2019 is a year of change. This is especially true for content industries that are highly active and fully interface with consumer context. From remakes of IP dramas, short video incubation, to the rise of interactive dramas and micro-drama models, content platforms have been constantly updating content output models in units of “months”, trying to constantly look for content in a world full of content The excitement of the audience. Interestingly, in this process, technology has gradually played an important role. “Technology + Content” has increasingly moved to the front of the stage, affecting and changing the content industry process.
Because of this, 2019 has also become a year worth reviewing. The “normalized changes” make the industry development cycle in 2019 a precious sample. After the review, it is easier for us to see a series of complex but regular changes, which can find out the potential for us to fail. The reason can also identify the key to success.
Maybe the new trend that will appear in 2020 has already begun in 2019.
The first change in 2019: industry empowerment content
Recently, I have been wondering what is the use of the many buttons on the left side of iQiyi in full-screen mode. I tried it a few times and found that this is a button to identify the screen information. Click it to know who is on the screen and what products are available. You can also place an order directly.
Identification is not really a new technology. Similar attempts have been made by Tudou in the PC era. The difference is that this time put it directly on the mobile terminal and use a universal technology to seamlessly connect the audience, content, and things in the content. In fact, in recent years, whether it is the rise of live broadcast or the popularity of e-commerce with goods, to some extent, it reflects that viewers have long been unsatisfied with simply watching content.
What is the main function of content? For a long time in the past, the answer to this question was basicallyConstant, that is to complete the “information transmission”, that is, to help people complete effective information acquisition to achieve learning, cognition, judgment and other purposes.
However, with the diversification of people’s needs and the richness of content expression, after the content enters the era of social networking, its function in people’s daily life scenes has also undergone drastic changes-more and more content has begun Get rid of the role of “information medium” and become a fast-moving consumer product that passes time, adjusts emotions, and relieves stress-taking on more division of labor in the industry.
Of course, this change has a good side. At least the content industry has gained a larger audience and has the opportunity to activate a larger market potential. However, the problems facing the industry are more intuitive:
This new trend requires “content” to appear in a more flexible way in front of people, and this requirement has also increased the cost of creation, such as which content carrier and content platform are suitable for dissemination of currently created content , Which element is the preferred tipping point, these issues can lead to a huge difference in the effectiveness of communication.
And this new pain point will bring a secondary pain point: Individual or small-volume creators will become increasingly difficult to ensure stable output of content production due to the increase in creative costs; content resources are also constantly tilted to scale The problem of homogenization and mass production began to occur in the industrial production system.
A megatrend in 2019 has emerged as the times require: content carriers are more abundant, technology is more comprehensive, and more emphasis is placed on industry-side active empowerment of content.
For example, the “Trend Partner” mentioned earlier, when watching the program, viewers can use the “AI radar” to directly and directly obtain “feedback” of the content: who this person is, what clothes they wear, and how to buy the same paragraph To complete the jump from viewing to buying; at the same time, you do n’t have to think too much about the “conversion” column group, you can invest more energy in content display and other links.
We can also see similar ideas in the “Internet Red Carrying Goods” boom of the fire in 2019. In the descriptions of many industry media, “Internet red with goods” has been described as a “remake of TV shopping”, that is, the basic model is that the anchors display the products, and the audience is converted to consumers as the ultimate demand, but the display The platform changed from TV to Internet.
But in fact, through the empowerment of the industry, the composition logic of the “carrying goods” scenario has been redefined once.
In the traditional “one-way output” content era, the only effective information transmission method in the TV shopping scene is the constant broadcast of the anchor. To add additional information, the basic way is to add exhibits to the frame, and alsoThe corresponding supporting actions are required for the user to take effect (such as hanging out a shopping phone on the TV and requiring the consumer to complete dialing and corresponding calls).
From the perspective of product operation, this aspect is likely to cause a lot of information interference, which seriously affects the final presentation of the content. On the other hand, it sets a too long use path for users, making participation a high cost. Behavior, which in turn leads to low consumer conversion rates and a lot of waste on the content itself.
(Picture) The “Kangxi” spoof TV shopping interface is already messy enough
The “Internet red belt” (or “content e-commerce” with a larger concept) in 2019 is obviously a solution in a different dimension. For example, the “commodity” in the content is no longer just a “display” function, but more similar to a “trigger”, can complete the jump from content to the purchase channel, and can also be linked to supplement the content.
If you want to summarize it in one sentence, it is that today ’s content is truly “no words.” With the promotion of industrial empowerment, every element that appears in the user ’s perspective can be used as “construction “Sexual supplementation” even performs its function as “new content”, thereby promoting more effective dissemination of content.
The second change in 2019: the audience changes from passive to active
If the content industry has maintained the traditional dual structure of “creator output and audience acceptance” for a long time in the past, the biggest change after entering 2019 is the break of this dual structure. This is due to the fact that content creators have begun to focus on technological innovation, using technology to make content more “variable and flexible”, that is, the audience is no longer fixed in the “output” state, but has gained more content participation the way.
Of course, “user participation in the content creation process” is not a phenomenon that only appeared in 2019. Before that, there have been manyTechnology can help viewers better participate in the content, such as barrage.
On the one hand, the barrage can be similar to “re-evaluation praise” as a positive feedback on the content, on the other hand, it can also become an important part of the content, and even has the ability to serve as the core of the content. The most classic example is AB Station New Year The reserved program “God Barrage” at the festival.
(Picture) “Auntie Washing Railway” lyrics MV made by pure barrage
It ’s just that whether it ’s re-evaluation or “barrage”, although the audience has a way to participate in the content, in the final analysis, these participations are “restricted”. Still taking the barrage as an example, the barrage show at the annual festival in AB station on the surface is a complete “self-expression”, but the final presentation effect is limited by many factors such as technology and native content. For example, after the player at station B upgraded to the HTML5 version, it stopped supporting the function of code barrage, which caused the barrage of God to almost disappear in the new works.
In other words, although the audience can participate in the content for a long time before, it usually only belongs to the icing on the cake—the initiative of content creation is still in the hands of the creator or platform. Often it’s just a second creation—it doesn’t change the experience of the content in any way.
This situation has changed dramatically in 2019, or the trend of “audience begins to participate in content” has begun to increase in 2019: people not only have more ways to participate in content, but also gradually gain “active participation” ability. With the “activation” of “participation”, the audience also has the opportunity to influence or even directly define the experience that content can bring.
For example, interactive video, this kind of inspiration comes from the content creation mode of Japanese-style galgame games. It has been widely adopted in 2019 and has hatched many explosive works, such as the first explosion in the game and then the film and television. Adapted “The Invisible Guardian” and the first domestic film and television work “His Smile”, which officially takes “interaction” as the main mode, in Iqiyi in JuneOfficially launched on the platform.
(Picture) A plot branch point in “His Smile”
The biggest difference from traditional film and television works lies in how key factors such as how the plot develops, how the characters are ultimately destined, and how the scene switches will be left to the audience to decide in the structure of the “interactive video”-from the perspective of results, In other words, the experience that the content can ultimately be presented is ultimately determined by the audience’s personal accumulation, emotions, and interest preferences-which obviously gives more possibilities for content creation.
It is worth mentioning that this content creation strategy not only redefines the industry-side production model, but also sinks into the hands of ordinary netizens. By the second half of 2019, many emerging short video communities represented by WeChat have launched branch story templates, and have given targeted support to the content of “branch story” creation.
In short, in 2019, we can see that audiences are being “invited” by the industry to the path of content creation, and this “invitation” has also injected a new wave of vitality into the content industry. The interactive relationship between users and content, or the growth path of creators, have been pushed to a new dimension.
The third change in 2019: content contains everything
The third change is that the content contains everything, but compared to the previous two changes, the relative trend is more gradual and more “daily”, which is mainly reflected in “the normalization of content linkage”, such as the national cartoon IP slam dunk master It can be adapted for mobile games. For example, the main creator of Ye Wen 4 will go to various platforms to customize different content.
Of course you can understand that this is part of social marketing, and it is a promotion strategy that conforms to the characteristics of social network communication. However, with the gradual development of such a strategy from a single choice to industry convergence, it is not difficult to find that the content industry is forming a consensus: the full exploration of the value of content, if you want to fully tap the value of content,Linkage must be made “standard” for content, that is, “content contains everything.”
The simplest definition of “content contains everything” is that the production of a content is not just the birth of hard materials (such as the text of an article, a video of a movie, etc.), but also requires the development of supporting facilities, such as the super Words, possible slots, IPs, communities, and more.
This trend has increased the difficulty of effective promotion of content, and also promoted the process of industrialization, that is, with the diversification of demand, more division of labor has emerged. Institutionalized and industrialized operation has become an inevitable choice. MCN is one of them. Typical products.
The original intention of the birth of MCN was to solve the innate shortcomings of individual creators, that is, “creation” is a perceptual act. It is difficult to maintain the quality of works while maintaining a certain level of output. It is a very targeted solution-through institutionalized operation, on the premise of accumulating a large number of samples and market data, a relatively mature system is formed, and content production enters an industrialized assembly line, which guarantees the lower limit of works. Higher while maintaining yield.
So in the era of social networks, MCN not only has a great advantage over ordinary creators in the “content industry”, but platforms that require content activity and content quality to retain users are also quite welcome.
The idea of MCN has been further developed in 2019: a large number of sub-production industries assisting in the completion of peripheral development have begun to emerge. They are no longer purely engaged in the incubation of new content, but are more willing to choose high-quality content to expand their boundaries, and no longer stick to the “MCN form”.
Whether this trend is good or bad is up for debate. Especially in October of this year, the tragedy of “A overnight video that is popular, but our traffic is 0” caused by MCN’s excessive “synergy effect” caused people to reflect on this trend of industrialization. But at least one thing is undeniable:
Content is increasingly unable to survive in the content ecosystem in “individual form” in isolation.
Conclusion
What new trends will emerge in the content industry in 2020, many of which have already begun in 2019. For example, driven by the trend of “all content is available”, the birth of more flexible and convenient content creation methods is almost a matter of time.
Especially as the content industry continues to create new dividends, latecomers who are trying to overtake corners are clearly working hard to promote this process, and people may usher in a new milestone “new model” Birth.
But predicting the content industry in 2020 is undoubtedly the hardest thing. Just like the biggest feelings we have obtained in the review in 2019, using the classic theory of dialectics to describe, the industry’s normal state may be “the only constant is the change itself”.
So whether the content industry gradually shifts from emphasizing “mid-single” to “assistance” or from “one-way output of creators” to “active participation of audiences”, compared with the recognition of trends, “Continuous adaptation” is perhaps the most important survival skill in the industry.