"Even 1-2 minutes of drama is enough"... The revolution of content, short-form

CJ ENM's OTT platform Tving officially launched its self-produced short-form content 'Tving Short Original' from the 4th. Naver has announced the launch of its animation service 'Cuts', which transforms webtoons into short-form videos. In an era where the performance-to-time ratio is considered, videos that were once thought of as trailers of 1-2 minutes have now become content itself. Especially with the explosive increase in demand centered on the MZ and Alpha generations, short-form is transforming the way content is consumed, beyond just a trend.

■Global short-form market grows to 13 trillion won

Short-form dramas are rapidly growing, centered around China and the United States. According to Kakao Ventures last year, the global short-form drama market size was about 13 trillion won, with the domestic market estimated at about 650 billion won.

So what impact will short-form dramas have on the K-content industry?

Lee Min-seok, CEO of WhyNot Media, a comprehensive entertainment company that pioneered the web drama genre with works like 'Point of Omniscient Interfere', predicted, "While short-form dramas cannot currently replace the K-drama market, they can be applied as a model to discover new business models or revive struggling advertising business models."

Could it be a new breakthrough for the K-drama industry? CEO Lee answered, "K-dramas are still popular in the global market, and the annual revenue scale is large, so it's difficult for short-form to replace them." He continued, "Short-form can quickly reach consumers through IP franchises like sequels and has great potential to expand into various additional businesses centered on small-scale fandoms."

He explained, "Long-form dramas face barriers to entry due to production costs and marketing expenses reaching hundreds of billions of won and the use of top-star IPs, but short-form has relatively high production freedom, making it advantageous for forming IP-based fandoms and diversifying revenue." He added, "Looking at the case of the underground idol 'QWER', even non-mainstream IPs with established fandoms have strong power," emphasizing, "K-pop also started as a non-mainstream culture and settled in the global market."

There was also an opinion that short-form dramas could be the starting point of an IP virtuous cycle structure.

Jung Ho-young, CEO of New Universe, a short-form production company, predicted, "Content that succeeds in short-form can expand into long-form dramas or movies in the future," and "The relationship between short and long forms will develop complementarily."

■Viral attribute, a key tool for advertising and promotion

Short-form has emerged as a key tool for advertising and brand promotion, armed with rapid dissemination and easy production methods. It is easy for anyone to produce, lowering the entry barrier for creators.

Park Chang-woo, CEO of Soon Entertainment, a short-form content agency, said, "Short-form has a completely different business structure and grammar from existing multi-channel networks (MCNs)," and "It's more important how quickly it can spread than the completeness of the content. Viral is its basic attribute."

Soon Entertainment previously sparked a global challenge craze through 'Malatang Huru' by Seoybe.

CEO Park said, "Challenges are an effective means to induce brand or music viral," and "Zico's 'Any Song' is like the progenitor of music viral, and now almost every singer requests a music challenge."

Challenges, which started as a 'forced trend' concept on TikTok, refer to a method that intentionally promotes the spread of specific content, except for voluntary trend cases like the unique dance move 'Sleek Back Challenge'.

Short-form is so fast and diverse in trend changes that it's difficult to define with a single formula.

He likened it to "riding a running horse," saying, "Tens of thousands of pieces of content are generated daily," and "Once a piece of content starts to gain traction, creators quickly jump on the trend to increase their followers and promote content dissemination."

Short-form is rapidly increasing production efficiency through integration with generative AI. AI is particularly optimized for creating videos within 15 seconds, and production costs have also decreased from tens of millions of won to hundreds of thousands of won. However, separate costs are required for the portrait rights of famous people. Especially, targeted advertising that reflects personal interests and behavior patterns is possible, making it "perfectly suited for the era of efficiency."

jashin@fnnews.com Shin Jin-ah reporter