Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

In 2024, Tencent Video ushered in its year of hits, with ancient costume dramas still being an important "trump card".

At the end of the year, the show "Nine Layers of Purple," which was not favored before its launch, emerged as a "dark horse," becoming another hit for Tencent Video this year.

According to data, just 8 days after its premiere, "Nine Layers of Purple" surpassed a popularity score of 30,000 on Tencent Video, entering the hit series club, making it Tencent Video's 8th hit series of the year. Director Zeng Qingjie, along with the leading actors Li Yunrui and Meng Ziyi, successfully made headlines, while Li Yunrui gained over a million followers on Weibo within 10 days.

In the fiercely competitive year of 2024, the breakout success of "Nine Layers of Purple" caused a major impact for Tencent Video at year-end.

Historical dramas have always been a strong sector for Tencent Video, but in the past two years, it faced skepticism due to its inability to produce hit shows. Clearly, after reflecting in 2022, Tencent Video is finding its own rhythm by innovating to revitalize historical dramas.

However, as competition among long video platforms enters the second half, the impact of short videos and demands for more diversified content models require Tencent Video and other long video platforms to respond more actively in order to overcome the current bottleneck period. It is not easy to consistently produce hit series, and Tencent Video still needs to surprise the market more.

Explosive hits.

The formula of 'big IP + popular actors' is no longer a surefire way to create hits, and the unexpected explosive success of 'Nine Layers of Purple' is the best proof.

'Nine Layers of Purple,' as an A-level project, is clearly not Tencent's annual blockbuster. From the creative team to the cast arrangement, it does not have many standout features. Although it incorporates popular elements like rebirth, household struggles, and political intrigue, it is not particularly novel with the introduction of other dramas such as 'Mo Yu Yun Jian' and 'Du Hua Nian.'

So why did 'Nine Layers of Purple' manage to break through? Producer Zhang Yingying stated, 'The recognition from the audience is inseparable from the meticulous effort of the entire team. This A-level project actually relies on our usual cast from S-level historical long dramas, as we invested all our budget into production and visual presentation.'

Moreover, compared to the traditional narrative of historical dramas, director Zeng Qingjie incorporated his past experience with short dramas into the shooting of 'Nine Layers of Purple.' The fast pace and strong conflicts of short dramas, along with rapid plot twists, have merged with the quality of long dramas.

The combination of a new director and non-popular actors brings freshness to the series while ensuring high production standards with an excellent team, leaving the audience feeling refreshed.

Looking at Tencent's several hit costume dramas this year, although the subjects are different, they all have strong innovations on the costume drama template.

At the 2024 Tencent Video Annual Release Conference, Tencent Online Video Vice President Wang Juan pointed out that major dramas are showing a 'goblet effect'; it is better to take risks than to be boring; the criteria for judging content are gradually becoming diversified. Regarding 'better to take risks than to be boring', Wang Juan stated that Tencent Video rejects mediocre projects that are 'featureless, innovative, and have no selling points'.

Among the eight hit dramas on Tencent Video this year, five belong to the costume romance genre: 'The Feng Walking', 'The Celebrated Year Season 2', 'The Longing Season 2', 'Eternal Night Star River', and 'Nine重 Purple'.

At the beginning of the year at the Tencent Group Annual Meeting, Ma Huateng also praised Tencent Video, stating that it has accumulated and now flourished over the past year. At the same time, Ma Huateng pointed out that it is better not to produce some mid-tier dramas and instead concentrate resources on producing high-quality projects, because the key to supporting the entire long video memberships is several major dramas; there should be at least one every quarter, if not every month.

After years of competition, the landscape of the long video industry, with 'Aiteng Youmang' as the four strong players, has basically stabilized, where Tencent and iQIYI fiercely compete for the top position while Youku and Mango also strive to maintain their spots within the top three.

While Tencent Video underperformed in the past two years, this year it has undoubtedly become the most glorious platform among 'Aiteng Youmang', as Ma Huateng had anticipated, Tencent Video is increasingly producing hit dramas.

Intense competition.

As Tencent Video's biggest competitor, although iQIYI has been somewhat overshadowed this year, it continues to produce hits, having three dramas so far that have become popular: 'The Wind Chaser', 'The Tang Dynasty Strange Tales: West Journey', and 'I Am a Criminal Police'.

The years 2022 and 2023 can be considered prosperous years for iQIYI, with five hit series each year, whereas before that, iQIYI only had two series that gained significant popularity.

Outside of series, in the third quarter, Tencent Video and iQIYI also began a fierce user competition in the comedy sector, launching two talk show variety shows simultaneously in August.

Once regarded as the least impactful among "iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV," Youku's performance this year has been commendable, first regaining the spotlight due to the hit series "Mo Yu Yun Jian," and later launching several series in the second half of the year, including "Bian Shui Wang Shi," "Zhu Lian Yu Mu," and "Bai Ye Po Xiao," which have all received decent acclaim.

Mango TV, which has a unique advantage in producing its own variety shows, launched the phenomenon-level hit variety shows "Singer 2024" and "Goodbye, Lover 4" this year, generating a large number of Internet memes, continuously trending topics, and even producing a hit series "Xiao Xiang Ren Jia" amid some less popular series.

According to Yunhe Data, in the third quarter of the online variety show dominance ranking, Mango TV occupied three positions in the top five, while iQIYI and Tencent Video each held one position. Additionally, according to Yunhe Data's release of the 2024 H1 series dominance ranking, Tencent Video occupied five spots in the top ten, while iQIYI occupied three.

In the face of fierce competition in long video content, even with a prominent performance, Tencent has not been able to close the gap with iQIYI in user scale and memberships this year.

According to Quest Mobile data, in August 2024, iQIYI and Tencent Video had monthly active users of 0.394 billion and 0.386 billion respectively, Mango TV had about 0.268 billion, Bilibili had approximately 0.219 billion, while Youku had only 0.199 billion.

In comparison, in March 2024, iQIYI's monthly active user scale was 0.401 billion, representing a year-on-year decrease of 19.5%; Tencent Video had 0.397 billion, down 3% year-on-year; Mango TV had 0.235 billion, also down 3% year-on-year; and Youku had 0.173 billion, down 25.5% year-on-year.

In terms of the more closely watched memberships, iQIYI's average daily subscription membership size has dropped from 0.129 billion in the first quarter of last year to 0.1003 billion in the fourth quarter, and it was recently announced that membership numbers would no longer be disclosed; Tencent Video's paid memberships have also remained stable, fluctuating between 0.11-0.12 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 6% to 0.116 billion in the third quarter of this year.

Mango TV has performed quite well in membership expansion this year. By the end of November, the Chairman of the Hunan Broadcasting - TV Station, Gong Zhengwen, revealed that Mango TV's leap plan has achieved significant results, with membership size exceeding 71.71 million, an increase of nearly 6 million compared to the end of last year.

Youku has not announced its paid membership numbers for over three years, and it is evidently under pressure to grow memberships. Previously, the 88VIP membership played a key role in its membership growth but is no longer limited to supporting only its own users; now users can choose between 'Youku' and 'Mango TV' within the gifted video membership.

More than a decade ago, platforms like 'iQIYI, Youku, and Tencent Video' ventured into membership services by offering richer and higher quality content, gradually cultivating the habit of users paying for viewing. During this stage, the number of memberships became a key competitive focus for major platforms.

However, with the mobile Internet entering a phase of stock competition and short and medium video platforms rapidly rising, the growth of long video platforms has basically reached its peak, whether in terms of user scale or membership numbers. Major platforms have begun to devote more thought to exploring new profit points to maximize membership income.

After the release of iQIYI's earnings report in the second quarter of last year, Senior Vice President Duan Youqiao stated that iQIYI's membership business has different focuses and strategies at different stages. The primary goal in the initial and rapid development phases is to maximize membership numbers, and once the membership scale develops to a sufficiently large size, the goal shifts to maximizing long-term membership income.

In this context, long video platforms are striving to create hit content while also working hard on membership rights tiering, paid viewing of derivative programs, advance screenings, offline concerts, and other directions, and are venturing into the currently booming short video field.

The competition among long video platforms is entering the second half, and to become China's Netflix, 'iQIYI, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV' all still have a long way to go.