Kuaishou reported short-drama marketing growth, not a revenue line

What was announced or recorded

Kuaishou Technology, the Hong Kong-listed platform operator, reported growth tied to its in-house short-drama brand, Kuaishou Astral Short Plays (快手星芒短劇), in two unaudited quarterly results announcements: one for the first quarter of 2024, published 22 May 2024, and one for the second quarter of 2024, published 20 August 2024.

What the documents establish

The first-quarter release states that average daily marketing spending on paid short plays 'skyrocketed by more than four-fold year-over-year' in the first quarter of 2024, and that during the 2024 Spring Festival, 20 short plays produced by Kuaishou Astral Short Plays each drew more than 100 million views, seven of them over 300 million. The second-quarter release reports the same spending metric rose 'by more than twofold year-over-year', and states that renewed brand sponsorships, including from Tmall, produced 'an over 20-fold revenue growth year-over-year' from marketing sponsorship of Kuaishou Astral Short Plays in that quarter. Both figures sit inside the company's broader external marketing services line, itself part of an online marketing services segment that made up 56.5 percent of Kuaishou's RMB 31.0 billion total revenue in the second quarter of 2024.

Announced versus delivered

These are delivered, company-reported figures, not a forecast, though both releases label the underlying results 'unaudited'. What is not delivered is an absolute revenue figure for short-drama activity on its own: both statements are growth rates against the same quarter a year earlier, not a stated RMB total for the short-drama product line. The figures also describe advertiser-side revenue, the marketing spend and sponsorship that brands pay to reach short-drama audiences on Kuaishou, a different flow of money from the coin or subscription payments a viewer pays an app like ReelShort or DramaBox directly.

What to watch

Editorially, an annual report, rather than a quarterly release, would be the place to look for whether Kuaishou ever states an absolute figure for this business rather than a year-on-year growth rate, and whether it separates advertiser-paid short-drama revenue from any viewer-paid equivalent.

• Has any later Kuaishou filing stated an absolute RMB figure for Kuaishou Astral Short Plays rather than a growth percentage?
• Does Kuaishou report a separate, viewer-paid short-drama revenue line distinct from advertiser marketing spend?
• How does a fourfold first-quarter and twofold second-quarter spending increase compare with the category-wide download and revenue growth analysts reported for the same year?

A platform reporting that advertisers are spending faster on short-drama placements is a real, sourced fact about demand for the format; it is not the same fact as the platform, or any app on it, disclosing how much revenue the format itself generates, and the two should not be quoted interchangeably.