Vertical video mini-dramas are a genre that has been identified as one of the fastest-growing forms of content in the international arena.
The videos are short, vertical, and take a minute to watch, allowing users to binge-watch them on their smartphones. As social experiments on social media sites, short videos are currently a multi-billion-dollar industry because of the way consumers spend time on content they are consuming.
As per the statistics presented by Vikrant Khanna, Founder & CEO of Mogi, vertical mini dramas expand exponentially, and this growth in China is quite evident. Over 60% of China’s 1.1 billion online users view micro-dramas on a regular basis, thereby making them a large commercial genre in China and beyond. The current value of the vertical drama market worldwide stands approximately $7.2 billion in 2025.
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The average behavior of viewers indicates active engagement and not dwindling attention spans. It is common to see viewers dedicating between 40 to 60 minutes of their day watching one-minute episodes. One of the web series, ‘How to Tame a Silver Fox,’ recently reached 350 million views.
A format designed for mobile consumption
Vertical mini dramas are engineered around how people use their phones. All the storylines offered in vertical dramas are intended to grab the audience’s attention in the first few seconds of watching. The vertical dramas offer very engaging storytelling tailored for scrolling feeds on platforms such as Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok.
Production costs also make the format attractive to creators and platforms. Seasons-long content is spun within two weeks for prices ranging from $50,000 to $69,000. This is much lower than the cost of content developed for traditional television and OTT platforms.
The format has particular appeal primarily for viewers between the ages of 18 and 35, who enjoy short-form immersive stories that can be slotted into a busy lifestyle.
How are OTT platforms responding?
The emergence of the vertical storytelling has resulted in a shift in strategy in the OTT space. OTT services are beginning to find competition not only from other platforms but from social media as well. As a result, many are experimenting with vertical-first originals, repurposing dramatic scenes into short episodes, and using social platforms as primary discovery tools.
Khanna observes the short-form clip outperforms the traditional promotional clip on a homepage in driving viewer engagement and conversion.
Automation tools are also being increasingly used. Services like UniqCast are being used for identifying emotional scenes, horizontal footage to vertical footage transformation, addition of subtitles to the content, and redirecting the audience to full episodes.
Analysts also forecast growth in ad-supported short dramas, micro-subscriptions, and AI-based curation. As viewer behavior continues to shift, the vertical mini drama are positioning themselves as a central pillar of the next generation of digital entertainment. As Vikrant Khanna said, "The next OTT growth wave won’t come from 60-minute episodes. It’ll come from 60-second stories."
