Holywater report puts vertical drama at $4bn outside China in 2026

The State of Microdrama 2026, a 55-page report dated 21 July 2026 and prepared for the Vertical Media Summit, was published by Holywater Tech with Owl & Co.

The market estimate is third-party. Owl & Co puts vertical drama revenue outside China at $3bn in 2025 and $4bn in 2026, growth of 33.3%. That is the narrow, paid slice. It sits close to Omdia's roughly $3bn and to Media Partners Asia's reading, and it is a different measure from the advertising-inclusive $150bn vertical video figure quoted from the same report elsewhere.

The behavioural data is company-claimed and drawn from Holywater's two apps, My Drama in live action and My Muse in AI. The male share of monthly active users rose from 1.1% to 30.3% over seven quarters; the 22-27 age band reached 25.9%, up 265%; heavy users account for 83-94% of watch time. Conversion was 23.6% for AI titles against 23.9% for live action, with production cycles of 2, 12 and 100 weeks. Romance accounts for 74%; science fiction and fantasy indexes 14.6 points higher among men; adapted IP ranks first at 41%.

The caveats are the report's own: a single operator and a self-selected survey (n=2,737, United States; 11% male against 30% of monthly active users). Directional, not independent measurement.