The short drama market is changing, and major platforms have made moves. This article deeply analyzes the pattern of the “four major schools” of short dramas, interprets the competitiveness and development strategies of various powerful forces, as well as the future development trends and pattern changes of the industry.
The short drama is rising again, and the real chapter has been seen between the swords and swords.
According to Tencent Video’s research, the annual output of vertical screen short dramas has soared to 40,000 units, and the annual revenue of producers has reached 12 billion yuan, and the gap with traditional long dramas of 31 billion yuan is rapidly narrowing.
Le Li, editor-in-chief of Hongguo short dramas, mentioned that the popular short dramas that have appeared on the platform continue to release their influence through the quarterly broadcast mode, “After the first season became popular, the enthusiasm of users in the second and third seasons is still high, and the total duration even exceeds that of a long drama.” What is more noteworthy is user behavior – traditional horizontal screen long dramas cover 77% of users, vertical screen short dramas reach 61% of users, and 38% of users freely switch between horizontal and vertical screens, forming a unique “amphibious ecology”.
These phenomena all show that the short drama industry has moved from reckless growth to the era of intensive farming. Behind the prosperity and development of short dramas, a big war is brewing. At the forum, all kinds of powerful people showed their magical powers:
Hippo doubled the guarantee amount of the finished drama, increased the account sharing policy layer by layer, and pointed to the short drama adaptation of animation and variety shows; Seven Cats showed an arsenal of 100,000+ online text IPs, and the tens of millions of prize pools were ready to go; Tencent Video offered a ruthless move of “increasing the daily account by 15% after the box office of a million horizontal screen short dramas”, and rewarded the production label with a maximum of 5 million steps; Xiaohongshu announced the launch of three high-quality short drama tracks: “LOVE Theater” (emotion), “Lilith Theater” (female), and “Sandbox Theater” (science fiction suspense), focusing on vertical content……
In this sword debate involving 10+ platforms and tens of billions of dollars, every player has used his housekeeping skills. Who can overwhelm the crowd in this martial arts conference? How will the pattern of short dramas be reshaped?
01 The heroes rise together, and the pattern of the “four major schools” of short dramas has begun to appear
According to official data, the market size of China’s short dramas has soared to 50.4 billion yuan in 2024, and the number of users has exceeded the 660 million mark.
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At the end of May, Xiaohongshu took the opportunity of “520” to launch “Foolish Love” and became popular. With classic elements of Korean dramas such as “stand-in literature” and “sadomasochism”, the number of views soared by 75 million in 14 days, not only setting a new platform record, but also the number of views of its derivative topic #Foolish Love exceeded 200 million, attracting 190,000+ discussions.
With the official “table” of Xiaohongshu, the power map of the current short drama rivers and lakes has gradually become clear. With their own distinct “genetic labels”, the short drama market has formed a relatively clear pattern of “four major schools”:
The “online platform faction” represented by Hongguo, Hippopotamus, Flowers, Seven Cats, Wild Elephant, China Literature, etc., the “video platform faction” represented by Douyin, Kuaishou, Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku, Mango TV, Migu, CCTV, etc., the “vertical ecological faction” represented by Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Weibo, WeChat, Baidu, etc., and the “e-commerce cross-border faction” represented by Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Meituan, Alipay, etc.
In addition to the above major players, there are also “overseas factions” represented by ReelShort launched by Maple Leaf Interactive (Chinese online subsidiary), DramaBox launched by Dianzhong Technology, GoodShort under New Reading Times, DramaWave under Kunlun Wanwei, ShortMax under Kyushu, etc., as well as “hardware manufacturers” such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
The “online text platform pie” with a large number of online IP is a natural master of content monetization. For them, short dramas are a natural part of the IP ecological chain, from the savage growth of cool dramas at the beginning to the gradual mainstream of high-quality dramas, these platforms are completing the transformation from “traffic harvesting” to “deep value cultivation”.
At present, with the blessing of its own platform, the “online text platform pie” has established a deep binding relationship with users: tomato novels have given birth to red fruits, Dianzhong Technology has incubated hippos and flowers, Seven Cats Novel has launched a short drama platform of the same name, and Chinese online has created wild elephants. This two-wheel drive model of “content + platform” has always given the faction a unique advantage in the short drama arena.
Among them, Hongguo is undoubtedly the “martial arts leader” of the current short drama rivers and lakes. Backed by ByteDance, a traffic gold mine, upstream, Tomato Novel continues to deliver high-quality IP; downstream, Douyin’s algorithm engine accurately pushes short drama slices to continuously drain traffic. This combination of “short video drainage + high-quality IP accumulation” has made Hongguo always one step ahead in the user battle, and as of March this year, it has easily won 173 million monthly active users, approaching Youku.
Hippos are also representative players of this faction. Relying on the deep accumulation of Dianzhong Technology in the field of digital reading, it has rich IP resources and mature operation experience, and has been infinitely beautiful since its launch in 2023. Up to now, its short drama reserve exceeds 10,000, covering 38 main categories and 112 subdivided themes, and continues to expand at the rate of more than 50 works per day, with more than 41 million monthly active users.
In the fierce competition in the short drama world, the “video platform school” is another new force. In the face of the strong rise of the “online text platform faction”, the secret weapons of these players specializing in the video field are different: some have a user pool of 100 million and precise algorithms, some have professional film and television resources, and some have a natural advantage in the main theme and specific channels with the background of the “national team”.
Douyin and Kuaishou, the two major traffic giants, are born to be fertile ground for short dramas, and they have a large number of short video users to build a commercial closed loop through advertising and traffic monetization. On May 29 this year, Douyin Group established the Short Drama Copyright Center to integrate the BD team related to the original Douyin short dramas and Hongguo short dramas, responsible for supplying short dramas to Hongguo, Douyin and other ends, and concentrating on big officers; As a pioneer of short dramas, Kuaishou has created a golden age of short dramas with popular works such as “The Eldest Princess is Above”, and the daily active users once reached 300 million, and now it is making strategic adjustments to seek new breakthroughs.
As traditional long video platforms, Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku, and Mango TV rely on their keen market sense and mature industrial production system, and take theatrical operation as a breakthrough to build content barriers in the horizontal short drama and classic IP adaptation track.
Among them, Tencent Video is backed by China Literature IP and has successfully created a “very short drama” brand; iQIYI continues to lay out high-quality content through “short theater + micro theater” to promote the strategic transformation of iQIYI Express Edition; Youku entered the short drama as early as 2019, building a genre content matrix through “small theaters”; Mango TV has pioneered the practice of the channel-network linkage model with “Damang Theater”, the country’s first prime-time micro-short drama label and the Damang APP, and realized the upgrading of the creative ecology by integrating satellite TV and network dual-platform resources.
As video platforms with mainstream media genes, Migu and CCTV continue to make efforts in vertical fields such as main theme narrative, popular science education, and anti-fraud propaganda.
The most subtle variable in the battle situation comes from the “vertical ecology”. This sect either relies on the vertical barriers built by distinct community genes, or takes advantage of the traffic protection of national-level applications to open up a unique channel in the red sea of short dramas.
With exquisite film-level production and in-depth emotional portrayal, Xiaohongshu has set a unique aesthetic benchmark among female users in high-tier cities; Bilibili accurately targets Generation Z users, uses two-dimensional and campus themes to match the barrage culture, forming strong community stickiness; WeChat uses its huge social network to achieve viral spread through WeChat accounts, video accounts, mini programs, etc.; Baidu’s search and recommendation information flow provide survival soil for short dramas.
As for the “e-commerce cross-border faction”, most of them have distinct commercial genes. The core logic of players in this sect is the same – to efficiently convert content traffic into commercial value.
Taobao takes short dramas as the core of its content strategy, focusing on creating brand-customized dramas to improve the efficiency of bringing goods; Through the deep integration of e-commerce and content, Meituan implants the “Meituan gene” in the work, from Meituan’s takeaway red envelopes to Meituan’s group purchase coupons, realizing the seamless connection between content scenarios and commercial demands; Pinduoduo mainly acquires old dramas, and can participate in “watching videos to get cash” while watching dramas, with the main purpose of increasing the stay time of users.
With their respective genetic advantages, the “four major schools” of short dramas are divided into one side: the “online text platform faction” holds the IP treasure trove, the “video platform faction” relies on the accumulation of the film and television industry, the “vertical ecological faction” deeply cultivates vertical circles and aesthetic barriers, and the “e-commerce cross-border faction” explores brand customization and traffic conversion.
02 The key to victory, how to reshape the future territory of short dramas?
At present, the competition in the short drama arena has entered a new stage of intensive cultivation, and the competition between platforms is shifting from the scale expansion of barbaric growth to the deep game of ecological construction. Judging from the latest trends of several major schools, the industry has shown three distinct trends.
The first is “win-win cooperation”. At present, there are many players entering the game, and in the face of the dilemma of homogeneity, the head platforms have opened their arms to integrate resources and improve the level of industrialization has become a consensus.
This year, on the basis of cooperation with Mango TV and iQiyi, Hongguo upgraded the “Guo Ran Plan” to a high-quality micro-short drama cooperation platform with the participation of the whole industry, intending to jointly create high-quality micro-short drama content by collaborating with film and television industry resources, media resources and other industry resources interested in micro-short dramas, and further consolidate its dominant position in the field of IP development and content licensing.
Hippo continues to upgrade the “Partner Program”, not only uniting 14 industry institutions to carry out in-depth cooperation in the fields of content production and copyright cooperation, but also planning to open 3,000+ popular novels in the Dianzhong IP library and 1,000+ popular scripts in the Hippo script library, and is committed to “uniting all content forces”.
With the strategy of “synchronous development of content and platform”, Seven Cats opens up the entire library IP and sets up tens of millions of script bonuses to attract high-quality creative power with real money; Through the “Hundred Dramas Plan”, Baidu cooperates with China Literature Group and iQiyi to achieve cross-platform dissemination and monetization of short drama content, and has recently updated the “Good Looking Video Express Edition” to the “Good Looking Free Short Drama APP” (currently only available on Android client), which also shows its future ambitions.
At present, short dramas are mired in the whirlpool of content homogenization, and the contradiction between the slowdown in the growth of the sinking market and the rising demand for quality in high-tier cities is becoming increasingly acute. The core of “win-win cooperation” is to break the situation with “quality”, raise the content value threshold through strong alliances, attract a wider range of users, and make the short drama ecology more sustainable.
The second is “content upgrade”. In the context of policy supervision and guidance, the rise of high-quality content is quietly changing the value logic of the industry. The “video platform school” with profound film and television genes has been used as a breakthrough weapon to continue to make efforts in the field of horizontal and vertical screen short dramas (especially horizontal screen short dramas) and classic IP adaptation.
This year, Tencent Video upgraded “Shifen Theater” to “Shifen Short Drama”, and comprehensively laid out the high-quality content track in terms of content standard formulation and cooperation strategy optimization. The platform plans to tilt 10%-20% of the budget of long dramas to the development of short dramas, actively expand the vertical screen market while deeply cultivating horizontal screen products, and build a content ecology that complements long dramas. In the newly released film list, the combination of multiple themes such as spy war, suspense, and female growth and powerful actors demonstrates the platform’s determination to renew the quality of content.
Coincidentally, iQIYI Express Edition is also about to be renamed iQIYI Micro Short Drama, which marks iQIYI’s all-out shift to the micro-short drama track. Earlier, iQiyi shared the amount of 30 million yuan with “Original Sin”, proving the commercial potential of high-quality short dramas. This year, the platform has even offered a combination of punches: the “Thousand Fine Micro-dramas Plan” to consolidate the content foundation, the “100 Hong Kong Films and Micro-dramas Project” to adapt classic IPs such as “Across the Seas” and “A Chinese Ghost Story” into vertical screens, and the “10,000-episode plan for popularizing the law” to expand the boundaries of content. At the same time, the 1-5 minute vertical screen “micro-theater” continues to deepen the sinking market, and popular themes such as sweet pets and fantasy complement each other with high-quality short dramas, showing an operational strategy of combining long and short, paying equal attention to high-quality products and traffic.
Youku has upgraded short dramas to its core business through measures such as establishing a “micro-short drama center” and adjusting the APP channel structure. Its newly established “short drama” channel focuses on vertical screen content, forming a differentiated layout from “short video” and “theater”. Mango TV relies on the “Big Mang Plan” to build a strong content moat. The platform has top IP resources such as Ma Boyong and Liu Cixin, from costume intrigue to hardcore science fiction, and even plans to creatively adapt the classic plot of “Huanzhu Gege”, showing the innovative thinking of IP operation.
The essence of “content upgrading” is to establish a virtuous circle of profit ecology, provide a solid backing for the continuous upgrading of content, and avoid the industry from exhausting its vitality in low-quality competition. The long video platform bets on high-quality content and classic IP, which is not only a form choice, but also a model adaptation – more in line with its user habits and mature membership system, opening up a new channel for integrating the long and short drama ecology and extending the value of members.
The third is “user grabbing”. In the current short drama market, “those who win users win the world” is still an iron law, but the key to victory has shifted from simply obtaining traffic to intensive cultivation of the core circle and the development of high-value incremental users.
Xiaohongshu’s latest move is quite representative – jointly launched the “Red Mirror Short Drama Project” with the FIRST Youth Film Festival, supporting author-type content with a million creative funds. This move not only consolidates its basic base for Kochi women, but also demonstrates its ambition to build a cutting-edge short drama community for young people. The platform clearly positions short dramas as “resonance fields for youth issues” and opens its arms to creative teams with high aesthetics, high quality and high fit characteristics.
The specific cooperation path also reflects the precise operation thinking: on the one hand, it attracts high-quality content through the guaranteed account sharing policy of the three major theaters (LOVE, Emotion, Lilith Female, Sandbox and Science Fiction Suspense); on the other hand, with the help of FIRST’s professional resources, it has set up a dual track of projects and scripts, inviting senior filmmakers to sit and cultivate high-concept works with the spirit of the times. This dual-track strategy of “business + art” is redefining the user value of short dramas.
Station B adheres to the “small but beautiful” boutique route, and continues to make efforts in the three major sectors of charging short dramas, self-made short dramas and streaming short dramas, aiming to directly target the minds of Generation Z users, and is committed to becoming a quality spokesperson for a specific circle. Recently, the platform has tailored the “Second Innovation Competition” for the cooperation project “Jiang Song”, with the purpose of encouraging users to participate in content reproduction, and this unique style of “high-quality content + user co-creation” has given birth to the immersive experience of “barrage chasing dramas”, which is the core advantage of Bilibili’s deep cultivation of vertical circles.
As for Baidu, it has taken the independent broadcast and self-control as a breakthrough to open up a new front in the battle for users. The strategic layout of the platform to produce 300+ short dramas this year is actually to quickly seize the attention of users – to cultivate users’ minds and create explosive models in the short term by focusing on self-made and co-produced content, and at the same time rely on the advantages of technology companies to build long-term competitiveness.
This kind of user competition presents distinctive ecological characteristics: Baidu APP short drama channel forms a synergistic matrix with ecological products such as good-looking videos, good-looking free short dramas, and Baidu Netdisk to achieve seamless connection of users in multiple scenarios. It is worth noting its content strategy – to attract female users to balance the ecology with female frequency themes such as urban and sweet pets, and at the same time consolidate the core male user base with male frequency themes such as immortal cultivation and counterattack, and find incremental space in the stock market. This differentiated style of play is reshaping the user landscape of the short drama market.
At this level, the key to “user grabbing” is to build user relationships and community ecology that are difficult to replicate, and form a solid moat against competition.
After all, in this life-and-death race, all players are facing the same ultimate proposition – how to build a golden triangle of “user circle-content tonality-monetization model”. Just as Xiaohongshu has tore open a hole in the short drama market with the combination of “Kochi women + textured content + brand customization”, the future may belong to those who can find the optimal solution in the ecological balance.
03 A new chapter in the rivers and lakes: rule reshaping and ecological evolution
At present, the underlying rules of the short drama arena are undergoing a profound change.
From the end of 2024, the short drama mini programs that once occupied the mainstream of the ecology began to ebb on a large scale, and on June 17, this reshuffle ushered in a landmark moment – Kuaishou officially shut down the short drama mini program business, and more than 100 illegal micro-short dramas and more than 90 accounts were cleared out.
The business logic behind the ebb is clear: the cost of investment continues to rise, the risk is increasing day by day, and industry giants are directly connecting with the head producer through innovative mechanisms such as guaranteed support to build a more efficient content ecosystem. This may indicate that the historical mission of mini programs as a transitional product is coming to an end, and a more mature and sustainable short drama business model is taking shape.
A clear trend is that the “IAAP” hybrid monetization model is rewriting the rules of the industry. According to the “Short Change New Situation: Dramatic Growth: 2024 Micro-Short Drama Industry Development Research Report”, from January to July 2024, the hybrid monetization model of the micro-short drama market surged by 148%, with advertising monetization (IAA) becoming the main growth engine. This data reveals an important shift: the IAP model, which relies solely on user payment, is giving way to the new ecosystem of “paid + advertising”.
The iteration of this business model is not accidental, but an inevitable choice for the development of the industry. In the long run, the IAAP hybrid model can not only expand revenue sources, but also build a more sustainable business closed loop for content creators and platforms through diversified monetization paths. This transformation is reshaping the commercial landscape of the entire short drama industry and injecting new vitality into the development of the industry.
The myth of the dispute over long and short dramas has also been gradually broken. Tencent Video’s research data at the Shanghai TV Festival revealed that horizontal screen dramas and vertical screen dramas are not in a relationship between one or the other, but form a complementary and symbiotic “amphibious ecology”. 77% of the audience will stop for the in-depth narrative of horizontal screen dramas, 61% of users are addicted to the instant pleasure of vertical screen dramas, and 38% of viewers can freely switch between the two forms – this diversification of viewing behavior just confirms that content consumption is entering a more inclusive and richer era.
Nowadays, the “Huashan Sword” of the short drama platform is the key division after the industry soars. The pattern of the “four major schools” is beginning to appear, but there is an undercurrent: although the “online text platform school” has IP advantages, it is also facing the pressure of content upgrades; Long video platforms rely on IP accumulation and need to overcome the problem of adapting to the form of short dramas; Xiaohongshu and other “cutting-edge” broke the situation with tonality, but the scale and supply have yet to be verified; E-commerce cross-border has shown marketing potential, and ecological construction is still in its infancy.
The 50 billion territory of short dramas is still being reconstructed in the turmoil. The “one super and many strong” led by Hongguo is not the end, and the “disruptive variables” such as Xiaohongshu, Baidu and even Aiyou Tengmang are accumulating. There is no eternal hegemon in this competition, and the future form of the short drama is still in the most exciting writing.
