Tencent's Lvpaopao Reaches 143 Million Monthly Users as WeChat Challenges Hongguo

WeChat turns its audience into a short drama challenge

Tencent's Lvpaopao short drama service reached 143 million monthly active users in August 2026, according to QuestMobile data, giving the company a substantial audience for its challenge to ByteDance's Hongguo. By the first week of October, Lvpaopao had 89.68 million weekly active users, an increase of 44.1% from the first week of September.

The service operates inside WeChat, where viewers can watch live action dramas, stories generated with artificial intelligence and animation without downloading another app. Episodes are free, with advertisements providing revenue between installments. Third party producers and authorized distributors supply the dramas rather than Lvpaopao producing them itself.

Hongguo remains much larger. QuestMobile put its August monthly audience at 410 million, compared with Lvpaopao's 143 million. Tencent's service therefore had about 35% of Hongguo's monthly audience, or slightly more than one third. These audience figures come from third party measurement rather than platform disclosures.

Tencent is also increasing its promotional activity. DataEye tracked 43,000 advertising creatives for Lvpaopao between October 1 and 7, with average daily placements rising 57% from the preceding week. Advertising creatives are the different promotional materials used to attract viewers, rather than a count of people reached.

The contest brings together two different routes to an audience. ByteDance combines online fiction, Douyin promotion and a dedicated viewing app. Tencent is connecting drama viewing to WeChat's existing search, video and social features. For producers, the result is another large distribution channel. For viewers, it means more free entertainment competing for time inside an app they already use.

How large is the gap with Hongguo?

Hongguo's monthly active audience rose from 356 million in May to 410 million in August, according to QuestMobile. That is an increase of 54 million, or about 15%, in three months. Lvpaopao is expanding quickly, but it is pursuing a competitor that is still growing.

China's market for dedicated short drama apps reached 467 million monthly active users in August, up 77.6% from a year earlier. Hongguo's 410 million users represented 87.7% of that audience. The country's entire mobile internet audience grew just 0.9% to 1.278 billion over the same period, showing how much faster short drama viewing expanded than internet use itself.

Daily figures show the strength of Hongguo's viewing habit. In July, it had about 168 million daily active users, up 107% from a year earlier. Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku and Mango TV together had about 155 million daily active users, putting Hongguo ahead of their combined total by roughly 13 million.

A monthly active user is someone who uses a service during a month; daily and weekly measures cover shorter periods. The August monthly figures provide the direct audience comparison between Lvpaopao and Hongguo. Lvpaopao's October weekly growth shows its more recent momentum.

A rapid expansion through October

Lvpaopao's audience growth has been accompanied by a continuing increase in promotion and new incentives for drama suppliers. The main developments span several months:

• August 2026: Lvpaopao reached 143 million monthly active users, while Hongguo reached 410 million.
• October 1 to 7: Lvpaopao recorded 89.68 million weekly active users and ran 43,000 advertising creatives.
• October 19: WeChat and Channels launched an incentive activity for adapting novels published through official accounts into micro dramas.
• October 24: DataEye ADX tracked more than 8,300 advertising creatives for Lvpaopao that day, compared with an August daily average of about 2,000.
• October 27: Hongguo publicly rejected circulating claims about its revenue.

The October 24 advertising count was more than four times the August average. That gives a second indication, beyond the early October increase, that Tencent was sustaining its effort to attract viewers.

Why Tencent is building inside WeChat

WeChat already has a large audience for short dramas spread across many mini programs. QuestMobile put their combined monthly active audience at 427 million in February. By May, the audience for WeChat short drama mini programs reached 508 million, compared with 402 million for dedicated short drama apps.

Those ecosystem totals cover numerous services. Lvpaopao gives Tencent a shared distribution destination within that existing market, bringing together viewers who previously watched through separate drama mini programs. Searching for short dramas inside WeChat now leads users by default to Lvpaopao.

Fifty four WeChat short drama mini programs had more than one million monthly active users, up from 32 in an earlier count. Two leading services each exceeded 50 million. Tencent is therefore entering with an established viewing habit inside WeChat, rather than having to persuade every viewer to try a new setting.

Channels, WeChat's video service, can direct people from a short scene to the full drama. Social viewing signals can also help people discover stories through friends. ByteDance's route links fiction from Tomato Novel, promotion through Douyin and viewing on Hongguo, which launched in August 2023 with a free service supported by advertising.

Social discovery brings a privacy concern

WeChat's drama audience includes a substantial older population. People aged 51 and above accounted for 31.2% of users of its short drama mini programs, according to QuestMobile. Keeping viewing inside a familiar app reduces the steps needed to start watching.

Social features create a different consideration. Han Jiazheng, a professor at the School of Animation and Digital Arts at Communication University of China, warned that allowing friends to see drama viewing activity could make some users uncomfortable. Personal entertainment preferences may be something viewers prefer to keep separate from their social relationships.

WeChat says Lvpaopao's average viewing duration is about five times the market average and its retention rate is more than 2.5 times the average. Retention measures how many users return after first using a service. The company has not specified the comparison period or the services included in those benchmarks.

Tencent's challenge is to turn easy access into repeated viewing. A promotional clip can bring someone into a mini program, but the drama itself must keep that person watching and give them a reason to return.

What the 100% incentive gives producers

WeChat's incentive program for the fourth quarter of 2026 offers eligible new dramas seven consecutive days of revenue incentives reaching 100%. The package consists of a 90% cash share and 10% in advertising credits.

Eligibility is tied to participation in Lvpaopao's joint distribution system, the release window and viewing duration. The program targets qualifying new dramas within their first seven days whose average viewing time reaches the threshold of about 10 minutes per person.

Advertising credits give producers promotional resources, while the cash share provides money from revenue. The package rewards dramas that keep viewers watching, making the length of each viewing session a central measure of a production's commercial performance.

The AI drama Yinghou Yaya, also rendered in English as Yaya the Movie Queen, offers an example of the audience Tencent hopes to build. It passed 100 million views within three days of launch, reached a peak of more than two million concurrent viewers and reached more than 10 million users across its mini program and Channels distribution. Advertising revenue across the two channels reached several million yuan.

Views can include repeated viewing and multiple episodes watched by the same person. The separate figure for users helps explain the scale of the audience behind that much larger playback total.

AI cuts production costs as supply surges

AI tools are helping producers generate characters, settings and video more quickly. Tencent said uploads of animated dramas in the WeChat ecosystem rose 3,380% in 2025. DataEye counted approximately 221,900 new AI short dramas and animated dramas across the market in the first half of 2026.

Only 1,055 of those titles exceeded 100 million views, about 0.47% of the total. Around 2,886 reached 50 million views, roughly 1.3%. DataEye also estimated that about nine in 10 AI short drama companies were losing money.

Huang Haonan, founder of Jiangyou Culture, described a sharp decline in production expenses at his company. A standardized AI animated drama that previously cost about 100,000 yuan could now cost around 40,000 yuan, a reduction of roughly 60%. He also said rising computing and token costs were absorbing some of the savings from lower staffing needs. Tokens are units of text or other information processed by AI systems, often used to calculate charges.

Huang said teams now need to spend more time choosing subjects, improving scripts and deciding which fiction can work as a short drama. A long novel with complicated relationships may need substantial restructuring to establish its characters and conflicts within brief episodes.

Lower production costs allow more companies to make dramas, increasing the number of titles competing for attention. Producers still have to pay for computing, promotion and distribution while waiting for revenue. A cheaper production can therefore remain a difficult business if few viewers finish it or advertising income is weak.

Overseas growth comes with pressure on payouts

DataEye forecasts that the overseas micro drama market will exceed $6 billion in 2026. China Literature disclosed revenue of more than 430 million yuan from short dramas and AI animated dramas in the first half, up 230% from a year earlier.

Huang's company supplies content to overseas platforms rather than operating its own app. That approach avoids the cost of building a complete viewing service, but leaves the producer dependent on platform distribution and revenue sharing. An app operator controls more of the customer relationship while also paying for user acquisition, operations and cash needs.

Huang gave examples of how payouts had weakened as the supply of AI animation increased. One production earned $140,000 from 100 million views; a later production earned $120,000 from 500 million views; another received about $40,000 from 300 million views.

Calculated per million views, those examples amount to approximately $1,400, $240 and $133 respectively. They describe Huang's business experience rather than a uniform payment schedule, but show why a much larger viewing total can still bring less revenue to a producer.

Overseas distribution also requires choices about language, stories, cultural preferences, copyright and platform rules. AI can reduce translation and production work, while the commercial task remains finding an audience whose viewing generates enough income to cover costs.

The contest is for time as well as revenue

ByteDance products accounted for 41.8% of usage time among China's top 50 domestic apps in August 2026, compared with Tencent's 28.6%, according to the figures cited in the research. The gap was 13.2 percentage points. Free dramas give both companies another way to keep users inside their services and sell advertising around that attention.

Douyin Group vice president Li Liang publicly said Tencent's short drama and short video businesses were growing faster than Douyin and Hongguo. His comments brought the competition into public view as Tencent increased promotion and producer incentives.

Hongguo's October 27 statement rejected claims that its annualized revenue was approaching 40 billion yuan and that its revenue for the year would reach 42 billion to 45 billion yuan. It did not provide a replacement revenue figure in that statement.

Lvpaopao's immediate opportunity is concrete: 143 million monthly users, access to WeChat's established drama audience and a distribution system connecting short clips with full series. Its longer commercial task is to retain those viewers while generating enough advertising income for both the platform and its content suppliers.

At a Glance

• Lvpaopao reached 143 million monthly active users in August 2026, about 35% of Hongguo's 410 million.
• Its weekly active audience reached 89.68 million in early October, up 44.1% from early September.
• Tencent is expanding promotion and offering eligible new dramas seven days of incentives comprising 90% cash sharing and 10% advertising credits.
• WeChat already had 508 million users across short drama mini programs in May.
• AI is reducing production costs, while rapidly increasing supply puts pressure on audience attention and producer earnings.
• Hongguo rejected circulating revenue claims on October 27 without announcing a replacement figure.