The macro view on micro dramas: Shorter, faster, and more addictive

From two- to-three-hour films to one- to two-minute micro-dramas, online content consumption is getting shorter, faster, and arguably more mindless

If you cross a gripping web series with reels on Instagram, you get micro dramas. These fiction shows, made up of two– to three-minute episodes, are the latest programming trend across the world. Each of the 30–50 episodes in a season ends on a cliffhanger — a murder, a marriage, a deception or redemption — among the scores of other emotions that could titillate you enough to move to the next one, and then the next. This constant emotional titillation is the only way to avoid being swiped away by viewers faced with a deluge of options to pass their time online.

 

A Media Partners Asia report estimates that micro-dramas generated $8 billion in global revenues in 2024. And China, where they first originated about a decade back, remains the centre of action. It is the biggest micro-drama market in the world with over $7 billion in advertising and pay revenues. More than 830 million Chinese viewers consume multiple shows such as Rainkissed Fate or This Killer is a Bit Cute on ByteDance (Red Fruit), Tencent (WeChat Video Accounts), and Kuaishou (Xi Fan). By the end of this year, micro-dramas will overtake the domestic box-office in China, says the Media Partners Asia report. The United States at $819 million in revenues is the other major consumer.

 

Micro-dramas have taken off in India. Earlier this year, half a dozen players like Flick TV, Reel Saga, Chai Shots raised anywhere from $2 to $5 million (₹17- ₹45 crore) to build a business around it.

 

This raises the first of two questions — what are investors banking on?

 

In June 2025, India had about 523 million people browsing online for news, entertainment and social media, going by Comscore data. That is the potential audience size. Many of them are already watching micro-dramas. There is, however, no estimate on how many subscribers are paying to watch these or how much advertising money goes to micro-dramas. This means the entire ₹2.5 trillion (pay plus ad) media and entertainment ecosystem, including TV, digital, audio, and gaming, is at play.

 

Micro-dramas lie in the Venn space created at the intersection of YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, and Dangal TV or similar services. They occupy the slivers of time during which we watch reels, surf a news channel, or chat with friends on WhatsApp. However, they demand the kind of gripping storytelling associated with a good web series and episodes in bulk at a fraction of the cost. The ad rate to reach a consumer on the small screens where they are watched is a fourth of TV or half of YouTube, according to media agency Lodestar UM.

 

The ad game then has to be one of huge scale — 100-200 million users. This means they can work better as part of a larger package, say MX Fatafat on Amazon MX Player, which already has 250 million unique visitors, or Fliqs on Watcho, an app from Dish TV.

 

For pay revenues to work, micro-drama has to be part of a specialised service like Pocket Films, a large distributor of short films across platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and JioHotstar, or KuKu FM, an audio series and books service that recently added KuKu TV with micro-dramas. The combined service claims it has 6 million subscribers, paying anywhere from ₹499 for three months to ₹1,499 annually.

 

That brings this to the second question this boom raises — what does it say about media consumption, consumer behaviour and where we are headed?

 

India has over 900 channels, thousands of newspapers, over 860 radio channels, makes more than 1,600 films a year, 60-plus video streaming apps, and a dozen music apps. There is now an obscenely rich spread on tap that Indians have been gorging on. They consumed 2.5 hours of online news, entertainment and social media a day in November 2024, according to Comscore data. Add TV (under 4 hours a day) and other media, the total is 7-8 hours a day on some media or the other — at least for the 523 million Indians online.

 

It has resulted in the most distracted consumer in the history of humanity. One piece of research says that heavy screen users have an attention span of 8 seconds, less than that of a goldfish. How could you possibly tell a story to this consumer?

 

Much of this makes it tougher to make money from the business — especially for smaller, focused players. For long, the economics of media was based on its repeat value. A successful film, show or piece of music had a really long life, giving the creating firm the window to make money on it. Now Google and Meta offer audiences across genres and geographies to advertisers at one-fourth the price of TV. Forget repeating, it would be a wonder if many overdosed consumers remember a book or a show.

 

From two- to-three-hour films, to 30-50-minute TV shows, and then web series, to 8-10-minute shorts, and now to one- to two-minute micro-dramas, it has been a journey towards shorter, faster, and arguably more mindless consumption. Will we be just watching photographs soon?

 

X: @vanitakohlik