This article is from the WeChat public account: Yiyu Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), text/thick code.
For a long time, Taobao's content-based anxiety has been an unavoidable topic, and recently, its solution has been aimed at short dramas.
In this battle about the traffic of short dramas, Taobao is tackling tough problems from "outside" to "inside".
The title sponsorship of the head short drama in the external market, Taobao Tmall is not soft, "Beauty Comes True", "I Open a Bar in Da Song", "Mandarin Duck Break", "Super Sitting" and other Kuaishou short dramas are closely working with it......;
Not only that, but the release of a number of support plans further highlights Taobao's skit ambitions. At the 11th China Network Audiovisual Conference not long ago, Taobao hosted a press conference of "Zhejiang is good-looking, Taobao is good", and released the 2024 short drama support policy, with tens of millions of funds, over 1 billion traffic, cooperative stars and other keywords absorbing countless sunny;
"Zheli is good-looking, Taohao short drama" press conference
Up to now, more than 20 brand short dramas have been launched on Taobao.
Taobao's pursuit of short dramas is closely related to its exploration of content e-commerce, from Taobao live broadcast to shopping, Taobao is eager to find a field that can carry content in the shelf e-commerce ecology, and now, short dramas have become one of the communication media.
From the perspective of playing style, there is no significant difference between Taobao short dramas and platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and whether Taobao short dramas can ride the wind depends to a certain extent on the degree of cooperation of the brand and the degree of determination made up by the later developers to enter the game.
Under the high fight, Taobao is just a "hot spot" this time, or will it grow into a "catfish" in the market? Can short dramas really help Taobao and Tmall alleviate the "thirst" of content traffic?
Do skit plays, Taobao is okay
Taobao's layout action on the short drama can be traced back to the second half of 2023.
At the beginning of December 2023, Taobao opened a short drama section on the secondary page of the "Shopping" section, called "Small Theater", which is similar to the pages of short drama apps such as Douyin Kuaishou, including all kinds of short drama content and commentary of classic film and television dramas, which can be played by swiping up. At present, "Small Theater" has been renamed "Theater", which is divided into several subcategories: new film recommendation, Taobao exclusive short film, in-depth commentary, and selected recommendation. In Taobao's exclusive short film category, 10-20 episodes of vertical screen short dramas are the mainstay, each episode is 3-5 minutes, the number of likes for a single episode ranges from 100 to 1,000, and the number of followers of the account that publishes the short drama is usually less than 100,000. In terms of content types, it not only includes the sweet pet love orientation dominated by young people, but also covers the family ethics themes of husband and wife relationship and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship that middle-aged and elderly people are concerned about.
Screenshot of Taobao
It is worth mentioning that at this stage, there is not much self-made supply content in the Taobao short drama channel, mainly to purchase the existing content on the market in batches and supply the content in the early stage at a faster speed, but this may also lead to uneven content quality and insufficient original content.
In addition, if you search for "urban short drama" directly in the Taobao search bar, you can also directly find the mini program version of the short drama collection platform, but this is not the focus of Taobao.
At the same time, some income projects known as "24-hour unmanned live broadcast, Taobao short drama daily income of 1000+" have also become popular.
According to reports, the revenue is calculated according to the user's stay time in the live broadcast, and there is a corresponding income if you stay for more than 100 seconds, and the revenue will increase with the increase of the broadcast time. Behind this, there is still a strong demand for content in Taobao short dramas, the pursuit of quantity in the early stage, and the focus on quality in the later stage.
In addition to the content supply, during the warm-up period of the Double 11 promotion before this, Taobao cooperated with a professional team to customize a number of short dramas to help the Double 11 promotion, such as "Surprise Story", "The Concubine Drives to the Flash", "The Matchmaker Wants to Love", etc., and the online products are mostly based on beauty and skin care.
In the Taobao short drama category, the "Selected" label is basically a brand-customized drama, such as "Dream of the Four Seasons" titled by Lancôme, and the product link of "Lancôme Little Black Bottle Glow Eye Cream" has been added to the video, but the page has not yet displayed relevant data such as purchase and drainage, and its product link is also a regular product on the shelves in Taobao stores, nor is it marked with preferential information exclusively for "xx short drama".
The influx of brands into the short drama market has become an inevitable trend, whether it is implantation customization or cooperative hanging chains, brands have unlocked new ways to play. Taking Han Shu as an example, by cooperating with Douyin expert Jiang Qiqi to customize the short drama "You Will Be Popular", it has received more than 600 million views, coupled with the combination of brand self-broadcast + Dabo, in March last year, "Han Shu's official flagship store" achieved a monthly GMV of more than 100 million on Douyin, surpassing other beauty and skin care brands and topping the brand self-broadcast sales list.
Brand promotion and sales conversion are the two key goals that the brand is looking forward to aspiring, and at present, Taobao short dramas have not yet appeared out of the circle, and there is a certain gap with content platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou in terms of originality and topicality, and there has not yet been a top stream in sales conversion.
Han Shu cooperated with Douyin expert Jiang 17 to customize the short drama "You Will Be Popular"
However, beauty is also Taobao's strength, and short dramas are used as a medium to carry brand marketing, and there are still some brands that have found increments on Taobao.
According to Taobao data, the high-quality short dramas created by L'Oreal during last year's Double 11 exceeded 100 million views, the new customers of Samsung's Spring Festival short dramas accounted for more than 90%, bringing long-term grass planting value, and during the Tmall 11 period in 2023, the commercial conversion rate of 12 customized brand dramas after watching can reach up to 30%.
Behind the tens of billions of short dramas
In recent years, Taobao's content-based offensive has become more and more intense, whether it is increasing non-selling videos, live broadcasts, or inviting off-site Internet celebrities and influencers to settle in, Taobao has given double subsidies of cash and traffic to attract institutions and influencers to Taobao.
Taking the "Taobao Live Summer Trend Recommendation Officer Recruitment Order" launched in August last year as an example, according to the rules, trendsetters and merchants who meet the requirements can get a cash reward of up to 200,000 yuan from Taobao, and for institutions that can help the platform introduce trendsetters and merchants in batches, Taobao will also reward additional cash ranging from 50,000 to 150,000 yuan.
Source: "Taobao Live Summer Trend Recommendation Officer Recruitment Order"
In this short drama recruitment, Taobao is also generous. At the 11th China Online Audiovisual Conference, Taobao released the 2024 short drama support policy, including investing tens of millions of funds in brand customized dramas, more than 1 billion traffic support, and uniting popular IPs, stars, head labels, head influencers and institutional partners to create rich high-quality short drama content; More than 10 billion traffic to help break the circle and other details are quite attractive.
Behind this, there is also a close connection with Taobao's internal organizational framework.
After the establishment of Taobao's content e-commerce division in December last year, Taobao live broadcast and shopping teams were merged, and live broadcasts, short videos, and graphics and texts were opened for the first time. Cheng Daofang, general manager of Taotian Group's content e-commerce division, said: "In 2024, Taobao's content and e-commerce will change from addition to multiplication, releasing a new round of content e-commerce dividends. ”
After this top-down business adjustment, Taobao content has also ushered in a certain growth. According to the data, in 2023, the number of Taobao content consumption users will increase by 44% year-on-year, the number of live broadcast rooms with monthly transactions exceeding one million will reach 12,000, the number of new content creators will be 8.63 million, and the number of new broadcast accounts will increase by 770,000.
Taobao content e-commerce ceremony
The state of chasing after content also reflects Taobao's content anxiety.
Together with Taobao's "Theater" channel, there are also other content categories such as "Listening to FM", "Live Broadcast", and "Reading Books".
I want to do anything, but I am not proficient in learning and art, which may be a true portrayal of Taobao's content at this stage, and at the same time, this also makes the outside world think about it to a certain extent - how much determination Taobao can make when it comes to making short dramas so far.
On social platforms, users often say that Taobao is becoming more and more heavy, and the shopping function has given way to the generalization of content, "Sometimes I just want to buy clothes, and I accidentally click on the video or live broadcast, and I can only turn off those pop-up windows in half a day." Taobao's pursuit of content is also a requirement for brand merchants.
A merchant once told Yiyu Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that around 2020, Taobao moved towards short videos, requiring merchants to cooperate in the production of short videos introducing product details and complete the upload within the specified time, otherwise it will affect the exposure of the goods, "The time is tight and the task is heavy, and many merchants are looking for a third-party outsourcing company to complete it, which is also an additional expense, just like completing the homework task, but we can't directly judge what the final effect is."
Screenshot of Taobao
For content, each user has their own preferences, and it is an indisputable fact that it is difficult to reconcile, but for Taobao, increment is the vitality of a platform.
"From traffic to the era of retention", this is the judgment of former Taotian CEO Dai Shan on the current Internet. She once emphasized in a public interview: "The change of the times has forced us to adjust our business focus from acquiring new users (traffic) to retaining old users (retention)", "In the future, we should pay more attention to the construction of content fields, in addition to buying things, we must also use high-quality content to attract and retain consumers".
All of the above, to a certain extent, explains the reason why Taobao spends a lot of effort to make content, and it is also a reflection of the eagerness to choose to smash into the short drama at the moment.
The key to breakthrough lies in "self-hematopoiesis"
Whether it is the content of short dramas or live broadcast talents, an obvious way to play Taobao's content is to "poach people".
At the "Taobao Content E-commerce Conference" on March 28, Cheng Daofang, general manager of the content e-commerce division of Taotian Group, revealed that Zhang Xiaohui is about to enter Taobao Live.
Previously, many head anchors such as Make a Friend, Dongfang Selection, and Liu Genghong have had experience in Taobao, and some e-sports anchors and entertainment anchors have also received olive branches from Taobao. More diversified types of influencers have allowed Taobao's content-based tentacles to reach farther. On the one hand, it is to respond to the needs of the platform to "de-head", and on the other hand, it is to recruit fresh blood.
Luo Yonghao Taobao premiered
This is also reflected in the short drama strategy, some MCN practitioners told One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) that although Taobao has invested a lot of resources in the introduction of short dramas at this stage, most MCNs and talents in the industry still focus on content distribution and platform incentives, and the focus of operation is still on Douyin and Kuaishou, the latter has a greater chance of giving birth to content hits, after all, long-term players of short dramas such as Doukuai have completed the mature stage layout of high-quality, type-based and schedule-based.
At the same time, in front of Taobao, it is not the only e-commerce player who is eyeing the traffic of short dramas, Pinduoduo, JD.com, Vipshop, and even Meituan, all of which have appeared in the aggregation of short dramas, and Jingdong has recently been rumored to take out a cash subsidy of 1 billion to strengthen the investment in the short video track, it is conceivable that the competition for short drama content will further heat up in the future.
In the face of fierce competition in the market, if Taobao short dramas want to break the game, their own hematopoietic ability is very important, which can be seen from the entry of self-made short dramas, and Taobao has also started the work of MCN recently.
Tens of billions of Taoju plans
In February this year, Taotian Group established a live broadcast e-commerce company, Zhejiang Taobao Live E-commerce Co., Ltd., to provide refined hosting and operation services for newcomer anchors who have just entered Taobao. In this regard, the relevant person in charge of the company made it clear that "the whole project is not aimed at profit", but behind Taobao's entry into the game, it may still affect the existing ecology between the anchor, MCN institutions, and platforms.
In addition, the operational capacity of Taobao short dramas needs to keep up.
Just like Make a Friend, Dongfang Selection and many other anchor institutions that have been "poached" to Taobao, after the highlight period of the debut is the peak, the audience usually falls sharply, and Dongfang Selection has settled in Taobao Live for about a week, and the audience has dropped from 10 million+ to about three or four million, and the problems faced by Taobao short drama operations are even more severe.
Screenshot of Dongfang Selection Taobao live broadcast
First, whether it is traffic data or brand customization satisfaction, the benchmark Taobao short drama has not yet been successfully created, and "self-hematopoiesis" still needs to be strengthened;
In the essence of the problem, how to make Taobao get used to and accept its own content and strengthen the concept of content e-commerce is a problem that needs to be discussed for a long time.