea is a major competitor in the process of China's online text platform going global, south Korean manufacturers Kakao and Naver have acquired the American novel reading platform Wattpad and Radish respectively, and China has "equally divided" the world's top 7 online comic platform.
In addition to market competition, there are also certain pain points in content creation. This is also a point in the Xinghuo Cultural and Creative Service for giving solutions.
Second, translation or originality, is it a multiple choice question?
According to the summary of the Facebook Webcomic White Paper, the main forms of content going to sea are content output (translation out of the sea), creating localized content through signing local authors, and variations of online texts such as audiobooks & interactive novels.
At present, the first two models, namely translation out of the sea and original out of the sea, are the two most important models of Chinese online text going to sea. However, neither mode is perfect, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Reflections on length: Impact on payment rates, DAU, and even ROI?
The most intuitive difference between a translated text and an original text is in terms of length. The word count of a translated text is generally more than 1 million words, while in the local original text, 200,000 words is already a long text. However, the length of original texts has also tended to become longer and longer.
Length affects other data representations for both creative modes. Due to the longer length of the translated text, a novel takes several days to read, so the DAU of the translated text is also higher, but the length is too long and brings certain difficulties to monetize. In a long translation, the author needs to create various conflict points in the plot and guide the reader to consume.
However, local original texts are different, the length is generally short, and the pace is fast, the contradictions are compact, and it is easier to attract users to pay chapter after chapter.
Therefore, from the data point of view, the payment rate of translated texts is generally 30% to 50%, while the payment rate of local original texts is above 50%.
The advantages of local originals are also reflected in the recycling of creative placement. Because the content of the local original is more in line with the preferences of local readers, the elements in the creatives produced are also more likely to "capture" overseas readers.
For example, radish, an online reading platform in the United States, likes to add werewolf vampire elements that are very interested to European and American readers in advertising creatives, according to the data of App Growing Global, Radish has added the werewolf element of the creative advertising activity index (a measure of the popularity of creatives in the App Growing platform) is above 80.
Image credit: App Growing Global
According to Xu Minghe of New Era Culture, the ROI of local original text ads can reach more than 60%.
According to different countries, regions, data models, etc., combined with the team model of each franchisee to develop targeted delivery strategies, providing overseas marketing experts with 1-on-1 guidance and the operation mode of various delivery platform software to ensure that each franchisee can obtain the greatest profit in the shortest possible time, the ROI of the day can be higher than 2.2, far exceeding the market industry level.
There is no doubt that the degree of localization of translated seas is far weaker than that of local authors' original content.
Since the translation of domestic novels overseas is to translate domestic novels overseas, there are often problems of mistranslation, omission, and literal translation. Especially the problem of literal translation, this problem seems to be difficult to avoid, because after all, the novel is a content form with very strong cultural attributes, and there will be many cultural differences in the process of translating domestic novels into foreign languages.
Some overseas readers will discuss the meaning of some Chinese words here, such as white lotus, high-speed rail, son-in-law, etc., and it is necessary to work translation to help enhance overseas readers' understanding of Chinese characteristics.
Although the acceptance of original texts has increased, it also has its shortcomings. Because the content caters to a local audience, the content type is single and the content is highly homogenized. At present, the original articles in the overseas market focus on the romance type, the most common theme is the vampire, which is basically the case on various platforms, and the core of the story is generally the cool text of the big heroine. But even if there is a problem of a single type, "big heroine" and "cool" are still the two points that are most likely to attract overseas readers.
When this kind of content is saturated, in fact, there are many themes that can be expanded, such as adventure, knight, light comedy, etc. are all types that future overseas manufacturers can try.
Original content needs to obtain enough original author resources overseas, and Spark Cultural Creation actively sets up overseas local offices or development partners within the scope of its capabilities to cultivate local creative teams.
At present, overseas fiction platforms are non-exclusive and buyout strategies, so the willingness of general overseas authors to share their works is still relatively high. In layman's terms, "wherever they give more money, they go." But it also means higher costs.
In fact, if we regard each novel as the smallest operating unit of the online text overseas app, that is, the unit economic model, its income and variable costs, relatively simplified, are the user's paid income, advertising monetization income, content costs and delivery costs. Looking further, some of the key metrics are the payment rate, DAU, translation cost/author cost, and ROI delivered.
Source: Facebook Webcomic White Paper
Overall discussion, although the network text to the sea is now in a seemingly blowout state, but in fact, the network text out of the sea is still in a relatively early stage, the next may appear some free platforms, it is also possible with the entry of capital in the industry shuffle, etc., calculate their own account, the content is always the core.
In addition to this, in terms of market choice, small and medium-sized network articles going overseas manufacturers should also consider technical pain points. The most typical may be the payment problem in Southeast Asia, where people in many Southeast Asian countries do not have local bank cards and need to go to convenience stores to pay. The problem of being able to solve the payment step may have a great impact on the payment rate.
In response to this problem, Spark Cultural Creation gives global access to three-party, four-party and localized payment methods, supports multi-currency collection, supports international credit card payments, provides mature cross-border payment solutions, and empowers international operations. Buried in key parts of the application, it can accurately track the status of user orders and avoid the phenomenon that users have not paid for the account.
Third, byte, xiaomi are all in the game, and the network text is the source of IP
If the above multiple choice question is what large and small manufacturers have to do, and the relatively short payback period is the reason for the entry of small manufacturers, then the imagination of the network article has attracted large manufacturers to enter the game.
At present, the online text has entered the 4.0 stage (at present, it can be considered that 1.0 is directly authorized by overseas manufacturers to do content distribution, 2.0 is machine translation, 3.0 is AI translation, 4.0 is local originality), although it is still in the initial stage and there are still many pain points, but this track is undoubtedly becoming more and more mature. At the same time, with the development of this track, some new phenomena are emerging, and the market pattern is also changing.
In addition to the development of small language markets, the creation of content for vertical groups, and the exploration of multi-content forms, etc. are the current directions of innovation for online article manufacturers.
In addition, in addition to the old network literature manufacturers such as reading and palm reading, some large manufacturers are also laid out on this track.
According to data from App Growing Global, ByteDance's fictum and Xiaomi's wonderfic have recently been buying a lot. According to the regional distribution of the two product creatives, fictum's target market is the United States and Indonesia, while wonderfic focuses on mexico, Spain, and Argentina, which are three Spanish-speaking markets.
Fictum and wonderfic feed source: App Growing Global
With the entry of large factories, the competition of the net text sea track may become more intense. At the same time, another important comic book outing has also made great progress this year, Quick Look Comics went to sea early this year and received $240 million in financing led by Yinjian International and One Store in August.
However, in the face of the rapid development of comics going to sea this year, first of all, comics going to sea will face stronger competition than online texts going to sea. The user base of comics overseas is larger than that of online texts, which is an opportunity, but it also means that overseas manufacturers have to face stronger peer pressure.
In addition to facing stronger competitors, another major obstacle to comics going global comes from monetization. The average age of comic book readers is generally lower than that of online readers. According to the survey, teenagers to adults in their 30s are readers of online articles, while readers of comics are generally under the age of 20.
Teenagers' ability to pay is limited in itself, and overseas comic reading is mainly paid to unlock and monetize, which increases the difficulty of monetization. The content production cycle of comics is longer and the production cost is higher, which makes the proportion of content production and returns in the form of comics more disproportionate.
In this regard, now many manufacturers are trying to create IP, to achieve cross-track linkage of content, the Spark Network Article Overseas Plan will screen the first batch of thousands of excellent works of Chinese Online Literature, free translation on the shelves, promote IP internationalization, and help The global dissemination of China's good stories.
So far, more than 20 cooperative literary websites have joined the "Spark Network Literature Going to sea plan", and more than 6,000 works have gone to sea through the Spark platform. The registration channel for the 2022 Spark Network Wenhai Plan has been opened. In the future, Spark Cultural Creation will continue to promote the transformation and upgrading of the entire language service industry through artificial intelligence and big data technology, and realize the restructuring of business formats. To fully empower the digital cultural industry to go to sea, truly bring about a breakthrough in efficiency, and achieve world cultural resonance.