How Two-Minute Microdramas Became a Billion-Dollar Industry

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1:27Yes, sometimes the biggest news stories of the day are about relationships. But folks, stick with us at the Amy and TJ podcast. Listen to us on Amy and TJ on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Casey Esser was chasing an acting career in Los Angeles. He was balancing a full-time job as a personal trainer with occasional acting gigs. Then one day, he got the kind of phone call that anyone trying to break into the industry dreads. My agent and manager at the time in 2023 were like, hey, you know, we think you're great, but this just isn't happening.

2:15You know, we're going to let you go. Casey says he didn't let the bad news stop him. The next day, he started looking for auditions on his own and ended up being cast as the lead in a new series called Faded to My Forbidden Alpha. It was about an orphan maid who falls in love with a werewolf who also happens to be super rich. The series began shooting almost right away. It wasn't tied to a big-name studio or streaming platform. It was for a mobile app he'd never heard of. People would say, like, what did you just shoot? And I'm like, oh, it's like a short-form episodic. And they're like, what's that?

2:53And I was like, I actually don't know. What Casey didn't realize was that he'd stumbled into one of the fastest-growing forms of entertainment. Microdramas.

3:06Microdramas are essentially mini soap operas meant to be watched on your phone. They're shot vertically, run roughly one to three minutes, and they are chock full of over-the-top drama and camp. Think secret airs, love triangles, and lots of dramatic face slapping. He was in bed with me. You're lying. Within weeks of its release, Casey's show racked up hundreds of millions of views. I shared the poster on Instagram and in my mind it was like, okay, like we did that, like moving on. And then like two weeks later started getting messages from all these different countries. And that was my first time like going viral.

3:51I just couldn't believe how many people it reached. It changed my life completely. Since then, Casey has appeared in dozens of microdramas. The craze that began in China has spread to the rest of the world. and now the broader entertainment business. By some estimates, one-tenth of the entire world's population watches microdrama. Omdia, which is a research company, estimates the industry generated about$11 billion U.S. dollars globally in 2025. And it's expected to more than double by 2030 to$26 billion U.S. dollars. Yang Yang is a producer on this show and is based in Hong Kong. Lately, she's been reporting on the microdrama boom, as has Bloomberg Businessweek's Christopher Beam.

4:41There's been a lot of adoption around the world. As you can imagine, there are companies trying to present microdramas as the next wave of telenovelas. So it is a global phenomenon with differences in various regions. Kristen Young say recently it seems like microdramas are everywhere, on hundreds of dedicated apps worldwide, in marketing and promotional content from brands like Crocs and Maybelline, even on The Tonight Show, starring Jimmy Fallon and John Stamos. Why? Why would you do this? I've never even met you. No, no, no, no, no, no. We've met before, but I'm sure you don't remember a lowly caddy at your precious country club.

5:28But as microdramas surge into the mainstream, the industry is grappling with a disruptive force that could reshape its future. You have AI cutting costs and making the business model more efficient and more scalable. On the other hand, you have the human cost and displacement, also a lot of repetitive content made by AI. The real question isn't, is AI good or bad for the industry, but rather, who benefits from AI's impact and who's left out?

6:08This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wan Ha. Every week, we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies, and the markets, tycoons, and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region. Today on the show, microdramas, how a Chinese entertainment phenomenon became a global obsession, whether it can sustain interest, and how AI is reshaping the industry.

6:42A microdrama series can run anywhere between 50 to 90 episodes in total. But because each episode only lasts a few minutes, you can binge watch the entire thing in about an hour. And if you're on social media, chances are you've already scrolled past one. TikTok started showing me these little snippets of what appeared to be a TV show question mark. Is anybody else obsessed with those mini K-dramas that be on TikTok now? I mean, some of them are really... Some of them I do be really into... Bloomberg's Young Young says that's usually how it starts. A few episodes show up as ads on your Instagram and TikTok feeds.

7:23They're super compelling, short and packed with lots of plot twists, emotional beats and cliffhangers. It's coined as dopamine storytelling. The point is to lure you to these individual microdrama apps. that's where you're going to pay with your money or with your attention to watch ad to finish watching these microdrama episodes. These bite-sized episodes served up over social media are bait for a bigger business opportunity. To continue watching the rest of the series, viewers often are pushed to download dedicated apps. Some charge a subscription fee, while others let you watch for free, as long as you're willing to sit through ads.

8:06Microdrama is surging. We see the downloads globally in the first quarter of this year up 140 % year on year. So in early 2026, the US alone drove nearly 40 % of global in-app purchase for Microdrama, which is the largest single market outside of China. And where we see these exponential growth are the markets like Southeast Asia, South Asia, like India, and Latin America. Like many of the apps themselves, the microdrama format started in China in the late 2010s. Production companies began packaging popular web novels into short, serialized videos designed to be watched on a commute or a work break.

8:56Imagine you're on the pack train after a long day of work, or you are between your shifts and you only have 10 minutes of break time. You don't have the time and mental capacity to watch something like The Odyssey. You just want something fast and entertaining and bridge you through this break time. The pandemic supercharged the trend. People were spending more time on their phones. And thanks to social media apps like Douyin, China's version of TikTok, people were already used to watching short, vertical content. When Douyin saw how viral some popular microdramas were becoming, it started working with production studios to put them on its platform.

9:39In the initial days in China, microdrama got so popular, partially because it was unable to infiltrate platforms like Douyin. And Douyin would distribute content from microdrama companies, and they would target it directly to people who they already know enjoy these short, snappy, dramatic content. The numbers were staggering. Last year, nearly 700 million people in China, about half of the country's population, were watching microdramas. And the industry generated more revenue than China's entire movie box office two years in a row. But... That market hit a wall. The predominant audience is female, about 18 to 45 age range.

10:32So it's a very specific kind of pool. As the domestic market became more crowded, Chinese production companies started looking overseas. and they produced thousands of new titles aimed at international audiences. By early last year, more than 200 microdrama apps had launched outside of China. That's nearly four times the number from the previous year. Globally, the average daily time spent on microdrama apps rose to 25 minutes by April 2026. That's about 85 % up from last year, last January. And this is according to Sensor Tower and industry research firms. How does that compare to streaming, Netflix, or anything else that you might be watching?

11:21That is closing in on your traditional streaming platforms, which has stayed roughly flat compared to microdrama. And I think that number on that is about 35 minutes per day. So 25, 35, it's edging close. But taking the microdrama playbook global hasn't been straightforward. Companies quickly discovered that audiences in different markets want different kinds of stories. And they're willing to pay for them in different ways, too. In places like the U.S., subscriptions to microdrama apps can cost close to$40 a month. That's more expensive than a premium ad-free Netflix subscription. Developed economies, places like the U.S., Germany, Japan, people there are more willing to pay to watch, whereas people in Southeast Asia or Latin America are happy to watch one-minute ad to keep watching the rest of the series.

12:32After the break, how AI is coming for the microdrama business, slashing costs and threatening jobs. Still, the new format is managing to attract the attention of Hollywood.

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16:14Going global has brought microdramas millions of new viewers. But it also created a new challenge. Not everyone wants to pay to watch them. So the industry is acquiring users faster than it's monetizing them. And the shift is happening from high-value markets like the U.S., like North America, to high-volume markets like Southeast Asia, India. And that's forcing the business model to pivot as well. For an industry built on producing more than 50 episodes for just one series, this puts pressure on the bottom line. That means the industry needs to produce a lot of content without spending a lot to make it.

17:00And that's where AI comes in. So this industry so far is still very dominated by Chinese-backed companies. They are using AI to produce, to write script. Some of them are using AI actors, and some of them are also training AI models to predict audience drop-offs. And I'm not sure if these models are in use right now, but this is the hope one of the executives told me that they want to have more precise predictions for audience fatigue. So nuanced to an extent that I know at 2 minutes and 30 seconds, this is a place where people will feel a bit tired or bored. And let's put some spice there. Kun Lun Tech, a Chinese microdrama production company, says using AI has helped them cut production costs by as much as 90%.

18:00A series that once cost around$200 ,000 to make could cost less than$20 ,000 with AI. Some of the industry's biggest companies are already planning for a future where AI does most of the work. Among them is Real Short, which is on track to generate more than a billion dollars in revenue this year. My colleague Sohee Kim, she spoke to Real Short CEO Joy Jia. And Joy said by 2027, which is next year, AI-generated production would account for more than 90 % of its content. And he echoed the same thing that Quinlan Tech said. It would also help them to cut costs to 10 % of the current level. At the same time, he's kind of anxious about the competition that AI could bring.

18:52He says he feels really scared. AI is completely changing the competitive landscape. And for the humans making these shows, the impact of AI is already hitting home. Here's Bloomberg Businessweek's Christopher Beam. You have actors, directors, crew members who made their careers working on microdramas, especially during the Hollywood strikes of a couple years ago. And now those same people who had this meteoric rise riding the wave of microdramas are now seeing opportunities dry up. So it just shows how quickly this cycle is happening. You look at these platforms like DramaBox, Real Short, and the number of new live action shows that they're rolling out seems to be fewer and fewer, whereas the number of AI shows they're rolling out is climbing rapidly.

19:48The industry may be facing challenges around jobs and costs, but the appetite for short-form storytelling continues to grow. Analysts estimate it will reach$26 billion by 2030. Numbers like that are making Hollywood sit up and pay attention. Earlier this year, NBCUniversal's Peacock became the first major U.S. streamer to launch a dedicated vertical video feed on its mobile app. Fox is now slicing up a full season of its primetime reality show, Farmer Wants a Wife, into episodes that are less than two minutes long for Holy Water's MyDrama app. Chris says legacy entertainment companies have been watching the microdrama business from the beginning, But they've been mostly skeptical.

20:32I think what's making a lot of more traditional Hollywood folks take a second look now is that they aren't just or they have not just been a flash in the pan. A couple of years later, they're still around. It's still a growing sector. The microdrama story is a compelling one, especially the money part. But Chris says there are a number of barriers to entry for traditional media companies. So if you're talking about the big studios, they might not want to take risks and do experiments in ways that might, they worry, embarrass them. Also, you have to take into account that a lot of these microdramas are non-union projects.

21:10In fact, the vast majority are. And so traditional big Hollywood studios, they're not going to want to do projects that don't involve unions. And so as a result, most of the companies producing microdramas are startups. A lot of them have roots in China, different kind of style of storytelling, also different traditions on set. You know, crews are used to working long hours. There's a kind of seat of your pants energy to a lot of these sets. They're moving super quickly in a way that it's not that Hollywood companies can't do that, but they're just not used to it. And there's another reason why Hollywood may be wary.

21:55It's actually tried something similar before. In 2020, Hollywood and Silicon Valley heavyweights launched a streaming service called Quibi. The idea was for people to watch serialized 10-minute videos or Quick Bytes on their smartphones. The company raised nearly$2 billion and it collapsed in less than a year. The lesson that most people I talked to take away from Quibi is that they spent too much money. They were just sinking a lot of money into each episode, into each minute of video. And also one other element that's worth remembering is that Quibi came before people were in the habit of scrolling through TikTok reels, just kind of exposing themselves to vertical video day in, day out.

22:43So you could argue that Quibi had a much higher bar to clear in order to acquire custom earnest. Chris says this time around, the timing for microdramas, including AI generated ones, is a lot better. There's no question that there is the sort of smooth, possibly too smooth, almost like robotic aesthetic that you would associate with generated AI video. and that's not for everyone. However, a number of producers that I spoke with said that there are audiences, especially younger audiences, that prefer it to the live action aesthetic. Aesthetics aside, Chris says, microdramas are symptomatic of a change that's already occurred in the way we watch shows and aren't going away anytime soon.

23:33The broader category here is vertical video and that takes many forms. Microdramas are just one slice of this kind of vertical video that people are getting used to. It does change the relationship that the audience has with storytelling. I do think that is fairly seismic. Yang says the bigger question is whether the industry can keep the formula that made microdrama successful in the first place, while finding new stories and audiences and new ways to make money. And that may come down to something much simpler than technology or economics. There is a sense of perhaps escapism for, you know, people who are under stress.

24:17We've all been there. You just want something fast and entertaining for the 10-minute break that you have this entire day. And you don't want to think deep and you have no mental capacity to do that either. And these plots, corny as they are, they satisfy.

25:01listening. See you next time.

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