Microdrama apps are getting more engagement than streaming services

“Microdrama” is the word of the moment, but how much viewership are these bite-sized vertical stories actually getting?

Well, according to research consultancy/industry analyst Omdia, they’re getting a lot–more, it says, than streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+.

Omdia pulled data from U.S.-based mobile devices and compared time watched on ReelShort, the vertical video platform launched in 2022 by Crazy Maple Studio, to time watched on premium streaming services known for traditional long-form content.

That data showed ReelShort–which has hundreds of original scripted microdramas–gets 35.7 minutes of use per day, per active user. Netflix, meanwhile, comes in at 24.8 minutes, Prime Video brings 26.9 minutes, and Disney+ is at 23 minutes, Deadline reports.

Omdia also grabbed U.K. data, which showed similar microdrama platform FlickReels is getting 22.39 minutes of watch time per day per user versus 21.47 minutes for Prime Video. In Mexico, short-form app DramaBox brings 27.9 minutes, beating Prime Video (23.8 minutes) and Disney+ (22.5 minutes).

Maria Rua Aguete, Omdia’s Head of Media and Entertainment, said this data shows “microdramas are no longer a niche experiment.”

“They are becoming a core driver of mobile video engagement. What stands out is not just revenue growth, but the intensity of usage. On mobile, microdrama apps are generating more daily viewing time than the world’s biggest streaming platforms,” she said.

One thing that’s particularly interesting here is Omdia’s decision to measure microdramas’ impact using watchtime rather than user numbers. To be clear, it did pull active user numbers–for example, in the U.S., Netflix has 12 million monthly active mobile users, while ReelShort has 1.1 million. With just those numbers to go off, you’d think Netflix was far outperforming ReelShort. But when you drill down and look at the actual engagement time, ReelShort is the winner.

This measurement system makes sense, especially since Netflix itself (like several other streaming platforms) recently stopped giving updates on its number of subscribers, saying it preferred viewership metrics.

Aguete added that Omdia thinks Microdrama apps’ engagement demonstrates they are “winning the battle for attention, rather than scale, at least for now. This is the metric streamers care about most as they look to grow mobile usage and compete with social video platforms where daily engagement is approaching 80 minutes.”

We can see Omdia’s numbers being accurate, based on the amount of viewtime short-form video has eaten up on socials. Remember when YouTube first introduced Shorts? They cut into long-form’s watchtime so severely that YouTube began to lose ad revenue. (No wonder it worked so quickly to get ads rolling on Shorts, too.) Now we’re seeing that same pattern replicated across short-form dramas and long-form streaming service programs.

Now that we’re six years deep into the short-form-ification of YouTube and the rest of the video-forward internet, we can say this is probably the big boom, where microdramas are the hot new thing and will command curious viewers’ attention for the time being. In the coming months and years, viewership will even out, with audiences finding value in both short- and long-form. Until then, Netflix will simply have to deal with another internet-born competitor.