The fiercely competitive micro drama market has welcomed another 'giant' player.
On September 25th, iQiyi announced the official launch of "Short Theater" and "Micro Theater". The micro drama content in the theater is exclusive to iQiyi VIP members. At this point, iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV, the four major long video platforms in China, have all completed their layout for the micro short drama track.
From a timeline perspective, iQiyi is a 'latecomer'. According to the "2024 China Micro Drama Industry Research Report" released by iResearch Consulting, in 2023, Tencent Video and Youku will lead the first tier in terms of the number of key micro dramas premiered on top platforms, with 170 and 163 respectively; The number of Tiktok and Kwai short video platforms is about 100; Next is Mango TV, with 52 episodes; IQiyi only has 15 works.
However, this coincides with a reshuffle in the micro drama market. The head of a micro drama production company located in Chaoyang District, Beijing, revealed to a reporter from China Business Daily that after nearly two years of rapid development, the micro drama market is facing several bottlenecks. Firstly, in terms of business model, more than 80% of revenue is used for investment, and for the largest revenue sharing drama in the market, the profit margin is less than 5%; Secondly, the trend towards high-quality products is unstoppable, and the quality of works in the market has significantly improved. However, this has also increased production costs, and the production and payment cycles have also become longer; Thirdly, the companies involved, especially in the upstream stages of script creation, production, and production, are showing a trend of reshuffling.
In this context, iQiyi is entering the market at this moment. If it wants to stand firm in the changing situation, it must innovate in its business model and refinement.
Play the cards of "precision" and "business model transformation"
From the perspective of business models, the current micro drama market can be roughly divided into three categories. The first is revenue sharing dramas, where platforms share revenue with upstream producers based on ratings, traffic, and other indicators. The top companies share revenue of approximately 10-20 million yuan, but this type of micro drama market has the smallest scale; The second is paid dramas, with an overall scale of around 30 billion yuan, which are the main force in the market.
However, in the split account drama, more than 80% of users' recharge income is used for streaming, with 10% being transaction fees, and the remaining 10% being shared between the production and streaming parties. The final profit margin is only about 3% -5%, "said the person in charge.
The third type is customized dramas, which are fully invested by customers and embedded with advertisements. This type of micro drama has the highest profit margin, but the market size is also relatively small.
From this, it can be seen that breaking through the bottleneck of the weak points in the micro drama market requires finding a healthier business model.
The plan proposed by iQiyi is not to use 90% of its revenue for streaming, as is currently the case in the micro drama industry. Instead, it plans to collaborate with excellent creative teams and allocate over 70% of its revenue to the production team.
In addition, according to iQiyi, they will explore flexible ways such as procurement, customization, revenue sharing, and streaming cooperation in their cooperation with producers. They will also include micro dramas from micro theaters and short theaters in their VIP membership model system. In the payment mode, single drama payment generally has the phenomenon of inconsistent charging standards and high document prices. And iQiyi members do not need to pay extra. In addition to exclusive viewing of long dramas, variety shows, anime, animations, documentaries and other categories, they can also enjoy content categories such as short dramas.
This is undoubtedly a new attempt for the current micro drama market.
In addition, it is worth noting that iQiyi is the first video website to explicitly separate short dramas and micro dramas. According to Wang Xiaohui, Chief Content Officer of iQiyi, micro theaters are less than 5 minutes per episode, mainly in portrait mode, while short theaters are 5-20 minutes per episode, mainly in landscape mode.
The broadcasting mode is exclusively for members and will be launched every week. Micro Theater pays high attention to female, male, and 'silver hair' channels because they can occupy a lot of fragmented time; short theaters are similar in type to long dramas, and we need to find here how to tell a story well in 5-20 minutes, which is a difficult point to solve, unlike the storytelling style of long dramas in the past, "said Wang Xiaohui.
Coinciding with the major changes in the industry
IQiyi's move at this moment coincides with the breaking point of the Chinese drama industry. In addition to the current development status of the micro drama market itself, the trend of long dramas moving towards short and mainland dramas going global is also a concern for the entire industry.
The reporter learned that since 2016, the average number of episodes in the TV drama industry has been decreasing year by year, meeting users' viewing needs with more compact plots and faster rhythms. At the same time, short video platforms that have rapidly emerged relying on fragmented content have also begun to explore the direction of structured narrative storyline content. Paid micro dramas have developed rapidly, with a market size of 37.4 billion yuan in the past year, a year-on-year increase of 268%. The evolution of long and short videos has brought the possibility of competition and new growth space to the market.
At the same time, the popularity of Chinese dramas in overseas markets continues to rise. According to Google search data, the search attention for mainland Chinese dramas continues to rise and has recently surpassed that of Korean dramas. According to AMPD's Q1 2024 data, in the Southeast Asian market, mainland dramas have surpassed Korean dramas in terms of popularity and market share, becoming the preferred entertainment content for local users.
Gong Yu, CEO of iQIYI, said: "The value of Chinese Mainland's content in overseas marketing has significantly improved, and content creators are worth starting to invest energy and focus on doing some content for overseas markets."
For iQiyi itself, micro dramas are also one of the choices to seek its leading position in the industry.
Yunhe Data proves that we have stabilized our foundation, but we do not have an absolute advantage. Although we have always said 'first is not important, only the most important', in our only creative passion, we hope to maintain better, improve faster, and do better. The audience says it would be great to have another 'Crazy Storm', but this kind of popular drama cannot be available all the time, "said Wang Xiaohui