The audiovisual consumption market is undergoing a significant shift with the rise of «vertical dramas,» a new series format specifically designed for smartphones, which gained popularity in China two years ago. These productions, available on apps like ReelShort, DramaBox, and FlexTV, feature episodes that are often less than a minute long, with a high volume of episodes per series (20 to 100). The low-cost production model allows for series to be shot in as little as one week, prioritizing speed and quantity over traditional quality. The vertical series market in China exceeded $5 billion in 2023, with projections suggesting it could grow to $13 billion by 2027.
This model is successfully being exported abroad, with the United States becoming a primary market for platforms like ReelShort. The app, which has been downloaded by over 10 million users since its 2022 launch, briefly surpassed TikTok in popularity on Apple’s app store in November. Joey Jia, CEO of Crazy Maple Studio which owns ReelShort, stated that the app’s core audience is primarily American women between forty and sixty.
The vertical video trend has a strong foundation in Asia, where internet adoption largely skipped the «desktop phase» and went directly to smartphones during the pandemic. This led to a «mobile-first» approach to consuming content, with the first vertical series appearing in 2018.
Despite this success, industry experts remain skeptical that the vertical format will achieve long-term success with Western audiences. This is largely due to fundamental differences in production and consumption habits. Western series have evolved to replicate the complexity and quality of cinema, with episodes often lasting more than an hour and designed for a cinematic viewing experience, not a mobile screen.
Vertical dramas, or «vertical TV series,» employ a unique visual language, often using split screens and animated transitions to fit the smartphone frame. The format is very innovative, as it features series of 60 to 80 episodes, each lasting between 60 and 85 minutes. The series are viewed on the platform’s app, directly on mobile devices. Some executives believe this stylistic approach may not appeal to a general public accustomed to traditional cinematic storytelling.
This sentiment is not new; filmmaker David Lynch famously criticized watching movies on a phone, stating, ‘if you watch a movie on your phone, you will never experience the film, not in a trillion years…You’ll think you’ve seen it, but you’ll be cheated’.
In the Americas, ReelShort has been working in partnership with local production companies, but new players have also joined the scene. DramaBox, for example, is a mobile TV series company created in 2022. It is very similar to ShortMax, the Chinese-based media company founded in 2023.
Other names have also entered the market, such as FlexTV and LokShorts. Even Netflix has conducted tests in this area, recently announcing that for some select users, its app will begin testing a vertical video feed.
