Mini dramas under spotlight on short video stage

Growing group of tech-savvy young people exhibit soaring demand for higher-quality content

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.