Mini dramas under spotlight on short video stage

Song Jiayi, a 28-year-old fashion magazine employee in Shanghai, loves to binge-watch mini dramas in her spare time, with each episode lasting just a few minutes on short video platform Kuaishou.

Compared with regular TV series, mini dramas tend to have a smaller number of characters, simpler themes and character relationships that are closer to people's daily lives.

Song started following these dramas after one of her friends recommended them to her and she quickly got hooked. "The simple storylines, funny dialogue and tightly-knit plots are quite to my taste and help me relax," Song said.

"My free time tends to be fragmented and short, so the mini dramas are the perfect fit when I take the metro." She is also willing to pay for quality content and recently spent 12 yuan ($1.9) for access to a 10-episode romantic drama.

"I am not picky on mini dramas. I don't pay much attention to things like how famous the directors, actors and actresses are, visual effects, costumes and prop designs. I care more about the thrilling plots and surprise endings," she said.

Song is among a growing group of tech-savvy young people who spend more time watching short videos and exhibit surging demand for high-quality video content. Chinese video-sharing apps are doubling down on the fast-growing mini drama segment.

As user growth gradually reaches a plateau, it is necessary for major video-streaming websites to explore new sources of revenue, diversify monetization methods and offer wide-ranging content to enhance user stickiness, said industry experts.

Kuaishou has accelerated its drive to expand in the lucrative emerging segment. As of October, daily active users who watched mini dramas on Kuaishou reached 230 million, and more than 850 mini dramas received over 100 million views, the company said.

The growth rate of mini drama content creators at Kuaishou exceeded 32 percent in 2021, and these creators have earned more than 1 billion yuan, said Yu Ke, who is in charge of the operation of Kuaishou's mini drama business.

Yu said the post-1990s generation took up more than 70 percent among all viewers of mini drama series. Female viewers accounted for 68 percent, and the proportion of viewers living in first and second-tier cities stood at over 25 percent.

Kuaishou said it plans to offer cash incentives and more data flow support for creators, strengthen copyright protection and carry out cooperation with content production organizations in an attempt to accelerate the commercialization push.

Meanwhile, the company saw the total view count of mini dramas amount to more than 770 billion from January to October. It has also launched paid short dramas on its eponymous app, where users need to pay for 1 yuan to 3 yuan for each episode.

Furthermore, Kuaishou has deepened intellectual property collaboration with Midu Novels, a free online literature platform owned by Chinese mobile content aggregator Qutoutiao. The two parties will jointly produce mini drama series to enrich the genre, attain more users and monetize content.

Short videos have witnessed explosive growth in China. Data from consultancy iiMedia Research showed revenue from the country's short video industry reached 140.8 billion yuan in 2020, up 70 percent on a yearly basis. And the figure is expected to reach nearly 200 billion yuan in 2021.

The number of China's online short video users reached 873 million by the end of 2020, accounting for 88 percent of total internet users, said a report by the China Internet Network Information Center.

As users spend more time watching short videos, the short video production model will continue to innovate, thus driving the development of the digital entertainment industry, said Zhang Yi, CEO and principal analyst of iiMedia Research.

Zhang said competition in the short video industry is set to intensify in the future, and long-form video streaming platforms such as Youku and iQiyi are struggling with sluggish growth in new paid subscribers, some of whom have been lured away by short video apps.

Li La, deputy general manager of Tencent's online video platform operation division, said users of short video platforms are exhibiting increasing demand for high-quality content, and the mini drama is a brand-new field and totally different from traditional TV series in the aspects of creativity, script design and filming style.

Li said it is of great importance to produce valuable and innovative video content which can bring more unexpected plot twists to audiences.

"We hope to build an open platform and attract more creators to participate, and jointly bolster the development of the mini drama ecosystem," she added.

Consumption habits of users are changing and mini drama series will witness explosive growth, Li said, adding she is bullish on prospects for the burgeoning industry.

"Apart from content creation, we have found that viewers are more interested in reading the 'screen bullets', which means real-time comments that appear on the screen. While watching mini dramas, viewers fancy communicating with each other or being engaged in games in such ways," said Cao Rui, head of galaxy studio under Tencent's online video platform operation division, adding that more virtual technologies might be applied in these dramas.

Weishi, the short-video sharing app owned by Tencent, announced last year it would invest 1 billion yuan to support mini dramas, and cooperate with Tencent-backed e-book site China Literature, Tencent Animation and Comics, and Tencent Games in IP creation.

Weishi will offer capital, data flow and IP resources to a large number of content creators. For instance, creators will receive a minimum revenue of 300,000 yuan for a 50-episode series and obtain additional bonuses based on viewer numbers.

The company will also expand its presence along the entire industry chain of mini dramas in a bid to provide users with high-quality content and speed up monetization efforts.

In addition, short video app Douyin has tested its paid mini dramas and users can choose to purchase each episode or the entire drama. Once purchased, the videos can be watched repeatedly without time limits.

Experts said mini dramas have opened up a new window for smaller film studios, young directors and new playwrights and actors, with their smaller budgets and shortened production times.

However, they are concerned that the current commercial model of mini dramas is not clear, and how to make money from the emerging industry remains a problem over the longer term.

Ma Shicong, an analyst with Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys, said the young generation, whose free time tends to be fragmented and sporadic, is showing growing enthusiasm for mini drama series.

The emergence of mini dramas, which are grouped into various genres, is conducive to enriching the content ecosystem of short video platforms, enhancing user stickiness and enticing new users, Ma said.

However, mini drama series may not make money over the short term as the initial investment and production costs are high, she said, adding that major video-streaming websites should improve the production quality of content.

"More efforts should be made to explore diversified monetization models, including advertising, paid content and e-commerce livestreaming," Ma said, adding that it is very likely that paid mini dramas will generate profits for short video platforms.

Jiang Han, a senior researcher at market consultancy Pangoal, said short video platforms have sped up their commercialization push by tapping into the mini drama segment, and the paid business model will help improve production quality of content.

"At present, the quality of mini dramas can't compete with that of traditional TV series. The domestic mini drama segment is still at a nascent stage, and there is a shortage of professional teams and capital investment," said Chen Yang, an associate professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at the Renmin University of China.

Chen said short video platforms have poured a huge amount of money into developing filming technology and cultivating related talent to enhance the entry threshold of the mini drama segment.