From ByteDance to Tencent, why have leading internet giants become addicted to short dramas?
"Boss, your products are really made with solid materials, no heartburn after eating them"
This autumn, people in southern China learned for the first time what the term "heartburn" means in the northern Chinese dialect, which refers to the burning sensation in the esophagus after eating irritating food. It seems that the so-called "heartburn" is just another viral meme born on the Chinese internet.
From the spread of down-to-earth viral memes such as "silly son-in-law" and "crooked-mouthed Dragon King" among the young groups in lower-tier markets, to the point that "heartburn" now refers to all kinds of pent-up frustration after being worn down by society, and is widely accepted by people of all ages in forms like "A-share market gives me real heartburn", "work is so heartburning" and "endless homework makes me heartburning", it reflects that short dramas that were once defined as shoddily produced are quietly taking up more of people's spare time with richer content supply.
Meanwhile, changes are also quietly taking place in the dimension of short drama platforms. On one hand, giants seem to be joining hands to usher in the "era of big short dramas". The monthly active users of Tencent's Lvpaopao Short Drama has quietly exceeded 100 million, with the week-over-week growth rate of weekly active users surpassing 44%, showing a momentum to rival Redfruit; Baidu launched Wenjuhui to seize the market share on WeChat Mini Programs, packaging short dramas and manhua dramas into the basket of advertising monetization; Kuaishou, on the other hand, operates short drama traffic on its main site while maintaining its independent position with Xifan Free Short Drama.
On the other hand, a more interesting variable comes from Redfruit. In late October, Redfruit made two consecutive "subtractions": first it announced to phase out the long-running coin reward function, and then launched "break reminder" and "sleep reminder". A platform that started its business with the model of "earn money by watching dramas" has voluntarily removed its sharpest hook for user acquisition. Between advancing and retreating, what secrets are hidden behind the short drama, this "electronic pickled mustard green" for users?
01
Perfect AI Test Field
This round of short drama boom is mainly driven by AI.
More specifically, it is driven by AI video generation technology, which has continuously and steadily reduced the cost of converting scripts into videos.
At the China-ASEAN Audio-Visual Week in October, the National Radio and Television Administration disclosed a set of data: 490,000 micro short dramas were launched from January to September 2026, 13 times the total number of 2025; AI-generated dramas account for more than 60% of the micro short dramas going overseas. At the same time, the production cost per minute of domestic AI manhua drama has been reduced to as low as 350 yuan, and the production cycle of a manhua drama has been shortened from the original 90 days to about 10 days. The comparison disclosed by Zhangyue is more intuitive: the cost of a single live-action short drama is about 1.5 million yuan, while the cost of an AI short drama can be controlled within 200,000 yuan.
The drop in cost has brought abundant and sufficient supply. The same phenomenon once appeared in the field of live-action short dramas.
When live-action short dramas just emerged in 2023, their biggest advantage over long TV series was the cost. A short drama of about 100 minutes usually only needs a production cycle of about one month, no star actors are required, and the average cost is only hundreds of thousands of yuan.
With huge cost advantages, live-action short dramas sprang up like mushrooms. Lower costs brought richer themes, attracting a larger audience. However, with the intensification of industry competition, in pursuit of certainty, the investment in high-quality short dramas has generally reached the level of millions or even higher. Top short drama actors have also begun to command a high daily salary of 50,000 to 100,000 yuan. Live-action short dramas have also begun to show a cost spiral similar to traditional TV series: the drama successfully makes actors famous, the more famous the actor is, the higher the cost, the greater the investment, the more people pursue certainty, the pursuit of certainty leads to narrower themes and more homogeneous competition. For a time, high-investment short dramas on the market were concentrated in ancient costume themes.
The maturity of AI video generation technology not only significantly reduces the cost of converting scripts into videos, but also ensures that the cost does not rise as actors become famous. In addition to the traditional themes of live-action short dramas, AI technology also makes themes that require high-cost special effects rendering such as Xianxia, fantasy, and science fiction accessible to short dramas, further enriching the supply of the short drama market, which is expected to attract a larger audience. It has clear and non-increasing cost, measurable feedback through completion rate, and mature revenue sources dominated by advertising and subscription.
Short dramas provide almost a perfect AI monetization test field for all major giants. The role of short dramas here is the "first kilometer" of commercialization of AI content. It verifies the technical availability with extremely low trial and error cost, feeds back model iteration with extremely fast turnover cycle, and paves the way for more complex subsequent AI content forms with massive user behavior data. What the giants are competing for is not just the few minutes of drama watching time, but the discourse power over the next generation of content production and distribution infrastructure. This has become the hidden motivation for giants to enter the market one after another.
02
Redfruit Chooses Timing to "Purify"
As the veteran leader of short drama platforms, how popular is Redfruit? According to the latest data released by QuestMobile: as of September this year, the daily active users of Redfruit exceeded 200 million for the first time, reaching 203.2348 million; the average daily usage duration reached 165.98 minutes. On the Internet, meme pictures of netizens teasing that they are addicted to short dramas and unable to extricate themselves, so they want to send themselves to the "Redfruit Rehabilitation Center" can be seen everywhere.
However, when the industry is booming and its own business is thriving, Redfruit voluntarily contracted, announcing that it will phase out the coin reward function, and launch "break reminder" and "sleep reminder".
The so-called coin reward function is actually a means for Redfruit to pay for users' time. On the app, every action of users, such as checking in, watching dramas, browsing e-commerce products, and playing mini-games, is converted into coins, which can be exchanged for cash. Essentially, the existence of the coin reward function reflects that Redfruit openly admits its role as an "attention intermediary": users' attention is priced in coins, and the platform resells this attention to advertisers at a higher price through advertising CPM and revenue sharing rules.
This strategy can achieve rapid user acquisition and extend usage duration in the early stage of platform development, but when the daily active users and usage duration are already considerable, the platform needs to consider that another group of users whose primary motivation for opening the app is to complete coin tasks rather than watch content, the ad completion rate, click-through rate and conversion effect of this part of traffic will be significantly lower than that of users who watch naturally. By canceling the coin reward function, Redfruit aims to filter out purer commercial conversion traffic.
As for the reminder system launched later, it only exists in the form of push reminder videos, text reminders, allowing users to set reminders according to their own work and rest schedules. In front of the highly "captivating" short dramas, the actual effect of such reminders is probably not great, and it more represents a gesture made by the platform in response to supervision and criticism of short drama addiction.
03
The Sweetness of Lvpaopao
Lvpaopao Short Drama, which is launched relying on WeChat Mini Programs, has seen extremely rapid growth recently.
According to the latest data from QuestMobile, the weekly active users of Tencent's Lvpaopao Short Drama Mini Program in the first week of October reached 89.68 million, which is close to the 100 million mark, up 44.1% from the first week of September. It is worth noting that this product was only renamed from "WeChat Official Short Drama Mini Program" to "Lvpaopao" in July.
It is not the first time that Tencent wants to tap into the short drama business. Previous attempts including "Ten Minutes Theater" in Tencent Video, the mini program "Mars Short Drama Club", and the predecessor of Lvpaopao "WeChat Official Short Drama Mini Program" did not make much waves, but this time Lvpaopao has achieved a brilliant start.
On one hand, Tencent, which has always been known for being conservative, finally played its trump card of WeChat ecosystem: it re-collected the viewing demand of countless third-party short drama mini programs scattered in WeChat, used a centralized drama searching and continuous viewing interface to undertake the demand, and then connected it with the Video Account which has 600 million daily active users. What dramas friends are watching, what dramas are forwarded in groups, and what links are posted in official account articles have all become distribution channels. On the other hand, Tencent is also willing to spend money on the supply side: for new dramas that it participates in co-distribution, as long as the per capita playback duration is no less than 10 minutes, they can enjoy up to 100% revenue incentive.
Willing to open up the WeChat ecosystem and attract supply with the determination that the platform does not make money first proves Tencent's recognition of short dramas as an important path for AI commercialization, but it is still too early to assert that Lvpaopao will replace Redfruit. With determination and momentum, relying on the heritage of WeChat, Lvpaopao can run very fast, but the 100% revenue incentive cannot last forever. To make profits, increasing advertising density, paying for high-quality content, and membership system will sooner or later become options. Of course, Lvpaopao may also become a look that "has so many advertisements that it is annoying".
However, with the entry of Lvpaopao and other short drama platforms, it can be predicted that in the torrent of AI mass production, higher-quality short dramas will become the "hot cake" that all parties compete for, and perhaps a pattern similar to the long video platforms iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku and Mango TV will be established, where the quality of the drama itself determines the retention and loss of users.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Yishi Finance" (ID: yishicaijing), written by Dongyang, edited by Gaoshan, and published with authorization from 36Kr.