The battle for attention is escalating: the 100,000+ era is over, the 1 million+ era is here

With the improvement of mobile Internet infrastructure such as 4G and WiFi networks, short videos have begun to become the new favorite in the content consumption field. According to the "China Short Video Market Special Research Report 2016" released by Analysys Data, as of March 2016, the number of active users in China's short video market was 31.19 million, an increase of 66.6% over the same period in 2014.

According to data from Toutiao , the platform's cumulative video playback volume exceeded 30 billion in September, and the average daily video viewing time of a single user was more than 30 minutes, "already accounting for 1/6 of the Chinese people's daily leisure time." Multiple data show that the demand for short video users is being further released and the scale of active short video users is growing strongly.

From pictures and texts to short videos

A great migration of human attention

Now that the Chinese people’s needs for food, clothing, housing and transportation are basically met on the Internet, “content consumption” has become another high-frequency consumption item. However, for content producers, although they can see that "content" itself has commercial value as a traffic entrance, they must first answer the difficult question of how to successfully capture users' attention amidst massive amounts of information.

Short videos are "fast-moving consumer goods" in the field of content consumption

Clear advantage in the “battle for attention”

Given that the total usage time of mobile users' content consumption is limited, a "time war" between several main forms of content consumption: picture and text reading, short videos, and long videos is inevitable. Compared with the other three, the disadvantage of long videos is that they take too long and it is difficult for users to watch them in fragmented time.

As for the usage time comparison between short videos and text pages, the data shows that the difference between the two is very small. It is estimated that users only spend 20-30 seconds longer playing short videos than reading text information. Taking the data disclosed by Toutiao as an example, in June 2016, the average reading time for each picture and text was 1.16 minutes, while the average playback time for each short video was 1.62 minutes. If a user has 2 minutes to kill on the subway, should they click on an article or watch a video? After the traffic and bandwidth issues are solved, the "attention battle" between short videos and graphic information will become very fierce.

To make an analogy, short videos are like "fast-moving consumer goods" in the content consumption field. That’s right, it’s the kind of product with a short usage cycle but huge consumption. Just like McDonald's and KFC in the food industry, the taste cannot be said to be the best, but it is more universal and can ensure that most people fill their stomachs in a short time. At present, the short video content in China is mainly entertainment content, and people consume short videos mostly "once watched, and then finished", with few repeat viewings, which is also in line with people's usage rules for "fast-moving consumer goods". For "short video" content producers, they can also achieve large-scale market volume and obtain commercial profits through users' high frequency consumption of short video content.

It turns out that short videos do perform well in terms of frequency of use. Toutiao’s latest big data report shows that the platform’s video playback volume reached 30.27 billion times in the past September, which is equivalent to the total of 3 clicks per person for all people on the earth. Among them, the top three monthly hit videos had playback volumes of 5,825,789 times; 5,050,354 times; and 4,319,698 times, all of which were in the millions.

From “long-form thinking” to “short-form thinking”

Short videos are more in line with the frequency of Internet thinking

When users read graphic content, they need to engage in deep thinking, that is, adopt a long-form thinking method from A to Z. This form of thinking is limited by the physical space of books and mobile phone pages, and requires users to be familiar with rigorous argumentation models and to devote uninterrupted attention and logical thinking.

But in the hyperlinked Internet world, the public is losing this focused “long-form thinking” ability, and is being replaced by a new short-form thinking style. In this way of thinking, a huge network is formed between knowledge points, and users are constantly tempted by the knowledge points in front of them, clicking non-stop with no end. As a result, the time users spend on each knowledge point will become shorter, their thinking ability will become shallower, and they will care more about the entertainment and stimulation of the knowledge points rather than the logical rigor.

Taking the popular " Internet celebrity " phenomenon as an example, observing the iterative forms of "Internet celebrities" in different eras, we will find that their migration paths on various platforms foreshadow the popular trends of the media. There are "Internet celebrities" in every era. From the first generation of "talented" Internet celebrities, such as Annie Baby and Tang Jia San Shao, they all attracted a large number of fans through text; the second generation of Internet celebrities attracted people's attention with strange pictures, such as Sister Furong, and even a group of joke tellers on Weibo; the third generation of Internet celebrities are mainly video Internet celebrities, such as Papi Jiang and Ai Kelili. From online communities, blogs, Weibo, WeChat to short video platforms, the evolution of the media that makes "Internet celebrities" popular reflects the changes in the audience's thinking frequency, and short videos are a content form that is more in line with the user's thinking frequency in the Internet era.

From traffic thinking to user thinking

Short videos have the highest “value per unit time”

The explosion of the short video market in 2016 is an inevitable result of the trend of upgrading content consumption. As the mobile Internet has entered the era of stock from the era of growth, the growth of mobile Internet users has slowed down, and the effective time spent on the mobile Internet has stabilized. A person has 24 hours a day, excluding work, sleep and daily life, and has about 4-5 hours of free time each day. If you want to seize this part of users' time, you must help users maximize the value of information in a shorter time.

In the content consumption market, the time users allocate to each content form will determine the monetization potential of that content form. When content producers need to grab users' attention, the active and passive relationship between the two has changed: it seems that users "buy" content, but in fact it is the content that does its best to buy users' attention.

In this "passive" relationship, content producers have only two choices: one is to seize as much user time as possible to realize traffic monetization; the other is to occupy as little user time as possible while providing content of equal value, that is, to help users save time. The fundamental difference between the two lies in the value of information per unit time.

The reality is that the traffic in the Internet world has been covered by the giants and there is little left. Latecomer content entrepreneurs are actually trying to grab relatively more time in the gaps between the giants' remaining traffic. If small and medium-sized content entrepreneurs want to successfully break through the reality of "traffic is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain and traffic costs are constantly rising", they must choose cost-effective media tools .

The so-called "high cost-effectiveness" means that users can obtain premium information through this time-saving and efficient medium; content producers can also use this medium to obtain maximum commercial value. It turns out that this "cost-effective" media form that competes for fragmented time has shifted to short videos.

Two major trends in the development of short videos

UGC transforms to PGC, and PGC moves closer to vertical IP

Internet people who are used to seeing the ups and downs of the "trend" will probably ask a question when seeing this: Even if short videos are a real trend, how long will this trend last? In addition to the 1.0 version of short videos such as edited versions of film and television dramas, advertising TVCs, entertaining and funny content, and beauty tutorial videos, what will the evolved 2.0 version look like?

From a video website for watching small animals to the world's largest video sharing website, the evolution history of YouTube, the originator of short videos, can give people great inspiration. Because it does not make a tycoon named Gatsby successful, but millions of ordinary Americans. PewDiePie, Michelle Phan and others have used YouTube to complete the transformation from "passerby - Internet celebrity - star".

PewDiePie, a college dropout, initially opened his YouTube channel out of boredom and looked for entertainment to broadcast his live gaming sessions. After becoming famous, he set up his own independent game development team. Beauty blogger Michelle Phan started out by sharing makeup video tutorials and later had a strong content production team, founding her own cosmetics brand and beauty sample company. It can be seen that the short video producers who became popular on YouTube have all experienced the path of "from individual to team, from UGC to PGC".

Papi Jiang in China has also gone through the same journey, from creating alone in the beginning to establishing PapiTube and forming a professional team to support it, recruiting performers, behind-the-scenes production, script writing, etc., and has begun to operate as a company. It can be foreseen that at this stage, domestic short video UGC will be improvisational and disordered in content production and operation , but if greater commercial value is to be achieved, the transformation of UGC to PGC will be the only way.

After entering into professional and team-based production and operation, the next stage of development for PGC short video producers is to become an IP in a certain vertical field. For example, relying on PapiTube, it attempts to mass-produce IPs of the "Papi Jiang" type; "Ergeng" in the lifestyle field is also undergoing the same transformation, from a short video team to providing related services for short video startups, using the IP endorsement of "Ergeng" to tap into richer commercial value.

In the trend of "UGC transforming into PGC, and PGC evolving into vertical IP", some short video incubation platforms or distribution platforms have room to play a role. Domestic short video platforms will also become incubators for the next wave of content IP. Content IP, especially vertical IP resources, may be the core elements for building barriers for short video platforms.

“The 100,000+ era is over, the 1 million+ era is here”

Short videos become a new traffic source

In the era of pictures and texts, the standard for measuring the popularity of content is "10w+" reading volume; but in the era of short videos, especially PGC teams that produce and distribute short videos with a clear goal, they will not be satisfied with a single channel and 100,000+ clicks , but will aim for "1 million+" playback volume.

On the one hand, the entertainment attributes of short video content make it easier for users to obtain information and reduce the time and energy costs. On the other hand, short videos have more channels to reach users. Compared with the distribution channels mainly based on WeChat and Weibo in the era of pictures and texts, platforms such as Toutiao, Miaopai , and Kuaishou also bring a larger base and a wider range of potential user groups.

With the combined effect of these two reasons, short videos have become a new traffic pool in the mobile Internet era, and have also brought more room for imagination in business models. Since short video content can be strongly associated with product information, it is more vivid and interactive than text and pictures. In addition, the huge traffic base makes short video a high-quality tool for e-commerce traffic diversion. Companies such as Taobao and JD.com have begun exploring this issue, and "Taobao Second Floor" has connected short video content and hot product sales, attracting traffic through high-quality content and then monetizing the traffic.

Native information flow advertising in picture and text format is more valuable for reference to the commercial monetization model of short videos. The interstitial ads in long videos are often dozens of seconds long, which is too unrealistic for short videos that are at most a few minutes or at least dozens of seconds long. However, native information flow ads embedded naturally can be naturally transplanted into the information ecology of short videos. For advertisers, when advertising content that is consistent with the short video information flow is integrated into the user's daily information ecology, these advertisements that are highly matched with the user and less harassing to the user will truly be clicked by the user with an accepting attitude, thereby bringing real investment value to advertisers.

Looking overseas, according to a 2016 survey by Mixpo, 50.2% of US advertisers ran video ads on Facebook in 2015 alone, and 31.1% of advertisers ran video ads on Youtube. Obviously, one-third or even half of foreign advertisers have seized the opportunity and shifted their main advertising channels to the short video advertising field. Once the huge value of short video advertising is tapped, the domestic short video ecosystem will become more complete and powerful.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

The author of this article @乌玛小曼 is compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!