From Traffic King to Quality First: Short Videos Embrace 'Long-Term Growth' 84

Browsing short videos during spare time has become one of the popular leisure activities for people in their daily lives. Today's short videos cover a vast and all-encompassing range of content, including entertainment, novel hot topics, personal selfies, knowledge sharing, skills and experience, product promotion, and other generalized knowledge-based topics. While users enjoy the fun, they can also subtly broaden their horizons, enhance their abilities, and immerse themselves in a social atmosphere that suits their personal preferences.

The short video boom is far from over, and its development prospects remain strong

With the gradual decline in mobile data prices, people can now generally afford to spend data on watching videos. Common video programs include short videos, live streaming, and film and television programs.

Among these, short videos, with their compact and refined nature and strong entertainment appeal, are particularly well-suited for people to spend their fragmented time. According to data from the "2021 Short Video User Value Research Report" released by CSM Media Research, the average daily usage time of short video users has increased to 87 minutes.

In February this year, QuestMobile released the "2021 China Mobile Internet Annual Report," which showed that by the end of last year, the monthly active users in the video industry had exceeded 1 billion. Among them, short videos surpassed other applications in user stickiness, accounting for 25.7% of total user usage time, and continue to penetrate and expand into the local life sector.

Similarly, the "2021 China Online Audio-Visual Development Research Report" released by the China Network Audio-Visual Program Service Association also showed that among various online video formats, short videos have the highest usage rate at 88.3%, with a user base of 873 million—far higher than online live streaming (62.4%) and film and television programs (71.1%). From this, it can be seen that whether for entertainment or social shopping, short videos occupy an extremely important position in people's daily lives.

The scale effect of user numbers and the stickiness brought by usage naturally translate into enormous commercial value and potential commercial benefits. On one hand, the market size of the short video sector exceeded 200 billion yuan in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 57.5%. On mainstream video websites, the number of paying users has continued to show a steady growth trend, with nearly half of users having paid for online video programs.

On the other hand, short videos themselves are an important marketing channel and commercial vehicle. Short videos can serve both as a means to drive traffic for film, television, and live streaming programs and as an effective way to operate e-commerce.

For example, the film "My Sister," released last year, ultimately grossed over 860 million yuan at the box office. One reason it became a dark horse during the Qingming holiday period was the significant role of online promotion, especially short video marketing. The film's topic playback volume on the Kuaishou platform reached billions of times, and many people came across touching clips from the movie while browsing videos on Kuaishou, which drew them to theaters.

Short videos can not only be used for large-scale commercial promotion and marketing but also serve as a channel for individual users to drive traffic and monetize their traffic.

Wenyue is an ordinary white-collar worker. In her spare time, she enjoys filming short videos to record her experiences and insights about using cosmetics. After uploading her shared videos to the Douyin platform, she often interacts and communicates with interested users. Over time, Wenyue has made many new friends, and her follower count has gradually grown to over 20,000.

Now Wenyue can also take on some promotional work for cosmetics videos. For her, short videos are not only a medium for recording life and beautiful moments but also equivalent to an extra part-time income.

The short video industry is shifting from traffic value to user value

Short videos have brought new momentum to the development of the internet industry, and short video users now account for nearly 90% of the total number of netizens. However, given that traffic, volume, and overall industry scale have reached their peak, the growth momentum of the short video industry will gradually slow down in the next few years. The simple, extensive, land-grabbing development model of burning cash to drive traffic is clearly no longer viable, and the industry must move toward refined operations and standardized development.

From a micro perspective, short video user groups tend to be younger, especially among netizens aged 20-29. Their interest in online video is the highest among all age groups, at 92.3%. This indicates that short videos have strong appeal to young people, and this appeal continues to grow.

From a global perspective, short videos also have a broad user base overseas. Data from the "2021 China Cities' Influence on Overseas Short Video Platforms Report" shows that from the beginning of last year to January 10 this year, videos tagged with #china on TikTok alone were viewed more than 27 billion times.

Specifically, how to enhance the audio-visual experience and improve user stickiness and activity naturally becomes the primary consideration for each platform. The fundamental solution to this problem can only be driven by high-quality content.

The "Yujian Column" believes that, in the next few years, first, high-quality content will remain the key to the long-term development of the short video industry. Short video operating companies should focus their efforts on using various effective measures to encourage users to produce more excellent works with good content, high quality, and appeal. Whether platform companies or individual users, only by continuously producing high-quality content can they win lasting attention.

Second, short video operating companies should not focus solely on young consumer groups. The vast middle-aged and elderly population also has its own audio-visual and consumption needs. Therefore, in terms of creators and content output, platforms should do a better job in top-level design, dividing reasonable and differentiated vertical content sections for short videos, and encouraging individual and corporate users to create products suitable for all age groups.

Third, it is necessary to fully leverage the "efficiency multiplier" role of cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, big data, and artificial intelligence in the short video field. By optimizing information flow algorithms, short video dissemination can become faster, more precise, more vertical, and more intelligent, thereby continuously enhancing the communication power and competitiveness of platform short videos, better meeting users' demands for knowledge information and entertainment in fragmented time, and further reducing users' costs of screening and selection.

The deep integration of the short video industry and internet e-commerce will be the next development blue ocean

Because short video creation features flexibility, entertainment, and low barriers to entry, with no high demands on duration or filming skills, initial short video creation was widely embraced, showing a trend of mass participation. Data from Kuaishou shows that the growth rate of Kuaishou short drama creators exceeded 30% last year.

Among them, over 10,000 had more than 100,000 followers, over 1,000 had more than 1 million followers, and nearly 50 moved from zero followers to the ranks of "million-follower influencers." From this, it can be seen that the short video industry has quite active supply and demand, whether from the creation side or the consumption side.

However, today's short video industry is gradually upgrading in response to changes in user consumption demands. It is developing from mass entertainment toward vertical segmentation and specialization, and advancing from meeting users' single needs toward achieving diversified value.

The original model is no longer sufficient to support the scaled development of the short video industry. Short video creators have unanimously been exploring how to forge a path for content monetization and sustainable creation that suits the characteristics of the short video industry.

Content monetization is a key factor in supporting continuous content output by short video creators, and monetization difficulty has always been a bottleneck in the development of the short video industry. Currently, the main profit source for short video platforms still relies on in-feed advertising, while short video creators primarily rely on advertising, subsidies, or driving traffic for product and service promotion. How to establish a complete operational mechanism and a lasting commercial monetization model remains a difficult challenge for platforms and creators.

From the current situation, aside from advertising, internet e-commerce is the most direct and relatively mature way to achieve traffic monetization. For example, Kuaishou's "trust-based e-commerce" ecosystem centers on content creators and users, relying on creators' continuous content output to build stable trust relationships with users. On the basis of gradually accumulating traffic, it continuously improves e-commerce conversion rates.

Douyin's "interest-based e-commerce" ecosystem, on the other hand, relies on rich and diverse content and algorithmic recommendation technology to allow users to discover quality products at favorable prices and stimulate consumption interest while browsing short videos, thereby creating conditions and opportunities for consumption.

In 2017, Chen Qiao began sharing original short videos about clothing matching on Douyin while still in college. She gradually accumulated nearly 500,000 followers and received many promotional projects during this period, including several domestic clothing brands with some fame. Her follower count continued to grow, reaching about 1 million by the time she graduated from college.

At that point, she registered a company and decided to develop her own brand. From project planning, casting, and filming to post-production and promotion, the company has initially formed a professional team and creation chain. Its products have also been rolled out across multiple platforms, with monthly sales reaching nearly 10,000 orders.

The "Yujian Column" believes that the integration of the short video industry and internet e-commerce, complementing each other, has become the next development blue ocean for the short video industry. As content ecosystems such as带货 traffic-driving, product promotion, and content-based payment continue to strengthen.

The future short video industry will feature more细分 markets, more refined content, and more complete industrial chains. It will not only meet people's diversified leisure needs but also provide promotional and operational services for more industries.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that professionalism, diversification, and intelligence will be the most prominent labels of the short video industry. The industry has now entered a critical stage that requires platforms and creators to deeply explore how to build content output models with greater depth, more profound layers, and stronger appeal. This places higher demands on platforms and creators in terms of organizational management, content operations, and product creation.

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