Retention Playbook: How Short Drama & Novel Apps Win Globally

Imagine this: your new short drama or novel launches overseas and racks up millions of views in its first week. Social feeds are buzzing, download charts are climbing, and user acquisition (UA) campaigns are driving traffic at record speed. But by day 7, the numbers crash — half your viewers are gone, ad revenue stalls, and your "hit show" risks turning into a short-lived spark.

This is the paradox of short drama/mini series. Their fast-paced storytelling makes them instantly addictive, but just as quickly, audiences churn. In a market where acquisition costs keep rising, retention isn't just a metric — it's survival.

Last time, we provided a detailed breakdown of the logic and techniques behind user acquisition testing. In this article, we'll introduce you to two phases of a short drama's lifecycle and offer you strategies accordingly to help your short dramas & novels avoid being a "one-hit wonder".

Let's break it down.

The Two Phases of a Short Drama's Lifecycle

The Peak Launch Phase

Imagine dropping a brand-new short drama app into the market. You've tested your creatives, you've validated early traction—and now the real race begins. During the Peak Launch Phase, the focus shifts from preparation to rapid execution.

This stage isn't about slow growth; it's about capturing a short-lived traffic surge and converting it into both user scale and revenue peaks. The core objective at this stage is to drive daily active users (DAU) and peak revenue, accelerate the conversion of high-value users, and simultaneously build more precise user profiles through large-scale data accumulation to inform subsequent strategy optimization.

This stage lasts roughly 7–10 days, with your heaviest push packed into 2–3 high-traffic days (typically weekends when people are free to binge-watch). After that, budgets adjust according to ROAS, allowing you to maximize momentum without burning cash.

The Sustaining Phase

The Peak Launch Phase brings the spike—but spikes don't last forever. That's where the Sustaining Phase comes in. Think of it as the second act: the fireworks show is over, but you still need to keep the audience engaged.

This stage is about stretching the lifecycle of your hits and unlocking more value from existing traffic without overspending. Instead of chasing another huge spike, you focus on steady performance, controlled user acquisition (UA) costs, and long-tail user retention. Therefore, the core objectives at this stage are to maintain a solid DAU baseline, keep paying users active through content refreshes and targeted nudges, and lower acquisition costs by relying more on organic and loyal traffic.

This stage lasts typically 3–4 weeks, until engagement naturally tapers off or new titles enter the pipeline. The aim isn't indefinite growth, but profitably extending the drama's life.

Strategies for The Two Phases

After knowing the core objectives and rough duration of the two stages, we can now dive into actionable strategies to maximize both short-term spikes and long-term value. By tailoring budget, creative, and tracking tactics to each stage, teams can turn fleeting attention into sustainable growth.

Peak Launch Phase Strategies

During the Peak Launch Phase, the focus is on converting the traffic surge into explosive growth for both user acquisition and revenue. Teams should push daily active users and revenue to their peak while converting high-value users quickly, using large-scale data to refine user profiles for later targeting.

Concentrating spend for 2–3 peak days maximizes impact, while ROAS-driven adjustments prevent wasted costs. Budget allocation is also key: 60–70% should go to new campaigns validated during testing to scale rapidly, while 30–40% is reserved for existing campaigns as a content matrix to stabilize performance and reduce dependency on any single hit.

Besides, it is critical to optimize user segmentation via a data-driven strategy. Event Analysis of Solar Engine can track full-funnel events, ensuring every action is monitored, from basic conversions like sign-ups and finishing free chapters/episodes, to payment signals including clicks, successful transactions, and subscriptions, to engagement metrics such as reading duration, following or tipping authors, all tracked in real time. Among these, real-time feedback like "Top-up Complete" and "Subscription" can quickly help identify high-value users; metrics like "Reading Duration" and "Sharing" can improve user segmentation and enhance targeting precision.

The Sustaining Phase Stratgies

As the initial spike fades and core creatives begin to fatigue, the Sustaining Phase takes over, focusing on maintaining revenue stability while preparing new content for the next growth cycle. This phase emphasizes ROAS preservation and extracting maximum value from existing users, while gradually introducing small-scale tests for upcoming creatives.

Thus, budget allocation can be dynamically adjusted based on ROAS and ROI. For high-performing dramas with ROI ≥ 1.0, retain 30%-40% of the budget to maintain baseline exposure. For those with an ROI between 0.7 and 1.0, reduce the budget by 20%-30% and run only high-conversion creatives. For those with ROI < 0.7, pause ad placements and reallocate the budget to new product testing.

Additionally, Solar Engine's Event analysis can be leveraged to add the "Completed Chapters (3/10 chapters)" event during major promotion periods, enabling the assessment of user engagement with content. Users who complete 10 chapters can be flagged as "high-potential paying users", allowing targeted delivery of membership benefits.

Teams can also track key metrics such as retention, ROI, and LTV for up to a full year with Solar Engine, while layering in behavioral signals, such as "daily reading time exceeding one hour", to continuously refine user profiles and accurately pinpoint high-potential cohorts. Building on these profiles, teams can further segment users with stronger monetization potential, such as readers who consistently unlock paid chapters and actively tip authors. For this group, teams can deliver personalized, time-limited bundles to drive higher purchase frequency and sustained contribution. At the same time, by leveraging Web-to-App strategies and deep linking, users who click "Continue Reading" on a web page are seamlessly redirected to their last saved chapter upon app installation, reducing drop-offs caused by broken user journeys. This integrated flow, from data-driven insights to conversion execution, enables platforms to maximize user value during the sustaining phase and extend the overall lifecycle of each title.

Through these strategies, a novel platform achieved a 35% increase in download conversion rates and an 18% rise in payment rates during its sustaining phase.

Common Challenges In Both Phases

Many developers face similar hurdles when managing ad campaigns across both the burst phase and the sustain phase. The most common issues can be summarized as follows:

Insufficient ad placement

Teams either rely on placements with weak performance or fail to double down on those proven to deliver, which leads to wasted impressions and poor returns.

Creative iteration lags behind

During peak traffic competition, user fatigue sets in quickly, but ads are not refreshed fast enough, leading to declining engagement and wasted spend.

Testing is too narrow in scope

Many developers rely solely on platform-based A/B testing—comparing eCPM across placements—while overlooking in-app variables such as creative, copy, and paywall strategies that directly influence conversion.

User segmentation is missing

Audiences with very different spending potential and engagement patterns are treated the same, which risks losing high-value users or under-monetizing certain groups.

Solving Common Challenges with Data-Driven Strategies

To address these challenges, teams need to rethink both ad setup and testing practices, ensuring every stage of the lifecycle contributes to sustained growth.

Optimize ad placement via targeting

Focus spending on the best-performing placements identified during early tests, allocating over 70% of the budget there while reserving a small share for secondary placements. This maximizes efficiency while keeping room to discover hidden low-cost traffic. You can also place ads targetedly, which should start broadly and progressively refine by gender, interest, or device to ensure accuracy.

Automate Creative Refresh

Turn on automated creative optimization to ensure ad variations are continuously updated, especially at the peak launch phase. This can enhance the display efficiency of advertisements and reduce the lag of manual creative iteration.

Build a Dual Testing System

In-app content and strategy testing directly impact user engagement and targeting accuracy. Developers should establish a dual testing framework of "mediation platform + in-app".

The A/B testing feature of SolarEngine enables developers to quickly iterate on both content and strategies. For example, rapid validation of web materials: on a landing page, developers can run split tests on novel covers (e.g., "dark suspense style" vs. "sweet romance style") or copywriting (e.g., "Read 3 chapters for free" vs. "Unlock full content for only $0.99"). Within 24 hours, high-converting material combinations can be identified based on metrics such as CTR and click-to-download rate, without requiring app store approval. Leveraging this method, one publisher improved paid conversion efficiency by 18%.

This feature can also optimize monetization triggers. For instance, dynamically testing whether to prompt payment after 1 chapter vs. 3 chapters helps identify the balance between conversion and retention. While the latter may lead to a slightly lower pay rate, it ensures stronger retention and higher LTV, thus avoiding user churn caused by overly aggressive or overly conservative monetization strategies.

Segment and Personalize

Use User Behaviour Analysis of SolarEngine to leverage behavioral data such as reading time, spending level, and interaction frequency to target users differently:

Free trials for non-payers;
"Continue Reading Reward" for drop-offs;
High-priced gift packages or exclusive side stories for high-value spenders.

Final Thought

Both phases are parts of one growth cycle. During the peak launch phase, large-scale user acquisition campaigns help accumulate both users and behavioral data, laying the foundation for refined operations in the sustaining phase. In turn, the sustaining phase leverages A/B testing to optimize content and monetization strategies, feeding back into the efficiency of the next peak launch cycle.

Together, these phases focus on maximizing user value—expanding user volume while enhancing user quality—ultimately achieving sustainable growth for short drama and novel apps through the continuous optimization of LTV and ROI. SolarEngine helps developers create a loop of "explosion–consolidation–re-explosion" for scalable, lasting growth.

Ultimately, winning the global market for short-form content isn't a one-time sprint, it's a strategic, data-driven marathon. By mastering both the Peak Launch and Sustaining phases, and leveraging tools like SolarEngine to turn data into action, you can build a flywheel of sustainable growth. Ready to turn your next title into a long-lasting success? Get in touch with our team today to learn how SolarEngine can help.