In 2024, the revenue of the Fanqie series under ByteDance exceeded 30 billion yuan, and it is expected to double this year | Exclusive from 36Kr

Author | Lan Jie

Editors | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

36Kr exclusively learned from a source close to ByteDance that in 2024, the revenue of ByteDance's Tomato - related businesses (including Tomato Novel, Red Fruit Short Dramas, Tomato Audiobook, and Wukong Search, etc.) exceeded 30 billion yuan, with an overall profit of approximately 3 - 5 billion yuan. Among them, Tomato Novel contributed the majority of the revenue.

According to the estimation of the same source, the overall revenue of the Tomato - related businesses is expected to exceed 60 billion yuan this year, with Tomato Novel's revenue exceeding 45 billion yuan and Red Fruit Short Dramas' revenue exceeding 15 billion yuan.

36Kr verified this information with ByteDance, and the company said that the above data was inaccurate.

For a horizontal comparison with similar businesses, according to the financial report, Tencent's Yuewen Group had a total revenue of 8.12 billion yuan and a profit of 1.14 billion yuan in 2024.

The relatively low profit of the Tomato - related businesses is mainly because ByteDance is still supporting the Red Fruit Short Dramas business at present. The latter has been investing heavily in user acquisition through advertising in the past nearly two years and achieved a DAU (Daily Active Users) of nearly 100 million and an MAU (Monthly Active Users) of over 200 million in just over a year.

QuestMobile data shows that the MAU of Red Fruit Short Dramas reached 236 million in September, a year - on - year increase of 94%, far ahead of Hippo Theater, which ranked second in the short drama track with an MAU of 51.58 million.

How does ByteDance usually decide to launch a business? Generally, it can be summarized as whether the scale of the business is large enough and whether it is profitable enough. Products like Tomato Novel and Red Fruit Short Dramas meet these two requirements. They are in the prime time of the industry and have a huge user base behind them.

The Tomato - related products are also the ones that best embody the characteristics of ByteDance. ByteDance, which started with traffic and recommendation algorithms, is naturally suitable for nurturing businesses that have a fast pace, quick feedback, rely on data, and can be adjusted in a timely manner.

However, the growth of Tomato Novel has exceeded the expectations of ByteDance and the industry. When the DAU of this business was only 10 million, the internal expectation was a maximum of 60 million, but now, the DAU of Tomato Novel has exceeded 100 million, and Red Fruit Short Dramas is approaching this achievement in an even shorter time.

"DAU is almost the most core criterion for ByteDance to judge whether a product is successful. It represents the scale and the upper limit," a former middle - level employee of ByteDance told 36Kr. That's why Zhang Chao, who led the development of the Tomato - related businesses, has received an O (Outstanding) performance rating for two consecutive years, which is the highest level of the company's internal performance appraisal.

Looking back at the rise of the Tomato - related businesses, it is another verification of ByteDance's success through massive investment.

The logic behind the success of Tomato Novel and Red Fruit Short Dramas is almost the same. After deciding to enter a market, ByteDance will first introduce upstream resources through methods such as poaching talents, acquisitions, and traffic support. Then, through the free model and heavy investment in advertising, it lowers the threshold as much as possible to attract as many users as possible.

This entire process is extremely costly. According to another source close to ByteDance, Red Fruit Short Dramas was initially given a daily advertising budget of 10 million yuan within the company, which is a very high standard compared with other businesses within the company.

According to multiple sources close to Red Fruit Short Dramas, this business is still not profitable at present.

After successfully building a platform with a large amount of traffic and a large number of users, the Tomato - related businesses will extend their reach to the upstream and downstream of the industry and enrich the business itself to achieve further commercialization.

Now, the number of signed authors on the Tomato Novel platform has exceeded 600,000, and the proportion of original content can reach 85%. The platform has also vigorously promoted and produced hit works such as *I Learned to Slay Gods in a Mental Hospital* and *The End of Ten Days* and promoted their IP adaptation.

In addition, the Tomato Novel app already includes sections such as audiobooks, short dramas, short stories, comic dramas, short videos, and the Douyin Mall. This not only increases the number of active users but also provides more monetization possibilities for the platform.

Red Fruit Short Dramas is repeating the same process.

In September this year, Red Fruit Self - production launched a revenue - sharing incentive policy for short - drama actor management agencies and actors. Two months later, the official announced detailed actor revenue - sharing data, saying that three short - drama actors had shared more than one million yuan. On November 25th, Red Fruit also held a creators' conference. Behind the attractive creation incentive policies, more resources are flowing to Red Fruit Self - production.

Previously, the media reported that Red Fruit was testing the "Search for Similar Products" function to accelerate the commercialization process.

In 2025, there has been a new growth point in the short - drama industry - AI - powered comic dramas, which have a similar business model to short dramas but can reduce the cost to tens of thousands of yuan per episode. According to a report released by Guanyan Report Network, it is estimated that the market scale of comic dramas in China will exceed 20 billion yuan in 2025.

Therefore, the Red Fruit Free Comic Drama app quietly launched in October, and the Tomato - related businesses have spawned a new but similar growth story.