On streaming apps with names like ReelShort, DramaBox, and My Drama, millions of people are paying up to $20 a week for sixty-second soap operas with titles that sound almost like parody: Dominated by My Dad’s Boss, Pregnant by My Ex’s Professor Dad, Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas.

These are vertical mini-dramas, short serialised stories built for the phone screen. And despite their melodramatic plots and modest production values, they’re outpacing some of the biggest names in streaming. DramaBox alone logged 44 million monthly active users in the first half of 2025, which is more than Hulu or Paramount+, according to data firm Sensor Tower, The Washington Post reports. Another app, My Drama, says some of its hit titles generate as much revenue as an average theatrical release in the U.S.

The trend is easy to dismiss. The acting is exaggerated, the cliff-hangers relentless, the storylines absurd. But the numbers suggest otherwise: people are bingeing these shows in massive quantities. The success of vertical dramas points to a deeper shift in how audiences consume video: one that creators, marketers, and businesses should be watching closely.

The TikTok Effect

The vertical drama boom is an extension of habits formed on TikTok. Since 2019, TikTok has trained audiences to expect fast setups, quick payoffs, and emotional spikes every few seconds. The format spilled over to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook, and now entire streaming apps are built around it.

@reelshortapp Liar... ▶️ Pregnant by the Golden Billionaire Bachelor is streaming on #reelshort ! Click the link in my bio to enjoy the FULL SERIES! #shortdrama #verticals #mustwatch #fyp #love #SweetRomance ♬ original sound - ReelShort

But unlike TikTok clips, vertical dramas are serialised. Each story is broken down into daily 60-second episodes that stack together into a full 90-minute drama. Fans like 34-year-old Fierobe, interviewed by The Washington Post, watch one or more of these full-length arcs every day. She subscribes to multiple apps and estimates she finishes 30 different shows each month.

The appeal is straightforward. “After a long day at work, you don’t want to think about anything,” she said. “We’re watching them to escape.” Pure escapism; exactly why we all use social media for.

Entertainment by Algorithm

Behind the scenes, vertical dramas are guided less by artistic vision than by audience data. Producers openly say that storytelling decisions are shaped by what keeps viewers engaged. A slap before episode 10? Almost guaranteed. Betrayal, jealousy, bullying, coercion? All part of the formula if it helps retention.

Budgets run between $100,000 and $250,000 per series, which is more expensive than a social media skit but surely far cheaper than a traditional television drama, where single episodes can cost millions. This makes the format sustainable for experimentation. Hits more than pay for themselves; flops disappear quickly.

One show, How to Tame a Silver Fox, about a college student falling for her father’s cranky best friend, has been watched 356 million times. For comparison, around 90 million people tuned in for the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us.

Whether viewers call the shows addictive or trashy, the audience keeps growing. From October 2024 to May 2025, ReelShort’s user base jumped from 40 to 50 million.

What Creators and Marketers Can Learn

For content creators, influencers, and brands, the vertical drama phenomenon is less about melodrama and more about mechanics. The format highlights a few clear lessons:

• Short beats long. Audiences are increasingly comfortable consuming stories in micro-bursts. Breaking down content into one-minute chapters doesn’t cheapen it; it sustains attention.
• Cliff-hangers are currency. Each cut isn’t just an edit; it’s an invitation to keep watching. Suspense is retention.
• Polish matters less than pacing. These shows rarely look like Hollywood productions. Viewers accept low production value if the narrative delivers constant payoffs.
• Emotions drive engagement. Outrage, desire, betrayal, the same forces that power viral TikToks are embedded into every script.

This is where the overlap with short-form video marketing becomes clear. A product demo can become a series of cliff-hangers. A podcast can be sliced into suspenseful, argument-driven moments. A coaching course can be repackaged into serialized micro-lessons.

In other words, creators don’t need to mimic the plots of Fated to My Forbidden Alpha or The Diamond Rose, but they can study how vertical dramas hook and retain audiences, then apply those methods to their own storytelling.

Beyond Melodrama

The industry is also beginning to branch out. ReelShort is experimenting with unscripted dating shows and even a documentary about a murder case that has gained an online following. Independent creators who cut their teeth on YouTube are now producing their first vertical dramas, drawing on experience with short-form storytelling to capture millions of views.

Some actors are finding steady work exclusively in vertical productions. Kasey Esser, 36, struggled to book traditional roles until he starred in Fated to My Forbidden Alpha, a werewolf romance. The show’s global fan base flooded his inbox, and he now works in verticals full time.

It’s not just the shows that are changing, but the industry pipeline itself. Writers adapt scripts from Chinese and Korean IP, retooling them for Western audiences. Actors and directors once focused on commercials are now shifting into serialized shorts. Fans run dedicated vertical-drama accounts, tracking trends the way others follow Marvel or Game of Thrones.

Why This Matters

Vertical dramas are not prestige television and they’re not trying to be. What they represent is a shift in how people spend their viewing time: away from long-form loyalty, toward serialised short-form compulsion.

For marketers, creators, and businesses, the lesson is clear. Attention is earned in small increments, and the way to sustain it is by cutting stories into pieces that fit the rhythm of everyday scrolling. The audience no longer waits until 8 p.m. for an episode drop, they want it in their feed, now, one minute at a time.

It may be easy to laugh at titles like Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King, but their success points to a reality content producers can’t ignore: the future of video is vertical, episodic, and addictive.

And for creators wondering how to capture that same effect in their own work, the starting point isn’t a bigger budget. It’s smarter editing, sharper pacing, and the ability to reframe a long idea into a sequence of irresistible short moments.

For creators, coaches, and brands, this doesn’t mean producing soap operas with mafia kings and forbidden alphas. But it does mean recognising that audiences respond to stories told in fast, serialised bursts. That’s where tools like AI Video Cut come in, which makes it possible to transform long videos, podcasts, or webinars into short, episodic clips that keep viewers hooked in the same way vertical dramas do.