Operation and Management of Micro Short Drama Platform: Taking

“Hongguo Free Short Drama” as an Example

Meixuan Fu

College of Business South Central University, Changsha, Hunan, China

Keywords: Micro-Short Drama Platform, Business Management Model, Hongguo Free Short Drama, Culture Going

Overseas, Advertising Realization (IAA).

Abstract: According to the research, China's micro short drama industry will reach 662 million users in 2024, with the

market size exceeding 50.5 billion yuan, and the overseas market also shows explosive growth, with Reel

Short as the representative platform successfully penetrating the European and American markets through

localization strategy. The paper focuses on the IAA model of Hongguo Short Drama, pointing out that it

lowers the threshold of user consumption through the strategy of "free viewing + advertisement incentive",

realizes low-cost traffic acquisition and IP transformation by relying on ByteDance's ecological resources,

and its monthly active users have rapidly climbed to 140 million. At the same time, the study reveals the

challenges faced by the micro short drama industry. In the future, meta-universe technology and AI-generated

scripts may revolutionize the industry. Through case studies and comparative research, this paper provides

theoretical and practical references for China's micro short drama platforms.

1 INTRODUCTION

In 2024, the user scale of China's micro-short dramas

has reached 662 million people, accounting for 59.7%

of the overall Internet users, and the market scale has

reached 50.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of

35.03%, exceeding the scale of the movie box office

for the first time, which indicates that the market of

micro-short dramas has become a highly potential

segment in the field of online audiovisuals (Li,2025).

The 2024 China Micro Short Drama Industry

Research Report predicts that the market size will

reach 63.43 billion yuan in 2025, and further grow to

85.65 billion yuan in 2027, with a compound annual

growth rate of 19.2%.

After American movies, Korean culture, Japanese

comics and Chinese online literature, Chinese micro-

sketch dramas are becoming the new thing in culture

going overseas. 2024 saw explosive growth in the

overseas sketch drama market, with apps generating

370 million downloads, inbound purchase revenue of

about US$570 million, and about 202 apps for

overseas sketch dramas, which is five times more than

that of the previous year, which Chinese sketch

dramas accounted for 80%. Reel Short’s performance

in the overseas market is particularly outstanding, as

of February 2024, the cumulative global downloads

exceeded 33 million times, and it has repeatedly

ranked at the top of the total app download list in the

U.S., the U.K., Canada and other countries, with a

total revenue of 320 million yuan, and The New York

Times evaluated it as "a Chinese app that has made a

major breakthrough in the U.S. market"(Long & Li,

2024).

Micro shorts, a combination of TikTok and

Netflix, are mini soap operas filmed in a vertical

format. These episodes usually have exaggerated

performance forms and absurd storylines (Fan, 2024).

The rapid development of micro-short drama

platforms has triggered extensive academic attention.

Some scholars hold the view that the explosive

popularity of micro-short dramas is due to their low

production costs and rapid online distribution

allowing for rapid iteration, and generating a wealth

of high-quality content that meets the needs of a

diverse audience(Zhang, 2023).On November 9,

2023, ReelShort briefly surpassed TikTok to become

the most popular entertainment app in the U.S. Apple

App Store. Other scholars have further analyzed

ReelShort's strategy of localizing the theme of

"Werewolf Love" and concluded that its success

stems from the accurate capture of regional cultural

symbols (Pham, 2025). On the technical level, studies

Fu, M.

Operation and Management of Micro Short Drama Platform: Taking “Hongguo Free Short Drama” as an Example.

DOI: 10.5220/0013989200004916

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication (PRMC 2025), pages 235-239

ISBN: 978-989-758-778-8

235

have shown the key role of algorithmic

recommendation on user stickiness, emphasizing the

dynamic adjustment mechanism driven by AI (Globe

Newswire, 2025).

In order to deeply analyze the operation and

management mode of micro short drama platform,

this paper adopts the following research methods:

First, the case study method. Taking "Hongguo Free

Short Drama" as the key research case, we analyze in

detail its specific strategies in content creation, user

growth, profit model and other aspects of

management, summarize its successful experience

and challenges, and then provide practical reference

for the management of the entire micro short drama

platform. The second is the comparative research

method. Compare the development mode of China's

micro short drama with international platforms, select

representative international cases such as Reel Short,

and summarize the characteristics and laws of the

operation and management of micro short drama

platforms under different modes, to provide a

reference for the international development of China's

micro short drama platforms.

2 INDUSTRY ANALYSIS:

GLOBAL MICRO SHORT

DRAMA ECOLOGICAL

COMPARISON

2.1 The Chinese Model: Traffic Driven

and Paid Conversion

2.1.1 Profit Model

The first way to monetize micro short dramas adopts

the IAP model (In-App Purchase), which means that

users directly pay to watch short dramas, and it is the

most direct way to monetize. The core logic is to put

traffic on short video platforms such as Jittery,

RedNote, and Shutterbug, and use the first few

episodes for free to attract users to pay for subsequent

content. Seize the "golden six seconds" to create a

"hook" for impulsive consumption. The second

method adopts IAA mode (In-App Advertisement),

that is, users watch short dramas for free, and the film

producer obtains revenues through advertisements,

etc. This model has a longer start-up cycle and a

stronger scale effect. The third method of profitability

is IAAP mode (IAP+IAA), which is to obtain revenue

through both user payment and advertisement, and to

improve user acceptance while fully utilizing the

traffic value of short dramas.

2.1.2 User Profiling

The age range of micro-drama users is relatively

broad, but mainly middle-aged and young people.

25% of teenagers aged 19 and below are fond of

fantasy and campus themes, and micro-dramas satisfy

their imaginations of a diversified world, while 60%

of users aged 20-49 are young people who are new to

the workplace or college students. Among them,

young users aged 20-34, mostly newcomers to the

workplace or college students, are in pursuit of fresh

and trendy entertainment, and the viewing experience

of micro-dramas is suitable for their fast-paced lives.

Middle-aged users aged 35-49, who have a certain

amount of spending money and leisure time, are

interested in themes such as family and emotion and

the urban workplace, and hope to relax through

micro-dramas. Meanwhile, the proportion of older

users aged 50 and above is also increasing gradually,

about 15%, they prefer traditional family ethics,

history and legend themes, and the simple and easy-

to-understand plots and shorter duration of micro

short dramas are in line with their viewing habits.

There are slightly more female users than male

viewers of micro short dramas, accounting for about

55%. Female users are inclined to sweet favor, love,

revenge and other emotional themes, while male

users are more interested in suspense, mystery, action

and other themes.

In terms of city-level distribution, the proportion

of users in second-tier cities is the highest, about 35%,

providing a good basis for the dissemination of short

micro-dramas. The proportion of users in first-tier

cities is about 25%, micro-sketch dramas have

become their choice of using fragmented time for

entertainment. The proportion of users in third-tier

cities and rural areas is about 40%, and there is a

relative lack of entertainment content. Micro-drama

has attracted a large number of users by virtue of its

rich content and the advantage of free viewing.

2.2 International Case: Reel Short’s

Localization Strategy for Werewolf

Romance

2.2.1 Plot Setting and Cultural Integration

Cultural Discount refers to the phenomenon that film

and television products are less accepted in the

international market due to cultural differences, and

Reel Short realizes the reverse breakthrough of

Cultural Discount through localized narrative. Reel

Short follows the storytelling structure of a Chinese

hegemony drama, transforming the "hegemonic

PRMC 2025 - International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication

236

president" into a "werewolf leader". In "Fated to be

My Forbidden Alpha", the common hegemony

episodes such as wall thumping and slapping are

retained, which are fresh to overseas audiences. At

the same time, it combines with Western pop culture

and utilizes the A/B/O setting to build a complex

social hierarchy, such as Alpha as a powerful leader

and Omega in the lower class of society. On this basis,

we design character relationships and plots, such as

the female lead's low status in the early stage and her

status reversal in the later stage, to enhance the sense

of immersion by utilizing the cultural background

familiar to the Western audience.

2.2.2 Characterization of Characters in Line

with Local Mainstream Values

Modern mainstream Western culture emphasizes

individual heroism and focuses on self-awareness and

self-realization. In My Chosen Werewolf Chief, the

four protagonists represent common American Latina

women, white women, southern American men, and

northern American men, which accurately

corresponds to American stereotypes and labels of

these four groups of people, so that the audience can

get a general idea of their personality traits through

the characters' images.

2.2.3 Sensitization and Promotion to Match

Local Habits

Reel Short strategically placed carefully - selected

clips from short, high - tension episodes of its shows

on TikTok. The clips were designed to be attention -

grabbing, often featuring cliffhangers or emotionally

charged scenes. Once on TikTok, these videos

quickly gained an astonishing number of airplays.

The allure of the snippets was so strong that it

immediately piqued the curiosity of TikTok users.

This, in turn, effectively attracted their attention and

seamlessly directed them to the Reel Short platform.

By leveraging TikTok's extensive global reach,

spanning across diverse regions and demographics,

and its massive user base numbering in the billions,

Reel Short managed to execute highly effective traffic

diversion.

3 CASE DIGGING DEEPER:

"HONGGUO FREE SHORT

DRAMA" BUSINESS

MANAGEMENT MODEL

Based on the global ecological comparison, the

following section will take "Hongguo Free Short

Drama" as a typical case study and analyze its

business management strategy in depth. Hongguo

Short Drama is a short drama online viewing media

platform, which provides a huge amount of popular

and high-quality short drama resources and was first

introduced to the market by ByteDance Group in May

2023. 2024 The industry report mentions that

Hongguo Short Drama's monthly active user scale has

already reached the fifth place in the industry, only

behind Aqiyi, Tencent Video, Mango TV, B Station

and Youku Video.

3.1 Exploration of Causes

3.1.1 Profitability Model of IAA

While other short drama platforms within the volume

of payment and membership, Hongguo another way,

using IAA free model. Users do not need to recharge,

do not need to buy membership, just watch a few

minutes of ads in the intervals of several episodes to

watch a large number of short dramas for free.

Hongguo relies on this model to quickly gather many

users. According to Quest Mobile data, after the

official launch in August 2023, when the market for

short dramas was not yet clear, Hongguo short dramas

began to emerge, and in less than a year, the DAU

(daily active users) exceeded 4 million, and the MAU

(number of monthly active users) soared to 140

million.

Compare the logic of paid short dramas inheriting

infomercials - after a new drama is online, the

playwright puts the exciting and wonderful clips of

the plot on platforms such as Jitterbug, Shutterbug,

etc., and these free episodes often end abruptly at the

climax, and viewers can't stop watching at this point,

but to continue to watch it, they need to jump to the

mini-programs or download the app to pay for it,

while To watch a short drama in its entirety requires

tens of yuan, sometimes even more expensive than a

movie ticket (Wei, 2024). In contrast, the free model

of Hongguo Short Drama fits the psychological needs

of users just right. You only need to pay a small

amount of time watching the ads, and then you can

enjoy the full episode. This model greatly lowers the

consumption threshold of users, enabling them to

Operation and Management of Micro Short Drama Platform: Taking “Hongguo Free Short Drama” as an Example

237

obtain a rich entertainment experience at a very low

cost.

3.1.2 Earn Money by Watching Short

Dramas to Prolong Users' Usage Time

The strategy of "watching dramas and earning gold

coins" has always been an effective means of user

growth in the Internet content industry, and Hongguo

Short Drama has also successfully applied it to its

business model. This model not only encourages

users to watch short dramas more frequently, but also

extends their stay on the platform, effectively

increasing the activity and stickiness of Hongguo

users. In addition, this incentive mechanism also

attracts a large number of new users to join, forming

a virtuous cycle and bringing continuous user growth

to the platform.

3.1.3 Relying on the Byte-Hopping

Ecosystem to Maximize Cost Savings

For the short drama industry, the most important link,

in addition to production, is the cast flow and script,

which are precisely the two advantages of Hongguo

short drama backed by ByteDance. According to

statistics, the profit model of short drama is heavily

dependent on user acquisition, and almost 80% of the

cost is spent on the marketing and user acquisition of

major traffic platforms such as Jitterbug and

Shutterbug. As a product under byte, Hongguo has a

natural advantage in casting flow.

Also, as a product of ByteDance, Tomato Novel

provides a huge amount of IP copyright resources for

Hongguo Short Drama, and most of Hongguo's short

dramas are adapted based on its popular IP. This

resource sharing has greatly enriched the library

content of Hongguo's short dramas and provided

users with diversified viewing options. In addition,

Aqiyi has also reached a strategic partnership with

Hongguo Short Drama to jointly develop intellectual

property and produce high-quality content

In addition, the Hongguo app not only provides

short drama content, but also covers a variety of free

audio-visual content such as novels, audiobooks, etc.,

forming a comprehensive entertainment platform,

creating a one-stop content and entertainment channel

for users, enriching the user's experience, and

broadening the direction of the future development of

Hongguo.

3.2 Melolo's Internationalization

Quest

Melolo, the first short drama app launched by

ByteDance for overseas markets, was launched in

November 2024 in Indonesia, the Philippines, and

other Southeast Asian markets. Its first-month

downloads exceeded those of a similar competitor

Reel short by 30%, a figure that suggests Melolo has

the potential for high user growth. By the end of

February 2025, Melolo had been downloaded more

than 1.32 million times globally, 99% of which came

from the Southeast Asian market, with Indonesia

accounting for a whopping 58.85% of the total, laying

the foundation for overall user growth (Yang, 2024).

4 CHALLENGES FACING THE

MICRO-SKETCH PLATFORM

Despite the promising future of the micro-sketch

industry, its development still faces multiple

challenges.

At the content level, the micro drama track has

attracted a large number of participants due to its low

investment, quick payback and low risk. However,

the excessive pursuit of short-term gains has caused

the industry to fall into the predicament of "bad

money driving out good money", and shoddy content

has squeezed the space for high-quality creations. The

quality of scripts is perfunctory, the acting skills of

the actors are embarrassing, from the preparation to

the finished product is fast only a week, slow is half a

month, the actors are even serving as editors,

directors and make-up artists and other positions at

the same time, and there is no sense of texture to

speak of, and the presentation of the character's image

relies on the surface of the creation of the.

In addition, many micro short dramas have

obvious homogenization in terms of plot setting and

characterization and lack innovation and depth.

According to the 2024 China Micro Short Drama

Industry Research Report, the duplication rate of

micro short drama scripts exceeds 60%, which leads

to aesthetic fatigue of the audience during the viewing

process.

At the copyright level, micro-short dramas are

disseminated through a wide range of channels,

including short video platforms and social media, in

addition to major micro-short drama platforms. This

makes it difficult for copyright holders to

comprehensively monitor and manage the

dissemination of works, and infringements are prone

PRMC 2025 - International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication

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to spread rapidly across multiple platforms,

increasing the difficulty of copyright protection (Liao

et al., 2023).

On the social level, micro-short dramas may

exacerbate the fragmentation and speed dating of

cultural consumption (Li, 2024). Surveys show that

the duration of single-episode attention span of

Generation Z viewers declined from 45 seconds in

2020 to 28 seconds in 2023. High-stimulation, short

and fast audio-visual experiences keep hitting

people's brains, expelling deep reading and thinking

from real life. In order to attract attention, some

dramas will adopt some elements of vulgarity,

violence and pornography, which will easily have a

negative impact on the values of viewers, especially

teenagers.

5 CONCLUSION

Through the study of the global micro-short drama

ecology and the business management model of

Hongguo Free Short Drama, this paper finds that

micro-short dramas have risen rapidly globally by

virtue of their unique advantages and become a new

growth pole of the global digital content industry. Its

characteristics of fragmentation and strong plot fit the

current fast-paced life, attracting a large number of

users and expanding the market scale.

Chinese micro-short drama platforms have

accumulated rich experience in operation and

management, such as precise traffic operation and

efficient payment conversion strategies, which are

important insights for developing markets. In terms

of traffic acquisition, social media and short video

platforms are utilized for promotion to attract

potential users; in terms of payment conversion,

quality content is created, and diverse payment modes

are set up to increase users' willingness to pay. These

experiences provide a path that can be drawn for the

development of micro-short drama platforms in

developing countries, helping them to develop and

grow rapidly with limited resources.

Looking into the future, meta-universe skits and

AI-generated scripts will bring technological

disruption to the micro-skit industry. Meta-universe

short drama can break the limitations of traditional

viewing mode, with the help of virtual reality, and

augmented reality technology, allowing the audience

to feel the scene in the drama and interact with the

characters, opening up a new development direction

for the industry, while AI-generated scripts can

greatly improve the efficiency of the creation of the

data analysis to mine the user's preferences, generate

scripts that are more in line with the market demand,

and bring more creativity and possibilities to the

creation of content. However, the development of

technology also brings new challenges, such as the

high cost of the technical realization of meta-universe

short drama, AI script creation may have copyright

attribution disputes. In the future, the micro-sketch

industry needs to seek a balance between

technological innovation and standardized

development, continuously improve the quality of

content, strengthen copyright protection, and promote

healthy and sustainable development of the micro-

sketch industry.

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