Author | Mia
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From last year to this year, the popularity of short dramas is still high.
Immortals from all walks of life have entered the short drama: Douyin announced that it has reached an exclusive boutique micro-short drama cooperation with Stephen Chow, and the two sides will jointly develop and operate the "9527 Theater". "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" is the first work of the theater, which was completed on April 24. The play is produced by Stephen Chow, produced by Yi Xiaoxing, directed by Ma Shi, starring Shi Yuanting and Xia Ruoyan, and joined by comedians such as Tudou, Jiang Shimeng, Xu Zhisheng;
A number of "non-traditional" internet platforms have also joined the fray, from e-commerce platforms such as Cats and Dogs to local lifestyle platforms such as Meituan, trying to cut a slice of the traffic pie of Douyin Kuaishou. The competition for the average daily usage time of users is becoming more and more fierce, and short dramas have considerable room for commercial value imagination from marketing to delivery. "Content" can be described as the general trend of platforms. The strong regulation of short dramas is coming, and perhaps in the near future, the short drama section of the above-mentioned platforms will evolve again.
E-commerce platform heavy position short drama
"Jing Shao's Abuse of Love, Wife Wants to Escape", "Rebirth of a Daughter-to-Tear Scumbag", "The Wife of the Troubled Marriage Lady Wants to Escape from Marriage", "The Richest Husband's Abuse for Me After Swapping Bodies", "Hot and Hot Gorgeous Transformation" ......
Open the short drama page of any platform, it is not difficult to find that these short dramas are filled with a strong "sense of algorithm" from the beginning of the title, and the female frequency theme focuses on rebirth, revenge, counterattack, sadomasochism, the permutation and combination of wealthy families, or clearly rubbing the popularity of the movie, which is usually inseparable from emotional resonance. The male frequency short drama uses "God of War", "Emperor", "Son-in-law", "Dragon King", and XX Zun as the keywords, pursuing the ultimate powerful force. From the title of the play to the plot, the simpler, rougher, the better, the strong earthy flavor and the reversal without logic, not only will not dissuade the audience, but it is a cool point that attracts the audience all the time.
According to the data of the new list, the number of micro-short dramas recorded and the number of episodes will reach 3,574 and 97,327 episodes respectively in 2023, with rapid year-on-year growth, and the number of short dramas played on the short video platform in Q1 2024 will increase by 65% year-on-year. The market size of short dramas will reach 37.39 billion in 2023 and is expected to exceed 50 billion in 2024.
From the perspective of the audience of short dramas, the number of users who often watch micro-short dramas has reached forty percent, and three percent of these forty percent have paid for the content of short dramas. Sixty percent of users are male. In terms of age distribution, the number of users over 31 years old has reached more than 70%, and the preference of 41-50 years old is the highest.
In terms of preference, users from Hainan, Yunnan and Guizhou had the highest preference for short dramas. From the perspective of city analysis, the proportion of cities below the third tier accounts for 60%, and the preference is also very high. The new list report summarizes the important characteristics of short drama users as "middle-aged, sinking market, and very strong willingness to pay".
And these characteristics also mean that short drama users are an incremental high-potential market that e-commerce platforms are very eager to reach.
is also online content, the development experience of online dramas and online movies, and the road taken by the long video platform can be used as a reference for the platform layout of short dramas: user emotional stickiness is attached to popular content, not to the platform. With the action of supervision, it is an inevitable trend to move from chaos and disorder to standardized quality. A small amount of head copyright purchase + a large number of self-made is the best choice to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
At present, the three-digit growth of short dramas is still in the initial stage of development of explosive growth, and there are still opportunities for major platforms.
Entering the stage of deep cultivation of stocks, increasing the number of user use and duration is the top priority, and all major e-commerce platforms have taken short dramas as the focus of this year: at the 11th Online Audiovisual Conference not long ago, Taobao hosted a "Zhejiang Good Looking, Taohao Short Drama" press conference, announcing the 2024 short drama support policy, including tens of millions of funds, more than 1 billion traffic, and cooperative stars.
In December 2023, Duoduo Video began to launch the "Duoduo Good Drama Plan" to support short dramas through recommendation weighting, traffic sharing and other models;4month10day,JD.com announced that it would invest 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion traffic to support creators and high-quality content in the field of short videos。
From the point of view of the entrance, Taobao and Pinduoduo have shown more direct attention: Taobao has opened a "theater" entrance on the secondary page of the "shopping" section, which is divided into several sub-categories such as new film recommendation, Taobao exclusive short film, in-depth commentary, and selected recommendation. Exclusive short films are mainly vertical screen short dramas;Pinduoduo currently directly opens a "short drama" entrance on the secondary page of the "Duoduo Video" section;JD.com does not have a direct entrance, but is mixed in the short video information flow of "shopping".
Behind the heavy warehouse short dramas, there are their respective anxieties: content e-commerce has entered the hinterland of shelf e-commerce, and shelf e-commerce has turned to "content".
Cheng Daofang, general manager of Taotian Group's content e-commerce division, has set a target for the new fiscal year 2025: a 100% year-on-year increase in user scale, a 100% year-on-year increase in monthly transactions of anchors with a monthly transaction of more than one million, and a year-on-year increase of 80% in GMV. To achieve this goal, Taobao will add 10 billion yuan to promote content e-commerce operations.
It is not only e-commerce platforms that have entered the short drama, but also Meituan. In March this year, Meituan revamped its short video column to add a theater channel, and in April, the theater channel added an editor's selection in the first column, with selected content being short dramas. At present, Meituan has opened a "theater" entrance on the secondary page of the "video" section. As Doukuai and Xiaohongshu have entered the game to snatch Meituan's local life cake, the boundaries between various platforms have become more and more blurred, and the offensive and defensive fronts of each other have been further lengthened.
The reconstruction of the people, goods and yards, and the supplement of the live broadcast ecology
To a certain extent, short drama marketing can be described as an evolved version of merchants' "short video delivery" and another supplement to live streaming, and short drama marketing is a new form of traditional brand marketing in the short video era. And all the fundamental demands can be attributed to the use of short dramas as a form of content to promote the reconstruction of the three core elements of people, goods and yards.
In terms of live broadcasting, Taobao has spent a lot of effort to poach people across the network, but whether it will be "unadaptable" in the follow-up is a question. According to Cheng Daofang, Zhang Xiaohui, the "first sister" independently cultivated by Xiaohongshu, is about to enter Taobao Live. At 18 pm on April 19th, Kuaishou top Sanda brother and his wife made their live broadcast debut on Taobao, and Douyin's "first brother of wine" La Fei Ge also announced that they would start their Taobao live broadcast debut on April 24.
Previously, many well-known institutions or anchors such as Make a Friend, Oriental Selection, Liu Genghong, and Yuanwang Technology's "Yuda Life Museum" and "Azhuo Tavern" have all settled in high-profile areas, but after experiencing the support of the premiere, the follow-up development is different. Make a friend said that after nearly a year of entering Taobao Live, the volume of goods on its Taobao side has maintained a rapid growth of 60% month-on-month. Liu Genghong and his wife Wang Wanfei ViVi opened the "ViVi Fat Oil Click" account, and the first sales were not good, and the account can no longer be searched. "Yili Xiaoshazi", Big Mouth Girl, Zhu Once, Teacher Xiao P, Rice Cake Mother, Xiao Shenlong, etc. have all stopped Taobao live broadcast,
Skits are an effective supplement to the live broadcast ecosystem. 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. Short videos, graphic notes, short dramas and live e-commerce can form a linkage, with the fundamental purpose of strengthening the attributes of grass planting, improving user emotional stickiness, stay time and shopping conversion rate.
A set of data is enough to verify the incremental market brought by the short drama. According to Taobao Live, in the second half of 2023, Taobao short dramas will begin to exert force, and within half a year, 15+ brands have been cooperated, and 20+ brand short dramas have been launched, of which 10+ short dramas have been broadcast more than 10 million. In 2023, the commercial conversion rate of 12 Double 11 custom brand cooperative dramas will reach up to 30% after the audience.
Douyin's beauty and clothing "white label" has had an impact on Pinduoduo. As a counteroffensive, Pinduoduo uses cash subsidies to make content, and the live broadcast has not been supported, and the growth rate of the short video business is considerable. According to 36Kr news, Pinduoduo's short video business "Duoduo Video" DAU has exceeded 150 million from the end of 2022 to the beginning of 2023, stabilizing at 1-120 million, with a peak user duration of more than 40 minutes, which has surpassed Xiaohongshu in scale, and the user duration has been comparable to that of WeChat video accounts. Judging from the market fit and broadcast volume data, Pinduoduo, which has more advantages in the sinking market, has a degree of overlap between shopping users and short drama users, and may be more leading.
At the same time, JD.com once again focused on content. On the evening of April 16, Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast debut of "Purchasing and Selling Dongge" came to an end. Liu Qiangdong's digital person has appeared in the two live broadcast rooms of Jingdong Home Appliances and Jingdong Supermarket, each of which only appeared for more than half an hour, and the total number of viewers of the live broadcast exceeded 24 million. This live broadcast with no interaction and only output has triggered the "digital human live broadcast trend", and it also shows that the development of live broadcast e-commerce has so far, and more fresh excitement and gimmicks are needed.
In the case that the user's mind has not been fully established, the short drama on the e-commerce platform is mainly intended to divert traffic, and there is no commercial transformation form such as paid short drama. Compared with several platforms, Taobao is relatively more standardized and subdivided, and has launched a lot of self-made short dramas, setting up interactive questions such as "how does this actor act" for voting PK, and the product jump link is either related to the plot or the title brand.
Pinduoduo's main UGC content "savage growth" has a larger scale, similar to the vertical screen mini program drama, without customization and implantation, but in the process of users watching the short drama, there will be a short video with the product link mounted, and you can enter the product detail page by clicking on the link. These items are not story-related, but are generated based on browsing history. There are many Jingdong brand customized short dramas.
In this regard, as latecomers, e-commerce platforms may also need to learn from the experience of Doukuai, such as the cooperation between Han Shu and Jiang Shiqi, and the Kuaishou hit drama "Ten Thousand Scum: Bright Star". The logic and genes of the two are not consistent: whether to sell goods first and then make content, or to make content first and then sell goods, which also determines the inertia of consumers.
In fact, the two major platforms of "Cats and Dogs" have also tried the gameplay of "short drama marketing", and cooperated with Doukuai to attract traffic, which reflects from the side that their "hematopoietic" ability still needs to be enhanced. Jingdong New Department Store cooperated with Kuaishou's popular short drama "Donglan Snow", and before the Double 11 promotion, Taobao and the professional team customized a variety of short dramas, such as "Surprise Story", "The Concubine Drives to All Flash", "The Matchmaker Wants to Love" and so on. During this year's Spring Festival, Taobao Tmall exclusively sponsored a number of Kuaishou short dramas such as "I Open a Bar in Da Song", "Mandarin Duck Break", "Super Sitting" and so on.
When the phenomenal hit short drama appears on the e-commerce platform, it may really mean that this battle has a new starting point.