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Emily is a college student by day, but she works the night shift at the strip club to pay her tuition – she doesn’t think anyone will find out her secret, until one day, her mysterious English teacher shows up! Did he recognize her? Will her secret get out? Pay 60 “tokens” to see what happens next, or you can watch an ad, or… just buy a VIP pass for $20 per week and skip the ads altogether.
These stories are pulpy and exaggerated, bursting with cringeworthy acting and writing. Yet these “microdramas” – TikTok-like shows with episodes about a minute long – are making billions of dollars a year.
First popular in China, microdrama apps are poised to have a breakout year in the U.S. app market. According to the app intelligence firm Appfigures, ReelShort reached roughly $1.2 billion in gross consumer spending in 2025, up 119% from 2024; another leading app, DramaBox, made $276 million in gross consumer spending last year, more than doubling its 2024 numbers.
The market doesn’t appear to be slowing down. TikTok just launched its own standalone microdrama app called PineDrama, and a new app from Hollywood veterans called GammaTime just raised $14 million, including checks from angel investors like Alexis Ohanian, Kris Jenner, and Kim Kardashian.
It’s surprising to see short-form, scripted drama apps achieve such success when we’re only five years removed from the implosion of Quibi. Quibi wanted to be like Netflix, but with ten-minute episodes that were designed to be watched on the go. Founded by Dreamworks co-founder and former Disney chair Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quibi raised more than $1.75 billion in funding from major Hollywood studios, then created shows with stars like Liam Hemsworth, Reese Witherspoon, and Anna Kendrick.
No one wanted Quibi, and the app turned into a punchline because of how massively it flopped. But ReelShort –- an app whose top shows are called “My Sister is the Warlord Queen” and “In Love with a Single Farmer-Daddy” –- is a hit.
“How are they succeeding where Quibi failed? They’re basically OnlyFans for the female gaze,” Eric Wei, creator economy expert and CEO of Karat Financial, told TechCrunch. “They do romantasy, where the titles are all like, ‘My Alpha.’ This is like ‘50 Shades of Grey,’ but for vertical video.”
OnlyFans isn’t the best comparison (these shows can be suggestive, though not pornographic), but Wei is right that sex sells. When a story seems like it might be heating up, you’ll be prompted to watch ads or pay money to keep going. But the payoff is never that compelling, so you keep watching, only to see another pop-up asking for more money, or other ambiguous in-app currency.
The business model behind these apps replicates the same dark patterns as mobile games. They’re designed to get users hooked on free content, giving out free in-app currency for logging in each day. As people spend more time on the app – which is designed to be addictive – they need more coins or tokens to unlock more episodes of a show, but there’s no way to earn enough to get their fix without shelling out real money.
Sometimes, a microdrama is interactive, allowing viewers to choose what route the story will take – but the good option (the woman stands up to her abusive ex) will cost tokens, while the less satisfying one (the abusive ex faces no consequences for his actions) is free.
Soon, a hooked viewer may relent and pay for the weekly $20 ad-free pass, which, after a month, would cost more than subscriptions to HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Paramount Plus combined.
As AI enters the picture, these companies will churn out content at an even more alarming pace. LLMs are not capable of writing prestige dramas like HBO’s “Succession,” or even a sitcom like “The Big Bang Theory,” but the most successful microdramas are so predictable and formulaic that they don’t actually require much human wit and creativity. You’d be shocked to learn how many microdramas begin with a scene in which a girl with glasses gets pushed down by a mean classmate, only to be saved by some popular jock, who notices she’s actually really pretty if she just takes off her glasses.
PocketFM, the Lightspeed-backed audio-series platform, has already embraced AI. Last year, it released a tool it calls CoPilot, which was trained on thousands of hours of content to understand the “beats” of a formulaic story, helping writers add cliffhangers or plot twists to their stories that it predicts will make audiences want to watch more. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian company Holywater, which raised $22 million to fund its microdrama app My Drama, calls itself an “AI-first entertainment network.”
While microdrama could fully go the way of AI, Dhar Mann Studios CEO Sean Atkins thinks there’s also an opportunity for creators.
“Think about it – short-form is a little less overhead than long-form, and vertical is even more overhead,” Atkins told TechCrunch. “I think you’ll see a handful of creators start going into that pretty significantly, particularly since they have the experience of low-cost production.”
These companies have a great business model on their hands. But it’s one that thrives on short attention spans, in-app purchases, and content that feels like “Cocomelon” for adults.
