Tencent’s short-drama mini-program inside WeChat reached 143 million monthly active users in August, according to QuestMobile data reported by the Chinese outlet Jiemian and relayed by TechNode on October 28. The same report puts weekly active users at 89.68 million in the first week of October. The service, called Lvpaopao and also referred to as Green Bubble Short Drama, is Tencent’s main answer to Hongguo, the free short-drama app run by ByteDance.

The figures are third-party estimates, not numbers Tencent has published. The South China Morning Post ran a separate October 29 article on the Tencent-ByteDance rivalry, but Lens could not open it because the site returned an access error, so this report relies on TechNode, Yicai and other opened sources.

What the usage data show

TechNode’s October 28 report says weekly active users of the mini-program grew 44.1 percent from the first week of September to the first week of October. Lens arithmetic: that growth rate implies roughly 62 million weekly users in the first week of September, though no opened source states that figure.

The monthly and weekly numbers measure different things and should not be added or compared directly. The 143 million figure is a monthly count for August. The 89.68 million figure is a weekly count for early October. Neither TechNode article explains why the monthly figure refers to August while the product is described elsewhere as having launched in late September; Lens found no opened source that resolves the gap.

TechNode also cites advertising data from the research firm DataEye. According to that data, Lvpaopao ran 43,000 ad creatives between October 1 and 7, and its average daily ad placements rose 57 percent from the previous week as Tencent widened its promotion.

How the service works

TechNode’s October 15 article, written by Jessie Wu, describes Green Bubble Short Drama as a free WeChat mini-program that launched quietly in late September and drew attention on Weibo that week. Tencent chose to build it inside WeChat rather than as a separate app, so users can find, watch and share dramas without installing anything.

The homepage has recommendations, popularity charts, new-release rankings, a Friends Are Watching section and regional trending lists. Playback can continue in a floating window while a user replies to messages. Traffic comes from WeChat Search, mini-program entry points and links inside Channels, WeChat’s short-video platform.

Viewing is free and paid for by ads placed within episodes. According to TechNode and Yicai, Tencent does not produce the dramas itself. Third-party production companies and licensed distributors supply them.

Tencent also set up an incentive program that runs from October 16 to December 31, 2026. TechNode reports that new dramas averaging at least 10 minutes of viewing time per user can earn revenue incentives of up to 100 percent, made up of a 90 percent cash revenue share and a 10 percent advertising credit. Yicai adds that eligibility rests on viewing duration, not view counts.

Yicai also reports that, according to WeChat statistics, Lvpaopao users watch about five times as long as the overall market and show a retention rate more than 2.5 times higher. The report does not name the comparison baseline for either figure, and the statistics come from WeChat itself.

The rival Tencent is chasing

Hongguo had about 168 million users in July, up 107 percent from a year earlier, according to QuestMobile data cited by Yicai. TechNode’s October 20 article, citing QuestMobile data in Nomura research as reported by TechWeb, describes the same figure as daily active users and says it exceeds the combined daily audiences of Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku and Mango TV. The two outlets use different labels for the figure, so it is unclear whether it counts daily or total users.

TechNode’s October 15 article adds usage-time data from third-party providers. ByteDance’s apps accounted for 41.8 percent of total usage time among China’s 50 most-used apps in August. Hongguo averaged about 125 minutes of daily use per user, against 112 to 120 minutes for Douyin and 82 to 85 minutes for WeChat.

Lens analysis: Lvpaopao’s 143 million monthly users and Hongguo’s 168 million daily or total users are not comparable numbers. Until both are reported on the same basis, the data show that Tencent’s product has found an audience quickly, not that it has closed the gap with Hongguo.

Why Tencent moved now

Yicai cites an industry insider, in a report attributed to The Paper, who called Lvpaopao a traffic-integration move rather than a proactive attack. The insider said mini-programs run by Jiuzhou Culture Media and Dianzhong Tech had bought ads on WeChat and then cut that spending, after which WeChat entered the business to protect its advertising revenue. This is one anonymous account and Lens could not verify it.

Yicai’s sources expected little change to the industry in the short term. A leading short-drama producer told the outlet that producers must keep balancing revenue sharing across platforms and that users are already used to Hongguo. In the long run, Yicai reports, Lvpaopao could stand out if WeChat uses Channels to bring in users.

The social features cut both ways. Han Jiazheng, a professor at the School of Animation and Digital Arts at Communication University of China, warned in Yicai’s report that because friends can see what a user is watching, privacy worries and social pressure could make people less willing to watch on the mini-program. TechNode’s October 15 article makes the same point about the Friends Are Watching section.

Both Yicai and TechNode report that AI-generated dramas are a core business for Lvpaopao and Hongguo. Yicai cites Founder Securities as saying that higher-quality, globalized AI-generated content is this year’s core theme.

ByteDance looks overseas

ByteDance’s response to the domestic competition includes an overseas platform. TechNode’s October 23 article, citing Jiemian News, says PineDrama is run independently by a team within TikTok’s business division, not by the Hongguo team. It reports that PineDrama has reached the top 10 of the iPhone free-app charts in the United States, Brazil and Thailand, and that it uses a free, ad-supported model like Hongguo’s while competitors ReelShort and DramaBox rely on paid viewing.

Most PineDrama producers come from China and many have worked on Hongguo, Douyin or TikTok, the article says. One producer quoted in the article said that 70 to 80 percent of the intellectual property in their team’s AI-generated animated dramas comes from Tomato Novel, ByteDance’s online fiction platform. TechNode notes that individual producers’ revenue accounts should not be taken as representative of the industry, and that the article gives no download counts or revenue figures for the platform.

The overseas market is growing. TechNode’s October 20 article, citing Sensor Tower, reports that worldwide short-drama app downloads rose 140 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2026 while in-app purchase revenue rose 20 percent. DramaBox and ReelShort each generated close to $140 million in in-app purchase revenue in that quarter, according to the same data.

What to watch

The first test is content. TechNode’s October 15 article argues that WeChat’s traffic gives Tencent a strong starting position but that retention depends on story quality, release frequency and recommendation quality, and that content will decide the contest.

The incentive program ends December 31, so the results of that payout structure on producer supply should be visible in the first months of 2027. Lens analysis: if producers shift output toward Tencent’s 90 percent cash share, Hongguo’s content supply would face pressure, but no opened source reports such a shift yet.

Third-party trackers will publish later monthly figures. Comparable monthly or daily numbers for both services would let readers judge whether Tencent’s early growth holds once the launch promotion, which DataEye’s ad data show rising in early October, eases.

Sources

Image: Tencent Qianhai Towers 202205.jpg by Sparktour, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative photo; it does not show the events described.