Why are micro-dramas taking over your phone?

Because the phone became the screen people actually finish. Owl & Co projects that vertical media outside China will bring in $150 billion in revenue in 2026, up more than 40% on 2025, with $131 billion of that advertising on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Dedicated micro-drama apps are the smaller, faster-moving slice — and Singapore is now backing the format in public: on 1 October 2026, IMDA and TikTok launched a programme to train local media companies to make them.

Summary

Owl & Co projects $150 billion in vertical media revenue outside China for 2026, a gain of more than 40% over 2025, of which $131 billion is advertising. Meta, ByteDance and YouTube take 94% of the total, and Owl & Co counts nearly 2,000 apps competing for what is left (Variety, 21 August 2026).

The audience is wider than the stereotype. On My Drama, the male share of monthly users rose from 1.1% to 30.3% across seven quarters, and heavy viewers now average 13.1 hours a week (The State of Microdrama 2026, July). In Singapore, 87% of people aged 15 and above use TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or Facebook every week, and IMDA's programme with TikTok will train media professionals from 20 accredited companies to produce 50 to 100 episodes of one to three minutes each.

In short

Vertical media outside China is projected at $150 billion in revenue for 2026, up more than 40% in a year — $131 billion of it advertising.
Meta, ByteDance and YouTube take 94% of that revenue, while nearly 2,000 apps compete for the remainder.
The audience changed: the male share of monthly users on My Drama rose from 1.1% to 30.3% in seven quarters.
In Singapore, 87% of people aged 15 and above use the big social video platforms weekly, and IMDA and TikTok are now training 20 accredited companies to make micro-dramas.

The market moved, and advertising pays for most of it

Owl & Co published its Vertical Economy Report in August 2026, and Variety carried the headline figure: $150 billion in vertical media revenue outside China this year, most of it advertising rather than subscriptions. Meta, ByteDance and YouTube generate 94% of that total, and ByteDance draws 72% of its entire revenue from vertical formats. Supply, meanwhile, is growing faster than attention: launches of new series rose 25% in the second quarter of 2026, while total watch time for those new series fell 4%.

The audience is not who the industry assumed

Micro-dramas were written off as romance for one narrow audience, and the data no longer supports that. Across seven quarters the male share of monthly users on My Drama grew from 1.1% to 30.3%, and viewing shifted into prime time: 70% of users watch in bed before sleeping and 59% from the sofa, with heavy viewers averaging 13.1 hours a week against 9.5 five months earlier (The State of Microdrama 2026, published 23 July). Genre broadened with it — shows about business, finance and news accounted for 12% of vertical media views outside China, according to Owl & Co's research.

For a business, that is the point: the audience for vertical video is now the general audience, older viewers and professional subjects included.

Singapore has just put public money and a platform behind it

On 1 October 2026, IMDA and TikTok Singapore launched the IMDA-TikTok Microdrama Programme, part of IMDA's Digital Content and Capability Development programme. Over six to nine months, media professionals from 20 accredited companies will learn to take an idea from concept to market and produce 50 to 100 episodes of one to three minutes each. Two tracks run in parallel: live-action, filmed with actors and real sets, and AI-enabled animation covering prompt engineering, character consistency, visual effects review and ByteDance's Seedance 2.5. Training goes past craft into cliffhanger design, paywall strategy and monetisation.

IMDA's own media measurement data for April 2025 to March 2026 puts weekly use of the top social video platforms at 87% of Singapore residents aged 15 and above. Read that beside the new programme and the signal is plain: the state is treating vertical storytelling as a media industry, not a marketing gimmick.

What a brand should borrow, and what it should leave

The lesson for a business is craft, not category. Micro-dramas hold attention because they open on the hook rather than the introduction, they are built as episodes with a reason to watch the next minute, and they are shot for a phone held in one hand. That discipline works for a thirty-second product film as well as for a ninety-episode series. Most brand video fails on the first of the three, and no amount of polish rescues a slow opening.

The economics do not transfer. Dedicated micro-drama apps make their money from subscriptions and in-app purchases inside an app a person opens on purpose. A brand's video has to sell something to someone who was not looking for it. Borrow the mechanics; do not assume the paywall.

Our take

We would not tell a Singapore client to make a micro-drama this quarter. The format's money sits behind a paywall inside someone else's app, and the businesses we work with sell a service, not an episode. What is worth copying is the pacing: a hook inside the first two seconds, one idea per piece, and a reason to watch the next one.

Where we are unconvinced is the $150 billion as a business case. It comes from a research firm working alongside one of the largest vertical video companies, and part of the evidence is drawn from that company's own apps — fine for reading direction, poor for predicting what any one brand will get from the format. A studio can spend real money on production and learn nothing at all.

If you want one thing to do this month, make it smaller than a micro-drama. Take the question customers ask you most often, answer it in sixty seconds of vertical video with the answer spoken in the first three, and make three of them. If those work you will know it from completion rates, not from views.