A sweeping epidemic has made Chinese people's Spring Festival holiday long and anxious, with users staying at home, resulting in an explosive growth in short videos.

According to the data of QuestMobile's 2020 Spring Festival Mobile Internet War epidemic report, the epidemic superimposed the Spring Festival, resulting in a change in the duration pattern of the mobile Internet industry. Compared with the Spring Festival last year, short videos accounted for more hours than mobile games. In addition, due to the substantial increase in user demand for access to epidemic situation, protection and other information, news and information has also risen to 9%.

Kuaishou Technology and Douyin both gained more than 40 million users as a result of cooperating with CCTV and local satellite TV Spring Festival Gala, according to the report.

| 01 | there are more opportunities for short videos to cover silver hair groups.

Some people said that due to the influence of the epidemic, the elderly at home, in addition to watching TV, brushed short videos, watched the latest developments in the epidemic, and immediately pushed one to the next.

During the epidemic, short videos have become an important window for many people who do not leave their homes to obtain external information. According to the statistics of Zhongyun big data platform, the data center of people's Daily online, from February 6 to February 13, there are 36325 short videos across the country where Douyin, Kuaishou Technology and watermelon match the key words of "epidemic". Among them, Hubei, where the epidemic is serious, has the largest number of short videos, reaching 5706. Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai and Shaanxi are not far behind.

As of Feb. 14, a search for "coronavirus pneumonia" on Douyin resulted in hundreds of related topics. Among them, the video of the key word "novel coronavirus" alone has been played 21.8 billion times and 297000 videos; the topic of "COVID-19" has been played 830 million times, 1.4 weeks, and so on.

The explosive growth of short videos has also spawned a number of popular styles. For example, during the epidemic, the short video "everything about COVID-19" created by the paper clip was brushed on the screen during the Spring Festival and was viewed more than 100m times in two days.

According to Qimai data, in the past month, the downloads of Kuaishou Technology and Douyin have exceeded 6.97 million and 5.32 million respectively.

Obviously, short videos have been basically popular among young people, and the new user groups include a large number of middle-aged and elderly people, that is, what we call silver-haired groups. The silver-haired group itself is the latest user group covered by Internet products and the most difficult to obtain. But at present, short video platform ushered in a better opportunity.

According to experts on Communication University Of China, short videos have indeed had an effect in responding quickly and positively to the audience to avoid panic, especially for some middle-aged and elderly people who have learned that "the main source of information about the national and even local epidemic is Douyin." When some young people live at home, they also begin to teach their parents to play short videos. In other words, under the epidemic, the popularity and expansion of new users of short videos for middle-aged and elderly groups will be easier than in the past, and even it will gain access to groups of the elderly that cannot be won at all, and achieve full-age coverage faster than in the past.

02 | the difficulty of short video content production and the increasing cost pressure

Although it is easy to win the silver user market and there has been abnormal user growth, short video content creators face the problem of content production due to the delayed resumption of work caused by the epidemic, which further affects advertising revenue. Graphics and text content and short video creation are highly dependent on advertising revenue, but under the epidemic, many corporate advertisers are planning to cut or reduce advertising budgets by increasing revenue and reducing expenditure. Many advertisers have delayed or even cancelled the ad schedule originally scheduled for February.

However, picture and text content has certain advantages in content production, relatively short videos need to be shot outside the team, picture and text self-media is mainly indoor creation, the impact is less. At present, the anxiety of short video content creators is: more videos are browsed, but fewer videos are produced, that is to say, because of the epidemic, users' demand for content consumption soars, but the external shooting of short video teams is limited.

According to media reports, more than a hundred artists from the MCN Onion Group have mostly stayed at home and taken selfies recently. From the perspective of the industry, outdoor shooting is limited, the space for the production of short video content is compressed, and the quality may be affected. However, the state of users staying at home has also given birth to a lot of life-oriented, professional, tutorial content. For example, the haircut and cutting course offered by Shangyi College, Yang Yuxiao, the 22nd generation heir of Linhai Paper-cut, started paper-cut teaching on Douyin, while Sun, a teacher from Cangxian Middle School in Hebei Province, started teaching on Douyin for free. Douyin is also inviting famous teachers to provide free classes for primary and secondary school students across the country.

In addition, many users also learned flower arrangement, Excel, PPT, English. All kinds of cooking skills. In addition to entertainment, during the epidemic, home life in primary school questions, small skills, practical tips, home entertainment and other content explosive growth. However, it still can not avoid the current situation of short video content industry creation-short video content creation takes MCN as the mainstream, team operation, and relies more on offline scene shooting, most of the business model relies on advertising profits, and the cash flow situation is highly dependent on the advertising market environment. At present, due to the high salary of employees and the limitation of fixed costs such as office space, the capital chain of some short video teams is also in crisis, and some teams may need to consider reducing the shortage of capital chain by laying off optimization staff. The warning for many content creation teams is that maintaining adequate and healthy cash flow is particularly important for survival in an uncertain market environment.

03 | the enterprise ecology of short video platform may open up a new situation.

As we all know, the epidemic has had an impact on many offline industries. In the past, traditional industries are not unaware of this problem-the risk of offline industries lies in over-reliance on offline scenes and venues, although many retailers and brick-and-mortar merchants have previously realized that embracing short videos and embracing new retail is a major trend, but this epidemic will comprehensively strengthen the determination of many enterprises to move from offline to online.

We found that due to the impact of the epidemic, the commodity industry such as cars and real estate was inevitably affected, and at present, online car sales have become a last resort for major car companies and dealers. For example, NIO Inc. Automobile has been broadcast live at 12 NIO Inc. centers across the country, and Volvo has officially announced that its sales model has shifted to online. Live streaming has become a make-up lesson for many car sales.

Let's take a look at real estate. Since late January, real estate companies and second-hand intermediary stores in many cities across the country have suspended business one after another. Under the pressure of performance, major real estate platforms have set up online sales centers. Some real estate enterprises have indicated that they want to learn from Li Jiaqi and Weiya and open online sales services through Douyin and other short videos, live streaming, Wechat official accounts, Mini Program and other online methods. Of course, we know that the house such a low-frequency trading of heavy assets, in fact, not suitable for online transactions, on-site housing and negotiations, trading is an essential part.

But this wind reveals a signal that cars and real estate are the tip of the iceberg of many traditional physical industries. If even the business of offline heavy assets such as real estate is considering making short videos, it means that under the pressure of the epidemic, many traditional enterprises have developed a strong sense of crisis and a firm mentality of online change. This change of mindset has actually brought benefits to short videos, because the short video industry has been trying to embrace small and medium-sized enterprises and expand the enterprise ecology since last year. For example, the upgrading of Douyin Enterprise account and Kuaishou Technology's industrial belt strategy. The author pointed out earlier that the war on the B side will further escalate in 2020. How to attract more big brands and small and medium-sized enterprises to enter their own platform and form a business ecology, Douyin Kuaishou Technology has an uphill battle to fight in 2020.

From the perspective of the general environment in 2019, many industries and enterprises are spending the winter. In the current epidemic environment, more and more enterprises become anxious. In this environment, a new round of short video competition for small and medium-sized enterprises has begun-on February 12, Kuaishou Technology launched a "warm Spring Plan" to allow brand owners to enter Kuaishou Technology stores with zero threshold, and deposit and enterprise certification services will be free of charge. open high-quota technical service fee reduction.

Douyin launched the "no closing online" campaign, offering 300 million traffic support to offline merchants across the country, and helped merchants open up online promotion channels through online group purchase and pre-sale and online live broadcast to share goods.

Overall, the epidemic has given birth to the survival desire of small and medium-sized enterprises. Douyin Kuaishou Technology originally had to make great efforts to compete for and activate enterprise customers, in the current epidemic environment, the enterprise group will also actively consider entering the platform to seek online promotion and cash channels, and it will be easier for the platform to attract more small and medium-sized enterprises into their own platform. The commercial layout of B-end enterprises in the short video industry will also open up a new situation this year.

04 | the epidemic forced the video media to become a video version of Weibo Corp?

The author also noticed that under the influence of the epidemic, short videos showed a subtle change-the trend of media is getting stronger and stronger, and the topic of anti-epidemic has become the standard of many short videos. Wechat, Jinri Toutiao, Douyin, and Kuaishou Technology have all launched contents related to the prevention and treatment of the new type of pneumonia.

For example, Kuaishou Technology and FIGURE jointly launched the [floating epidemic Day] series of documentaries. Douyin launched the special topic "fighting pneumonia" on January 23, and invited several authoritative medical experts to come in to answer questions about the epidemic.

Short video platform has also become a must for the media to report the epidemic. According to Kuaishou Technology's interactive statistics with the front-line media, more than 30% of the media stationed in Kuaishou Technology have sent reporters to the Wuhan front.

In addition, Beijing News, Caixin, CCTV, as well as local radio and television media, newspapers, magazines, etc. have sent reporters to Wuhan to go deep into communities, hospitals, factories, and so on, to report the latest progress of the epidemic through short videos. Take the Southern Metropolis Daily as an example, data show that in more than 10 days, the Southern Metropolis Daily Kuaishou has released nearly 100 relevant epidemic reports, 10 live broadcasts, and a total of 120 million broadcasts.

This is a media trend of short video platforms. In fact, we find that at present, Internet giants are almost all media-- starting from Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc-CL C abroad, they have also begun to lay out the flow of information. Domestic giants such as Tencent, Weibo Corp, Baidu, Inc., and the four portals are all providing massive content to occupy more user time, achieving a wider range of accurate brand access, and media attributes are all becoming stronger.

In the past few years, due to the 140-character publishing and forwarding mechanism, it was Weibo Corp who beat the traditional media in timeliness. Nowadays, with the traffic aggregation effect of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou Technology, it is reaching a wider audience, and it is becoming the first release channel of many traditional media.

Why should the short video platform move towards media? The author believes that this is related to the current profit model of the short video platform, because the profit of the short video is highly dependent on advertising, and advertisers will give priority to comprehensive media platforms when choosing marketing. Giants are developing in the direction of mass mainstream media-strong content and public information production capacity are closely related to a stable business model.

At the beginning, the short video was a place for ordinary users to sing and dance, tell jokes and show their talents. in the current epidemic environment, anti-epidemic media reports and content become the rigid needs of users, and short videos strengthen the timeliness of video news communication. this inevitably tilts the content of short videos from focusing on entertainment jokes to the professional and serious content of the media.

The media of short video will bring about changes in two aspects. On the one hand, it strengthens the professionalism and authority of the first-hand report of the short video platform, and there are more and more content with news and value, which will also make the space for personal and life-oriented content to be compressed. From this direction, short videos may have the trend of video version of micro-blogging. On the other hand, after the media, the advertising plate, which is closely watched by the collective, is more competitive than ever before.

Conclusion:

Generally speaking, under the current epidemic, the platform traffic is growing rapidly, the demand for epidemic protection and information short video content is high, and from the platform to the content creators have the opportunity to harvest more new users. However, due to the limitation of external shooting, many content teams have added anxiety, which can be said to be the coexistence of danger and opportunity.

At this stage, more and more professional teams, film and television teams, and traditional offline companies will enter the short video platform, which will lead to more fierce content competition and more diversified content presentation of short videos. If content creators can survive this difficult time, it will be a sunny day ahead.