Emily is a student by day, but she works the night shift at a strip club to pay her tuition – she doesn’t think anyone will know her secret, until one day, her mysterious English teacher shows up! Does he know her? Will his secret ever come out? Pay 60 “tokens” to see what happens next, or you can watch commercials, or…
The story is pulpy and exaggerated, bursting with cringeworthy acting and writing. But these “microdramas” — TikTok-like shows with episodes of about one minute — generate billions of dollars a year.
First popular in China, the microdrama app is poised to have a breakout year in the US app market. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, ReelShort will reach an estimated $1.2 billion in gross consumer spending by 2025, up 119% from 2024; Another leading app, DramaBox, made $276 million in gross consumer spending last year, more than doubling the 2024 number.
The market doesn’t seem to be slowing down. TikTok just launched a standalone microdrama app called PineDramaand a new app from a Hollywood veteran called GammaTime just raised $14 million, including checks from angel investors like Alexis Ohanian, Kris Jenner, and Kim Kardashian.
It is surprising to see a short-form, scripted drama app achieve such success when we are only five years removed from the implosion of Quibi. Quibi wants to be like Netflix, but with 10-minute episodes designed to be watched on the go. Founded by Dreamworks co-founder and former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quibi raised more than $1.75 billion in funding from major Hollywood studios, then created shows with stars like Liam Hemsworth, Reese Witherspoon, and Anna Kendrick.
No one wants Quibi, and the app is a punchline because there are so many. But ReelShort — the app that featured the above shows called “My Sister Is the Warlord Queen” and “In Love with a Single Farmer-Daddy” — was a hit.
“How did they succeed where Quibi failed? They are basically OnlyFans to see women,” Eric Wei, economic expert and CEO of Karat Financial, told TechCrunch. “They do romance, where the title is all like, ‘My Alpha.’ It’s like ’50 Shades of Grey,’ but for vertical video.
OnlyFans isn’t the best comparison (this show can be suggestive, even if it’s not pornographic), but Wei is right about selling sex. When a story looks like it’s hot, you’ll be asked to watch an ad or pay money to run. But the payoff is never that compelling, so you keep watching, only to see another pop-up asking for more money, or more ambiguous in-app currency.
The business model behind the app follows the same dark pattern as mobile games. It’s designed to keep users hooked on free content, giving them free in-app currency for logging in every day. As people spend more time in the app – which is designed to be addictive – they need more coins or tokens to unlock other episodes of the show, but there is no way to earn enough to get that fix without shelling out real money.
Sometimes the microdramas are interactive, allowing the viewer to choose the route the story will take – but the good choices (the woman fights the abusive ex) will cost a token, while the less satisfying ones (the abusive ex has no consequences for his actions) are free.
Soon, hooked viewers can ignore it and pay for a $20 weekly ad-free ticket, which, after a month, will cost more than HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Paramount Plus subscriptions combined.
As AI enters the picture, these companies will create content faster. LLM can’t write prestige dramas like HBO’s “Succession,” or even sitcoms like “The Big Bang Theory,” but the most successful microdramas are predictable and formulaic, so they don’t require human ingenuity and creativity. You will be shocked to find out how many microdrama starts with a scene in which a girl with glasses will be pushed down by a mean classmate, only to be saved by some popular jock, who notices that she is actually really pretty if she just takes off the glasses.
PocketFM, the audio series platform powered by Lightspeed, has embraced AI. Last year, they released a tool called CoPilottrained in thousands of hours of content to understand the “beats” of the story formula, helping the author add cliffhangers or plot twists to the story that predicts will make the audience want to watch more. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian company Holywater, which rose $22 million to fund microdrama app My Drama, calling itself “AI’s first entertainment network.”
While microdramas can run entirely on AI, Dhar Mann Studios CEO Sean Atkins thinks there’s also an opportunity for creators.
“Think about it – short-form is a little less overhead than long-form, and vertical is even more overhead,” Atkins told TechCrunch. “I think you’re going to see some creators start to do it significantly, especially because they have experience with low-cost production.”
The company has a great business model on its hands. But it is one that develops in a short period of attention, in-app purchases, and content that feels like “Cocomelon” for adults.