Why are microdramas popular? What the data shows

How much time do viewers spend on microdramas?

One measure of the format's pull is time spent per user. Adjust and Sensor Tower put ReelShort users in the United States at 35.7 minutes a day in 2025, against 24.8 for Netflix, 26.9 for Prime Video and 23 for Disney+ (estimate; Adjust and Sensor Tower report). The same ReelShort and Netflix figures are also attributed to Omdia, for the fourth quarter of 2025, alongside Omdia figures that put FlickReels ahead of Prime Video in the United Kingdom and DramaBox ahead of Prime Video and Disney+ in Mexico (country table).

In China, QuestMobile put standalone short-drama apps at 26.9 hours a month across 125.6 sessions in May 2026, which it places above online video (estimate; QuestMobile).

Operators and surveys report long viewing too. Kunlun Tech reported average daily use of more than 60 minutes on FreeReels and more than 30 minutes on DramaWave in its half-year report (Kunlun Tech results). In Dentsu's 2026 survey across 12 markets, 62% of microdrama viewers said a typical session lasts longer than one hour (Dentsu survey).

Daily time in app, microdrama against streaming services

How fast has the audience grown?

Downloads have multiplied. Sensor Tower counted 475m short-drama app downloads worldwide in 2024 and 2.3bn in 2025 (estimate). Adjust and Sensor Tower put fourth-quarter 2025 downloads up 186% year on year while downloads of conventional streaming apps fell 7% (Adjust and Sensor Tower).

The first half of 2026 brought further growth, with vendors differing on the rate. DataEye counted 1.441bn overseas downloads, up 79% year on year (DataEye H1 2026). Mintegral, using Insightrackr data, put short-drama app downloads at 1.45bn, up 95.5% (Mintegral report). DataEye estimates overseas monthly active users at about 100m at the end of 2025 and 258m at mid-2026, and projects 389m by the end of 2026.

In China, QuestMobile counted 851m de-duplicated short-drama users in May 2026. ByteDance's free app Hongguo reached 356m monthly active users in May 2026, up 79.1% year on year, on the same vendor's estimate. On the open platforms, YouTube said microdramas passed 6.5bn views in the first half of 2026, with watch time up more than 50% year on year (company). Owl & Co counted 63bn microdrama views and 2bn viewing hours in the third quarter of 2026 on the 20 top platforms it tracks, more than half of the views on TikTok's free PineDrama app (estimate; reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 20 October 2026).

How fast has spending grown?

Spending rose quickly in 2024 and 2025, but the vendors do not agree on the level. Sensor Tower put category user spend at $1.45bn in 2024, 16 times the year before (estimate). For 2025, Sensor Tower's app-store figure appears as $2.8bn outside China, up 116%, and elsewhere as $2.98bn, up 115%, described as a global figure. DataEye puts overseas dual-store in-app purchases at $2.279bn, up 129%, and 点点数据 (Diandian) at $2.058bn, up 126%. The figures do not reconcile into a single series (market table).

Growth then slowed. DataEye estimates overseas in-app purchase revenue at about $1.27bn for the first half of 2026, up 13% year on year (estimate; DataEye spending). Individual markets still set records: Sensor Tower reported South Korean short-drama in-app revenue at a record in August 2026, up about 28% on July (Korea record). The size of the market by basis is covered in microdrama market size.

App-store spending on short-drama apps, 2025, by vendor

What keeps viewers watching?

Operators describe a format built to carry viewers to the next episode. Timothy Oh of COL Group described episodes of roughly two minutes built around a hook every 90 seconds. He said viewers are served opening episodes directly in social feeds, and that the company runs around 400 marketing experiments a month, recutting a title after two or three days if its opening underperforms (COL Group interview). Pedro Lopes of Portugal's SPi said at Iberseries & Platino Industria in Madrid that viewers typically watch the first five episodes of a series before moving on, The Hollywood Reporter reported on 2 October 2026.

Viewing concentrates in a heavy core. Holywater, which operates My Drama, says heavy users account for 83% to 94% of watch time on its apps (company; Holywater report).

Romance leads in survey data. In a My Drama viewer survey of May 2026, romance drew 74%, drama 65% and comedy 54% (company). ReelShort's catalogue centres on werewolf and alpha romance, billionaire and CEO stories, and revenge. DramaBox's head of communications named LGBTQ+ stories and age-gap love stories among the most popular genres. On advertising, only 20% of Dentsu's respondents said there were too many ads in microdramas, which Dentsu puts at half the share saying the same of broadcast television.

Where is microdrama growth slowing?

Volume has outrun value. DataEye's first-half 2026 figures put overseas downloads up 79% year on year and in-app purchase revenue up 13%, from the same dataset, and the vendor describes the sector as having moved into stock competition (存量竞争) for existing users. Naavik's analysis of 14 June 2026 reached the same conclusion with a different method. DataEye also records a recovery from May, after a February trough. Sensor Tower's store-level figures for the first quarter of 2026 put downloads up 140% and in-app purchase revenue up 20% (estimate).

Supply has grown faster still. In China, the NRTA said 430,000 microdramas went online in the first eight months of 2026, 13 times the total for all of 2025 (NRTA briefing). DataEye counted more than 221,900 AI short dramas and manga dramas launched in the first half of 2026, of which 0.47% passed 100m views; its figures describe the count both as network-wide in China and as new titles on Douyin (DataEye supply count). Olivier Bernard of Kedoo Entertainment estimated in December 2025 that around 1,500 vertical-video apps had launched in about three years, with only 539 still active (company). The audience behind these figures is profiled in who watches microdramas; headline numbers are collected in microdrama statistics.