In the first quarter of 2024, in the absence of phenomenon level drama products like "Fury" that drove the market in the same period last year, data from multiple third-party institutions showed that the drama market experienced a contraction in data indicators such as playback volume and overall traffic. As the market cake decreases, the competition in the TV series market becomes increasingly fierce, especially with the narrowing of the gap between top long video platforms and TV series.
In terms of platforms, a reporter from China Business Daily noticed that multiple third-party data agencies do not have the same conclusion about "who dominates the market with iQiyi and Tencent Video". However, these two video platforms have a clear lead over other platforms and are firmly in the first tier of the market.
In terms of specific TV series, reports from Yunhe Data, Lighthouse Professional Edition, and Detawen all show that Tencent Video's "Prosperity" ranks first in terms of playback volume and market share, followed closely by iQiyi's "Traveling South and North". In the ranking of views released by major institutions, Tencent Video and iQiyi also account for the majority of the number of dramas released on the list.
Overall, the TV series market still shows a trend where the popularity of web dramas is stronger than that of TV dramas, and iQiyi and Tencent Video continue to lead the way.
The overall market experienced a year-on-year contraction
In the first quarter of 2023, iQiyi's release of "Fury" made the entire market hot, and its topic level once surpassed that of the popular Spring Festival film "Wandering Earth 2" during the same period. But this phenomenon level content has strong uncertainty, and after the hot broadcast, it will also bring a significant drop in traffic to the platform.
In the first quarter of this year, although there were still acclaimed works such as "Busy" and "Coming and Going", it was clearly not as popular as "Fury".
The 2024Q1 Drama Market Report released by Lighthouse Professional Edition shows that in the first quarter of 2024, the cumulative number of main feature views in the online drama broadcast market was 25.683 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 10.1%; The number of popular TV series is 91, a decrease of 25.5% compared to last year, and the average number of views per episode is 282 million, an increase of 25.5% compared to last year. In addition, the top popular TV series in the first quarter of 2024 did not perform as well as last year. The top five TV series accounted for 25.96% of the total views in the first quarter, a decrease of 10.97% compared to last year.
The 2024 Q1 Drama Online Broadcast Performance and User Analysis Report released by Yunhe Data shows that after the surge in traffic driven by "Fury" in the first quarter of 2023, the overall network traffic in the first quarter of 2024 decreased year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2024, the total number of effective feature films in all online dramas reached 71.1 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 10%; The effective playback of member content reached 38.8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 11%.
However, without phenomenal products, the gap between the TV series launched in the market has significantly narrowed. According to the Q1 2024 Drama Market Report, among the newly launched series, "Fanhua" leads the way in terms of cumulative viewership with 1.818 billion views of the main film, while "Nanlai Beibu" and "Jiujiu Jiu Ai" rank second and third respectively. The performance gap of the top projects has narrowed compared to the same period last year; In terms of word-of-mouth, compared to the top ten ratings of popular dramas on Douban in the first quarter, "Fanhua" scored 8.7 points in 2024, which is on par with last year's "Three Body Problem" and "Going to the Wind". In 2024, two TV series exceeded 8 points, with 6 episodes from 7 to 8 points higher than last year. The top ten were all above 6.8. Although the number of top scoring projects decreased, the reputation of the waist and tail projects was higher than the same period last year.
IQiyi is no longer racing alone
In terms of the Lighthouse Professional Edition, it is believed that although there is a lack of absolute bestsellers like the same period last year in various platform dramas this year, the overall performance is still commendable, providing audiences with a rich experience of following dramas. One of the important manifestations of this improved experience in watching dramas is the significant differentiation among various platforms, making it almost impossible to find homogeneous content.
In terms of Youku, in addition to the stable performance of Spring Festival regulars "Love in the Countryside", "Want to Love for a Long Time" has received double praise in terms of broadcast, and heavyweight projects such as "The Tang Dynasty Digong Case" and "You Also Have Today" have also advanced together, with views close to 1 billion. In terms of iQiyi, both the realistic era dramas "South and North" and "Great Rivers and Rivers 3" have appeared, giving it a sense of the times brought by "The World" before. At the same time, the performance of drama and film collaboration projects such as "Three Teams" and "Tang Detective 2" is impressive. Tencent Video won the first quarter drama championship with its masterpiece "Flowers", and its co broadcast with Mango's "Walking with Phoenix" will also have the opportunity to become a new hit. Mango TV has also relied on several popular TV series such as "Shenyin" and "Fengxing" to ensure stable performance.
But in terms of data, in terms of the playback volume of exclusive dramas, Lighthouse Professional believes that Tencent Video ranks first, followed by iQiyi, Youku, and Mango TV; In terms of the number of exclusive dramas, iQiyi ranks first, followed by Tencent Video, followed by Youku and Mango TV.
Detawen believes that in the first quarter of this year, the overall performance of all iQiyi dramas surpassed Tencent Video, making it the video platform with the highest business share. "This is because iQiyi's output has increased this quarter and there is a certain degree of control over the overall quality of its works. The output of new works such as" Traveling South and North "and" Chaser of the Wind "has steadily occupied the top market of this quarter, and the rise of top works and the stability of mid to late works have made its overall series perform above the waterline." According to Detawen, "Tencent Video has fallen second this quarter, with a slight decrease in the number of new releases compared to the previous quarter, and the output of top works in this quarter is slightly inferior to the previous quarter's" Flowers ". Therefore, the market share of this quarter's prosperity is slightly insufficient. Among the output of new works, only" Walking with the Phoenix "has surpassed 2, becoming Tencent Video." This quarter's new highest prosperity drama series
De Tawen also believes that the number of new works released by Youku has significantly decreased this quarter. Although "Love for a Long Time" and "Hua Jian Ling" have achieved good popularity, they are missing out on the top market. The performance of new works released this quarter is significantly lower than that of iQiyi and Tencent, resulting in a significant decline in business share.