Audiences are following, brands are rushing to watch, investors are eager to get on board, and platforms are also joining in this meme-making carnival. But when I opened the third quarter report just released by Mango Super Media, the atmosphere was not so lively.

In the first three quarters of 2026, Mango Super Media achieved revenue of 9.351 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.18%;Net profit attributable to the parent company dropped from 1.016 billion yuan in the same period last year to 213 million yuan, a year-on-year drop of 79.01%.

Of course, “Later Friendship Period” only launched in October, and it was not yet time to submit results in the first three quarters of financial reports. But the problem is that this year’s mangoes are not short of hot hits.

The show is getting more and more lively, but the profits are getting thinner and thinner.Did Mango just make the audience happy, or has it found a new way to make more money?

From Sister Lang to the post-friendship period, mangoes have been booming for a whole year

How popular is “The Friendship Period”?

Yunhe data shows that on the first day the program was launched on October 22, the effective broadcast market share of the feature film reached 34.9%, reaching the top of the hot new comprehensive list. After the latest feature film (Part 1) was released on October 29, the number rose to 74.3%, and it reached 77.1% the next day.It will become the first new variety show with a market share exceeding 70% in 2026.By the time of the new update on November 5, the influx of traffic even overwhelmed the platform servers.

A more intuitive change occurs in the shopping cart.

During the show, the famous scene of a guest covering his face and crying while wrapped in a 999 cold blanket went viral. Third-party data shows that the number of viewers of the 999 Cold Ling Douyin live broadcast room once exceeded 200,000, which is several times higher than usual. The brand took advantage of the situation and launched a limited edition sofa blanket of the same style as the show. The price was 69 yuan after coupons, triggering rush sales.

Brands that are not directly sponsored also receive traffic dividends. Juewei Yabo signed Li Na as its “Fresh Promotion Officer”; Yuanji Yunjiao launched the same package, and Douyin group purchase sales quickly exceeded 70,000 copies; Naixue’s tea, a small cake that flashed in the show, was also sold out in many stores.

Interestingly, this was not a generally well-received show before it aired.

What really broke the show was the conversation between Li Na and Xu Fei in the cliff cabin. The two appeared in 2006’s “Supergirl” and had a close relationship before parting ways due to a misunderstanding. Li Na wanted to clarify the “economic losses” in her career, while Xu Fei repeatedly asked about “the reason for the alienation” emotionally.

The two people’s hearts failed to align, which gave expressions such as “life-giving literature” and “drawing ground as a prison” room to be dismantled and spread. The audience suddenly discovered that the story of the breakdown of friendship is more exciting than the love dispute.

What’s even more rare is that this happened at a time when the overall variety show market was under pressure. Yunhe data shows that in the third quarter of 2026, the effective broadcast of the top 20 variety shows on the entire network dropped by 17% year-on-year, and the number of new domestic seasonal variety shows decreased by 27 year-on-year.

However, under such market conditions, Mango still produces frequent hits – “Chengfeng 2026” and “Detective Season 11” firmly ranked first in the first half of the year, and “Wife’s Romantic Travel 2026” and “Dear Inn 2026” also successively triggered hot topics.

The popularity of “Later Friendship Period” once again proved to advertisers:The content attention of long videos can still drive consumption.

And Mango’s ambitions don’t stop at variety shows.

Real people chat and AI shoots long dramas

The last time Mango made the capital market so excited this year was because of an AI-generated monkey.

On August 31, the AI ​​drama series “Journey to the West” was launched on Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV. There are no real actors in the work, and the scenes and character interpretations are all generated by AI. On the day of the broadcast, Mango Super Media’s daily limit was 20CM, and the daily limit was closed again the next day. The cumulative increase in the two days was approximately 44%, and the market value increased by approximately 11.65 billion yuan.

Behind the excitement in the capital market, “Journey to the West” has allowed the long-form video industry to see a long-awaited thing:I finally have the opportunity to shoot a feature-length drama without having to spend so much money.

Cai Huaijun, chairman of Mango Super Media, revealed that the total cost of “Journey to the West” has been reduced to a fraction of similar S-level live-action dramas; the full season has 30 episodes and each episode is 40 minutes long. Compared with traditional three-dimensional animation, the cycle from planning to launch has been compressed by 70%.

The commercialization of “Later Journey to the West” also went through quickly. According to brokerage research reports,The series has been broadcast more than 4 billion times across the entire network, has been on the hot search list more than 300 times, and has received exclusive sponsorship from Xiu Xiu Pharmaceutical and advertising cooperation such as Ding Guier Navel Patch.Characters such as Sun Xiaosheng have also been developed into plush peripherals and are being sold online one after another.

Cai Huaijun also revealed that this drama brought a group of new users to the platform, especially male users, which exceeded expectations.

This is due to Mango’s long-term technological accumulation. In 2019, Mango established an AI team, and in the first half of 2026, the “AIGC Innovation Content Center” was established and a dedicated channel was launched. The self-developed “Mango Lingchuang” platform has integrated more than 40 models and supported more than 3,900 business projects.

In addition to AI long-form dramas, Mango micro-short dramas are also exploding. The 2026 interim report shows that in the first half of the year, the “Damang Project” launched 2,647 micro-short dramas, a year-on-year increase of 124.51%;The average daily active users of the short drama channel increased by 104% year-on-year.

“Post-Friends Period” and “Post-Journey to the West” seem to have different production directions, but they point to the same thing:It is necessary to not only make popular products, but also find cheaper ways to make popular products.

However, the excitement on the program list ultimately depends on profits.

There is no shortage of popular items, but membership income has dropped by more than 500 million.

Mango’s show this year is indeed lively, but life is far from easy.

In the first three quarters of 2026, Mango Super Media’s revenue was 9.351 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.18%; however, the net profit attributable to the parent company dropped from 1.016 billion yuan in the same period last year to 213 million yuan, a decrease of nearly 80%.

Revenue increased by nearly 300 million yuan, but profit decreased by 800 million yuan.

Where exactly is the money being lost?First is the membership.In the first half of 2026, Mango TV’s membership revenue was 1.933 billion yuan.A decrease of 563 million yuan from 2.496 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Although advertising revenue (1.684 billion yuan) increased by 6.11% year-on-year, operator business (845 million yuan) increased by approximately 5.6%, and overseas business daily activity increased by 123%, it was still unable to fill the gap left by the membership business, resulting in a year-on-year decrease of 8.61% in total Internet video business revenue in the first half of the year.

So, if video revenue decreases, why can group revenue still grow?The answer lies in e-commerce.

In the first half of the year, Mango content e-commerce business revenue was approximately 1.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 146.35%, and an increase of approximately 650 million yuan over the same period last year.

For comparison, the group’s total revenue only increased by approximately 230 million yuan during the same period. In other words, Mango’s extra income on its books is largely supported by e-commerce.

However, the e-commerce business is “profitable”. In the first half of the year, the gross profit margin of the content e-commerce business was only 6.16%, which was far lower than the 23.54% of the Internet video business. Moreover, the gross profit margin of e-commerce dropped sharply by 12.42 percentage points year-on-year, falling into a “Revenue increased by RMB 650 million, but gross profit decreased by more than RMB 10 million.”embarrassing situation.

The dual decline of video and e-commerce has caused the company’s comprehensive gross profit margin to continue to be under pressure: from 35.49% in 2021 to 23.09% in 2025, and further dropped to approximately 20.8% in the first three quarters of this year.

Mangoes are not the only ones making money more and more difficult. iQiyi, which also has long-form video as its core business, has seen its gross profit margin drop from 27.52% in 2023 to approximately 16.22% in the first half of 2026.

On the other side, Station B has followed the opposite curve. In the first half of 2026, its comprehensive gross profit margin will reach approximately 37.2%, which has continued to increase in recent years.

This differentiation shows that the traditional copyright model of long videos with heavy assets and high investment is facing severe challenges.At a time when short videos and live broadcasts are constantly diverting users’ time, the risks of competing for big stars and big productions are getting higher and higher.

This is why mangoes must be “lightened”.

This year’s “Post Friendship Period” and “Post Journey to the West” happen to give two different solutions.

“The Friendship Period” does not have a luxurious top-notch lineup, but it relies on a conversation between old friends from 20 years ago to attract countless viewers; “The Journey to the West” uses AI to reduce the production cost of a long drama to a fraction of that of similar large-scale productions.

The era of relying on big productions and high investment to compete for audiences may have passed. As for the video platform, what we have to fight for in the future is not only whether it can make a hit, but also who can use less money and faster to continue to make works that the audience is willing to watch.

The audience can be attracted by the phrase “drawing the ground as a prison”, and investors can also revel in an AI monkey. But how popular a program can be and how much money a platform can make are two completely different things.

In this tough battle to become lighter, Mango won the first game.

References:

Blue Whale News: “Later Friendship Period” is a big hit, who is the “wealth splash” aimed at: Mango Super Media has hit the daily limit, the same style of Naixue’s “Li Na” has been sold out in many stores, and the 999 Cold Respirator sells the same style blanket for 139 yuan

Entertainment unicorns: “Later Friendship Period” and “Li Na Literature” killed the list: Mango Variety Show once again bet on the “traffic password”?

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