Tencent has made four forays into the short drama market without success. Can WeChat, the "green bubble", make it this time?

Recently, a large number of memes about "Hong Guoguo and Lv Paopao" have emerged on social media. Netizen @Happy Superman commented that each generation has its own "Hong Guoguo and Lv Paopao", which is the collective memory of children's programs in the 1990s. This post has also attracted a large number of comments and discussions from other netizens.

The reason why "Hong Guoguo and Lv Paopao" has sparked a wave of discussion stems from the comparison between two major tech giants behind the names, ByteDance and Tencent. Hongguo, the independent short drama APP under ByteDance, has strong industry recognition in the short drama sector, with 168 million daily active users ranking at the leading position of the industry. Lv Paopao, which was just launched in September this year, is Tencent's latest short drama business line deployed on WeChat. Choosing the WeChat entry instead of an independent APP obviously means it does not want to compete head-to-head with Hongguo.

However, simply forcing a side-by-side comparison between the two products does not quite match the roles that Hongguo and Lv Paopao play in the industry. With this article, Entertainment Value Official will conduct an in-depth interpretation of the disruption and impact brought by Lv Paopao to the industry, and whether Tencent can gain a firm foothold in the short drama business this time.

01

Four Attempts

All Stuck at the "Channel" Level

Entertainment Value Official found that recent media reports all describe Lv Paopao as "WeChat's first foray into short drama business". To be precise, this is actually the first time that WeChat has developed short drama "personally", but Tencent has had four short drama experiences before, except that none of the business lines succeeded. To analyze whether Lv Paopao can succeed, we must first review Tencent's four previous "unsuccessful" attempts:

The first attempt: Tenfen Theater - with high-quality content, but no brand awareness.

On December 22, 2021, Tencent Video launched the industry's first micro-short drama brand "Tenfen Theater", focusing on high-quality content, and produced hit works such as *Provoke* whose revenue sharing exceeded 20 million yuan in 2023. It has achieved full control of content production. But at that time, it was placed on the channel page of Tencent Video, a long-video APP. Users recognized Tencent Video rather than Tenfen Theater. It was not until June 2025 that it was upgraded to "Tenfen Short Drama" and officially included vertical-screen short dramas. The brand awareness had not been established for four years.

The second attempt: In 2024, WeChat positioned itself as an "infrastructure".

In that year, WeChat completed two major moves: it launched the internal test of the short drama embedding function on Channels, realizing the closed loop of "short video traffic drainage + mini-program monetization"; it also opened the CPS promotion for short dramas on official accounts. WeChat always played the role of setting rules, opening up traffic and collecting service fees. According to a report by *Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily* in December 2023, short dramas were mainly broadcast on WeChat mini-programs at that time, accounting for about 80% of the total channels, and the withdrawal commission rate was as high as 10%, which was superimposed on the 20% virtual payment technical service fee. It earned channel fees without owning any products, which is a typical example of the pipeline role.

The third attempt: Mars Short Drama Community - the closest failure to success.

In January 2025, "Mars Short Drama Community" (later renamed "Mars Drama Watching") was launched on WeChat. It was affiliated to Tencent Video and was Tencent's first independent short drama product. The launch timing was quite meaningful: at Tencent's annual meeting in January, Ma Huateng publicly stated that short dramas were impacting the long-video market, and the product was launched immediately after that.

The content of Mars Short Drama Community was basically from paid dramas and member-exclusive dramas converted to free access on Tencent Video. For example, unlocking each episode of *After Breaking Up, I Was Spoiled Crazy by Three Older Brothers* costs 1.6 yuan on Tencent Video, but users can watch it for free by watching ads on Mars Short Drama Community. It had no signed distribution partners, no exclusive dramas, and no content produced specifically for the free content pool.

The promotion investment was also only symbolic. Data from the industry version of DataEye-ADX shows that since Mars Short Drama Community launched its promotion on January 15, the number of daily promotion materials was only a few hundred groups by mid-March, with a peak of 652 groups; in the same period, the number of promotion materials for iQIYI Speed Edition increased from about 1000 groups to more than 5000 groups. The volume of a few hundred groups was not a strategic grab for the market, but just a trial.

The fourth attempt: WeChat "Short Drama" mini-program - a bridgehead, not a core position.

In June 2025, WeChat launched the official mini-program named "Short Drama", which was soon placed on the front page of the mini-program list; at the same time, Yuewen also launched the "Miracle Short Drama" APP and the "Yuewen Short Drama" mini-program, adopting the paid unlocking route.

The WeChat Short Drama mini-program is absolutely No.1 in the distribution form of "mini-programs", and it is the bridgehead for WeChat ecosystem to enter the short drama track. However, in the overall market of free APPs represented by Hongguo, it at most plays the role of a "low-cost incremental channel", and can only be counted as the second echelon that is catching up rapidly. A notable detail is that in October 2026, the "Short Drama" mini-program no longer has relevant entry, and it has been replaced by Lv Paopao.

02

What Changes Has Tencent Made as Seen from Lv Paopao?

According to the *2026 Short Drama Industry Insight Report* released by QuestMobile, the monthly active users of short drama mini-programs in the WeChat ecosystem has reached 427 million, surpassing the total 335 million monthly active users of independent short drama APPs; the number of short drama mini-programs with more than 1 million monthly active users has also increased from 32 to 54. Judging from the scale alone, WeChat mini-programs seem to have left APPs behind.

"Large user base" does not equal "discourse power". The key lies in the form of traffic: mini-programs are decentralized, while independent APPs are aggregated.

The 427 million monthly active users of WeChat short dramas are scattered among dozens of independent mini-programs, so the gap between head products has not been widened. The top 10 short drama mini-programs including Zhang Yang Drama Watching, Jiuxi Theater and Tea Tree Short Drama barely cover 280 million users in total, none of which can match the 304 million monthly active users of Hongguo on the independent APP side. Hongguo Free Short Drama's leading position has finally formed a highly concentrated traffic effect, which brings industry discourse power.

It can be seen that although Tencent's mini-programs have a "large user base", the root cause of the lack of industry discourse power does not lie in the scale, but in the word "non-aggregation". The 427 million users are scattered traffic like a pile of loose sand, which cannot form competitiveness without aggregation. This is exactly the gap between "decentralization" and "aggregation", and it is also the fundamental factor that Tencent must face and change.

This time, we can first feel that Tencent's thinking is different from the previous strategy of blindly pursuing independent brand recognition from the name. In addition to the implication of an aggregation platform, the deep intention of the name "Lv Paopao" may be to align with the user awareness of Hongguo. As long as users remember Hongguo, they can easily associate it with Lv Paopao.

Its slogan "Free high-quality dramas, one tap to watch" enables users to open the mini-program without downloading an independent APP and watch dramas immediately, and it adopts the IAA monetization route by inserting advertisements between episodes, which is straightforward.

In addition, Tencent's four previous short drama attempts were either products under Tencent Video, or provided by third-party developers, with WeChat only acting as a channel. This time, Lv Paopao is the first product produced by the "WeChat Short Drama Content Center", and WeChat officially owns the product itself. This is no longer just "developing one more product", but a positioning adjustment, from which we can feel Tencent's determination to do well in the short drama business.

Another important change can be felt from Lv Paopao's Q4 incentive policy. For high-quality new dramas with joint distribution whose per capita playback duration ≥ 10 minutes, they can enjoy up to 100% revenue incentive (90% cash share + 10% advertising grant); the basic incentive is 85%; and only 50% incentive is available if the duration requirement is not met. This is using settlement rules to select high-quality content, rather than simply and rudely harvesting clicks.

There are a huge number of short drama mini-programs on WeChat. Although they have a large user base and transaction volume, they have never achieved aggregation, so there is no asset value, no pricing power, and no premium space. The emergence of Lv Paopao this time shows that Tencent wants to fundamentally reverse the current situation. Lv Paopao's new aggregated channel is equivalent to WeChat announcing that it is not enough to just be an infrastructure, and it will personally act as the aggregator.

03

What Advantages Can Lv Paopao Gain Over Hongguo?

What Can It Not Gain?

Data from DataEye Research Institute shows that as of May 2026, the number of micro-short drama users has reached 851 million, accounting for 66.7% of the total number of internet users; the market size is expected to exceed 1210 billion yuan in 2026, of which free micro-short dramas account for about 573 billion yuan. For the industry, although independent APPs like Hongguo have already supported sufficient market capacity, the industry is in urgent need of a second distribution outlet.

Hongguo is a strategic product of ByteDance in the short drama track, while Lv Paopao is a strategic complement of Tencent on WeChat. The two products have the same underlying business model, with revenue coming from advertisers rather than user payment. Both Hongguo and Lv Paopao are assessed by the formula of "duration × ad load rate × CPM".

If we compare Lv Paopao with Hongguo, there are still certain differences in their nature. The moat of Hongguo is "aggregation", while the value of Lv Paopao is that WeChat has decided to fill in the missing puzzle of "aggregation" for the first time. After all, WeChat has more than 400 million monthly active users of short drama mini-programs, and these users are already watching dramas in WeChat. The value of Lv Paopao is to bring this part of viewing duration and its generated advertising value into an official entry. This goal can be achieved even without defeating Hongguo.

WeChat does not produce content by itself, and the content supply still relies on joint distribution to access external short drama mini-programs, but it has obtained the rule-making power that it did not have before. According to the public information of WeChat, the incentive policy for the open platform in Q4 (from October 16 to December 31, 2026) is quite attractive: for the joint-distribution dramas on Lv Paopao, high-quality new dramas with per capita playback duration ≥ 10 minutes can enjoy up to 100% revenue incentive (90% cash share + 10% advertising grant); the basic incentive is 85%; only 50% incentive is available if the duration requirement is not met. The assessment indicator has been changed from play volume to per capita playback duration, which should be the first time that WeChat directly defines "what kind of short drama is worthy of reward".

Entertainment Value Official observed through the homepage of Lv Paopao that 9 out of the top 10 short dramas on the WeChat short drama ranking list are AI-generated short dramas. There is sufficient inventory of AI dramas, and these low-cost, fast-produced contents can quickly fill the content shelves. But the duration threshold will screen out more live-action drama content, which is also the expected change brought by the incentive mechanism to Lv Paopao.