A comprehensive report from Holywater Tech and Owl & Co has projected that the global vertical video business outside of China will hit $150 billion in revenues this year, a gain of more than 40% on last year, with dedicated microdrama apps generating $4 billion.
The State of Microdrama 2026 features product data and behavioral insights from Holywater’s My Drama and My Muse platforms, surveying more than 2,000 My Drama users.
“When Bogdan Nesvit’s team approached me to jointly present this report at the Vertical Media Summit, I was thrilled,” said Hernan Lopez, founder of Owl & Co. “For the first time, we’d get a real look at behavioral data from two of the leading microdrama apps in the West. But observed behavior tells you only what people did, not why, which is why it was important to complement that data with the users’ own words.”
The report also finds that the audience base for vertical video is rapidly diversifying; the share of male users has risen from 1.1% to 30.3%. It’s also taking up more than just daytime scroll time, competing directly with linear prime time. Per the report, 70% of My Drama viewers are watching vertical series right before bedtime, and 59% are watching on the couch. Heavy viewers average 13.1 hours of watch time per week, up from 9.5 five months ago.
Tracking usage on My Muse, Holywater’s app for AI-generated series, the study found that 89% of surveyed users want more AI-generated stories. Users converted to paying subscribers at the same rate: 23.6% on My Muse versus 23.9% on My Drama.
“The category started with romance,” said Bogdan Nesvit, co-founder and co-CEO of Holywater Tech. “Other genres can make it much bigger, and we already see them starting to work in the data.”
“AI is the engine of that growth: testing a new genre used to take months, and on My Muse it takes weeks,” added Anatolii Kasianov, co-founder and co-CEO. “A category that spans many genres needs the name of a format. We are calling it vertical series, and the platforms that host it are vertical streaming services.”
