Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Xie Silin
Image source: Qingyu Nian's official WeChat
After 5 years, the long-awaited "Celebrating More Than Years 2" has finally unveiled itself.
On the evening of May 16th, "Celebrating More Than Years 2" was launched on CCTV 8 and Tencent Video as scheduled, and as soon as the series began, it quickly revealed the life and death puzzle of "Little Fan Adult" Fan Xian left at the end of the previous season, and quickly brought the audience into the new situation and changes that Fan Xian faced after he faked his death and returned to Beijing.
The familiar light comedy style and vivid character creation are still the only magic weapon for celebrating more than one year of IP to attract audiences.
According to data disclosed by Tencent, on the first day of launch, the popularity value of "Celebrating More Than Years 2" on Tencent Video Station immediately exceeded 32906, setting the highest popularity value in history on the first day of broadcasting, and it also became the first film and television series in history to enter the Tencent Video Hit Club on the day of broadcast. At the same time, topics related to "Celebrating More Than Years of Drama King" also topped the hot search on Weibo.
Commensurate with the extremely high popularity, is the extremely hot investment promotion of "Celebrating More Than Years 2".
According to the data released by the Douban group "Radish Away", which focuses on the statistics of drama webcast advertising data, "Celebrating More Than Years 2" was updated with 5 episodes on the first day of launch, with an average number of advertisements as high as 9, 6 pre-roll ads, 2 creative inserts, and an end advertisement, "Celebrating More Than Years 2" advertising investment is almost all paved, involving 9 brands such as Tomson Beijian, Chunzhen, Pechoin, Du Xiaoman, etc., with an average advertising duration of up to 136s.
The results of this advertising investment far exceed other popular dramas broadcast in the same year. The leader of the "Radish Go Away" team came to see the monthly analysis of Times Finance and pointed out that "Flowers", "South to North" and "Walking with the Phoenix" are the three dramas with the best webcast hard and wide data this year, of which only "Flowers" is slightly better than "Celebrating More Than Years 2" in terms of the average number of advertisements per set, reaching 10. But if you look at the average advertising time of the set, "Celebrating More Than Years 2" is far ahead, 39.37s more than the 96.63s of "Flowers", which ranks second in terms of duration.
Image source: Courtesy of the interviewee
"The duration of the ad will limit the number of ads, such as the pre-roll ad and the in-film ad, which cannot be unlimited in duration, which will make the audience bored. For example, three creative advertisements are inserted in the middle of other dramas, each of which is 8 seconds, and the total is only 24 seconds. However, there are 43s in a creative advertisement in "Celebrating More Than Years 2", which directly occupies all the time, and the number must be limited. "Look at the moon said.
In addition, Kanyue further pointed out that the advertising position is not the same, and the offer is not the same. In general, the price of mid-roll advertising is generally higher. And judging from the creative advertising episode to change the brand, this position must be contested by advertisers. Judging from this, Kanyue believes that the investment promotion of "Celebrating More Than Years 2" is in line with expectations, and it is worthy of the name of "drama king".
At the level of title sponsors, "Celebrating More Than Years 2" has a total title sponsorship of 7 companies at 4 levels, including the total title Chun Zhen, the joint sponsorship of Pechoin, the leading special Jingdong Supermarket, and the special cooperation Dong'e Ejiao, TCL, OPPO, and Mageli. After seeing this result, a voice on the Internet joked: "Now even advertising sponsors have to compete for positions." ”
The popular "Celebrating More Than Years 2" is expected to contribute a large number of member increments in the future. Taking "Flowers" as an example, Tencent highlighted in its latest first-quarter financial report that popular self-made TV series and animations such as "Flowers" drove the number of paid members of long videos to increase by 8% year-on-year to 116 million. In this conversion, the number of new paid members of Tencent Video in the first quarter exceeded 9.28 million.
Advertising investment, title cooperation, and member pulling, wave after wave of income are still amplifying the commercial value of the popular IP of "Celebrating More Than Years". Tencent, which stands behind the scenes to promote the adaptation of this male frequency online article, has also made a lot of money from it.
How profitable is "Celebrating More Than Years"?
"Celebrating More Than Years 2" can have the current results, which is not unexpected by the market. In November 2019, after the first season of the series landed on Tencent Video, iQiyi and other webcast platforms, it immediately became a bombshell for Tencent to invest in the online drama market.
According to the latest official disclosure data, the cumulative number of broadcasts in the first season of "Celebrating More Than Years" exceeded 16 billion, and it received a high score of 7.9 points from netizens on Douban, with more than 1.2 million people scoring behind it, ranking TOP3 on the whole network. According to the statistics of Lighthouse Professional Edition, "Celebrating More Than Years" has topped the list of feature film broadcast market share on the whole network for 37 days, with the highest single-day broadcast market share as high as 37.04%.
The explosion of the series has pushed up the commercial value of "Celebrating More Than Years". However, the official did not make a detailed disclosure of the investment promotion and membership pull data of "Celebrating More Than Years", but even so, the market can still find clues to judge the value of its IP from the mixed information.
When "Celebrating More Than Years" was on the air, iQiyi and Tencent Video, two simulcast platforms, jointly launched an advanced on-demand service for the show, and VIP members of the above two long video platforms can choose to spend 3 yuan to watch one more episode, or pay 50 yuan to always watch 6 more episodes.
To provide new paid services to users who have already paid to become members, iQiyi and Tencent Video's move immediately caused a lot of controversy, and related topics also rushed to Weibo hot searches. But this did not prevent "Celebrating More Than Years" from benefiting from it, according to Blue Whale TMT, "Celebrating More Than Years" on Tencent Video and iQiyi's advanced on-demand revenue was as high as 145 million yuan.
Reflected in the financial data, "Celebrating More Than Years" has also had a significant impact on the performance of related companies. According to Tencent's financial report data, in 2019, the paid members of Tencent's video business increased to 106 million, and the annual operating loss of the video business decreased to less than 3 billion yuan below the industry. In 2019, China Literature Group, the IP holder, also achieved revenue of 8.348 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 65.7%, the highest growth rate in recent years.
Even five years later, the market influence of "Celebrating More Than Years" has not dissipated. Before the second season of the series was launched, the number of reservations on Tencent Video had exceeded 17 million, becoming the first film and television series on the whole network to exceed 10 million reservations. In addition, in order to help the audience review the previous plot, Tencent Video launched a more streamlined and compact special edition of the first season on May 7, and made a separate advertisement to attract investment.
According to the statistics of the month, a total of 78 webcast advertisements were inserted into the first season of "Celebrating More Than Years", covering 15 brands such as Chunzhen, Xiaomi, JD.com, Daxi, TCL, OPPO, and Tongcheng Travel, with an average of 3.13 ads, a total duration of 555 seconds, and an average episode duration of 22.2 seconds.
As an old drama that has been online for 5 years, the number and duration of the first season special edition of "Celebrating More Than Years" even surpasses most of the film and television dramas broadcast at the same time on the market, and it is almost inferior to "Spring Lover" and "Walking with the Phoenix" in the past month.
In addition to the direct income brought by the explosion of the series, the influence of this popular IP has also been reflected in other fields. According to the data released by China Literature, during the broadcast of the first season of the series, the number of online readers of the original book of "Celebrating More Than Years" on the starting point reading app and the online reading income of a single book increased by 50 times.
At the same time, China Literature is also interested in exploring new models of IP development from more dimensions. In March 2022, China Literature authorized Shengqu Games to develop the 3D MMORPG game "Celebrating More Than Years Mobile Game", which was officially launched, and immediately launched the film and game linkage, playing the concept of "Celebrating More Than Years 1.5 Seasons", shaping the game product into transitional content to undertake the two TV series, and converting fans' attention to the sequel into mobile game traffic. According to gamma data, the cumulative turnover in the two months after the launch was nearly 200 million yuan.
At the same time, Times Finance learned that within China Literature, "Celebrating More Than Years" is not only a film and television project, but also a company-level project. At present, the short drama "Celebrating More Than Years" is already under development, and China Literature has cooperated with Tencent Video to achieve a linkage between long and short dramas to form a complement. The mini-game "Celebrating More Than Years" will also be launched simultaneously with the series. At the same time, offline consumption has also become an important part of IP expansion, and richer derivatives such as corresponding blind box figures, soft peripherals, and cards have begun to be sold.
The layout of big entertainment has changed, and Tencent monopolizes "Celebrating More Than Years"
However, perhaps the most important thing for Tencent is that "Celebrating More Than Years" provides a model for its exploration of IP commercialization.
In terms of IP commercialization, Tencent has been exploring for many years. As early as 2011, Cheng Wu, then vice president of Tencent, took the lead in proposing the concept of "pan-entertainment" in the Internet industry, that is, the incubation and development of IP in various forms based on the mobile Internet. Under the call of this concept, he promoted Tencent to open animation, online text, film and television and other business sectors on the basis of a single game business, so as to build Tencent's pan-entertainment business matrix.
For example, in 2013, Cheng Wu and Wu Wenhui, who broke away from Shanda Literature, jointly promoted the establishment of Tencent Literature. Two years later, under the leadership of Tencent, Tencent Literature and Shanda Literature merged to form China Literature.
Also in 2015, Cheng Wu also established Tencent Pictures to carry out Tencent's attempts in film and television content production. It's just that Tencent Pictures, which lacks professional production capabilities, has not achieved much in the first few years. It was not until 2018 that China Literature, which had already been listed, acquired Xinli Media, a professional film and television production company that failed in its IPO, with a huge investment of 15.5 billion yuan, and the capacity gap was filled.
At this point, the chess game has finally been arranged, and Cheng Wu still owes a successful game to prove his judgment.
As the first in-depth integration of Tencent Pictures, China Literature Group, and Xinli Media, the success of "Celebrating More Than Years" has laid a model for Tencent Pictures to connect multiple interests and integrate complex industrial chains. Since then, Cheng Wu has successfully reversed the situation of internal film and television business fighting separately and going it alone, and embarked on the broad road of copying more "Celebrating More Than Years".
In October 2020, Tencent Pictures, China Literature Group, and Xinli Media jointly held a press conference to form the "troika" of Tencent's neo-cultural and creative field, and created a number of popular models one after another. At the beginning of 2021, "Son-in-law" won 5 billion views in one month, setting a record for the fastest rising drama on iQiyi at that time; At the beginning of 2022, "The World" premiered on CCTV 1 with an audience of nearly 400 million, and the finale viewership share was as high as 15.47%, a record high in the past ten years.
However, in the process, the problem of business integration within the entire Tencent system has also emerged. These two popular dramas incubated and produced by Tencent enterprises were handed over to Tencent Video's competitor iQiyi for exclusive broadcasting, and brought a lot of data and word-of-mouth conversions to them, so that they squeezed the market space of Tencent Video.
Xiang Kai, a young Chinese playwright and director, told Times Finance that this situation can no longer be understood simply by the market-oriented operation with the high price, but the coordination of different business sectors has problems. "If the content produced in Tencent's system ends up being a wedding dress for competitors, then even if there is a monetary return, it is not the most efficient course of action for the whole group. From this perspective, deeper integration is imperative. Xiang Kai said.
In February 2022, Tencent once again adjusted the layout of the content sector, and the main part of Tencent Pictures was adjusted from PCG (Platform and Content Business Group) to CDG (Enterprise Development Business Group).
After the adjustment, Tencent Pictures will focus on the development of melody works of the times, and the original IP film and television development with strong commercial attributes will be handed over to Xinli Media, China Literature Film and Television, and Tencent Animation. At the end of 2023, China Literature spent another 600 million yuan to acquire Tencent Comics, and since then, the development of IP film and television with commercial attributes has been completely handed over to China Literature.
And Cheng Wu has also retired. In June 2022, Tencent Group issued an internal email announcing that Cheng Wu would no longer serve as the CEO of Tencent Pictures; In May of the following year, Cheng Wu announced his resignation as CEO of China Literature due to illness. Hou Xiaonan, who succeeded him, was one of the first batch of school enrollment at Tencent, and has held a number of business management positions such as mobile QQ, QQ space, and Tencent open platform. According to media reports, Hou Xiaonan is especially good at breaking down the barriers between departments and sorting out the relationship of interests.
These adjustments are reflected in the development of "Celebrating More Than Years 2", which is reflected in the change of the production camp. Tencent Video clearly appeared in the first place of the producer of "Celebrating More Than Years 2", which replaced the position of Tencent Pictures when the project was officially announced during the "Troika" period; "Celebrating More Than Years 2" has also become an exclusive drama on Tencent Video.
In Xiang Kai's view, after this series of adjustments, Tencent's layout in the film and television entertainment sector has become clearer. "In the future, Tencent's main focus in the content field will be more on the Internet open platform and be the carrier of content. The incubation and supply of content IP are centrally stripped into the China Literature system. ”