The growth of global Internet users is sluggish, and the traffic of traditional giants such as Google and YouTube has declined. In this context, short dramas have not only attracted a large number of audiences in China with their advantages of “short and fast”, but also shined in overseas markets, becoming a dark horse in the Internet content ecosystem. Chinese companies dominate the short drama track, but the wave of overseas local manufacturing has also surged. When short dramas meet AI technology, what kind of sparks will collide?
The popularity of short dramas around the world will be higher in 2025.
According to Sensor Tower statistics, in the first quarter of 2025, global in-app purchase revenue for short dramas approached $700 million, nearly four times that of the first quarter of 2024.
As of March 2025, the cumulative in-app purchase revenue of global short drama applications is approaching $2.3 billion. The United States is the world’s highest-grossing market for short drama applications, with a 20% month-on-month increase in the first quarter of 2025 to nearly $350 million, contributing 49% of the total global short drama app revenue in the quarter.
Other regions (non-key areas) ranked second with a total of about 18%, and Southeast Asia ranked third with about 9%. In Q1 2025, the number of downloads of short drama applications worldwide exceeded 370 million, 6.2 times that of Q1 2024.
Following the collective attack on short dramas by domestic car companies, large manufacturers, e-commerce MCNs, and consumer brands, the audience of short dramas exceeded the three major groups of takeaway, online text, and online car-hailing, the global Internet seems to be covered by short dramas.
The global Internet “needs” short dramas?
It is undeniable that the success of short dramas is closely related to the lonely Internet world, both at home and abroad. Long ago, the loss of innovation on the global internet was a cliché. In the past two years, the emergence of large models seems to have made a splash in a pool of stagnant water.
In April 2025, Similarweb announced the traffic status of the world’s top ten websites, among which the traffic of all leading platforms such as Google, YouTube, Instagram, and X collectively declined. Throughout April, ChatGPT was the only website among the top 10 most visited websites to achieve month-on-month growth.
However, a ChatGPT obviously cannot support the dignity of the Internet industry.
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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The data shows that the current user scale of ChatGPT is close to the threshold of super applications, and the average daily usage time is less than 20 minutes. Compared with national app apps such as INS and Google, the usage of ChatGPT on non-weekdays has decreased significantly, and the usage on weekdays is about 50% higher than on weekends.
At present, there are more than 2,000 AI applications on the market. The content includes AI companionship, ChatBot, intelligent customer service, image and video generation…… But so far, this track has not only not “preached” for the Internet again, but a total of 200,000 AI companies have withdrawn one after another within three years:
These include Anthropic (large language models, generative AI), Waymo (autonomous driving), Anduril (defense), xAI (applications), Databricks (data processing and management), and Vantage (data center and infrastructure)…… The AI entrepreneurship of the fire is actually full of bitter water.
What is more noteworthy is that in 2024, capital’s attitude towards the technology Internet track is not as good as before. According to Dealroom’s latest report, startups and growth businesses across the tech sector, including non-AI, raised a total of $227 billion in 2024, down 12% from 2023.
Behind the popularity of domestic short dramas is actually the weak growth of the Internet, and this logic is also applicable to the world.
According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the number of global Internet users has grown from 3.1 billion in 2015 to 4.9 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of about 5.4%, which is significantly lower than the average of the past decade. Especially in developed countries and regions, the Internet penetration rate is close to saturation, and the number of new users is limited.
On the one hand, Internet users are saturated, and on the other hand, capital is gradually losing patience.
In China, QuestMobile data shows that the monthly active users of Hongguo short dramas in November 2024 reached 140 million, a year-on-year increase of 626%. In the first quarter of last year, the daily usage time of Hongguo short drama users reached 1.38 hours, surpassing iQiyi, Tencent Video and Mango TV.
The same is true overseas, Kunlun Wanwei’s DramaWave will enter the top 10 of South Korea’s Google Play entertainment app list from April 5, 2025, and surpassed Netflix to top the list on April 12, dominating the list for a whole week.
In the past two years, more than ten overseas short drama apps, including DramaBox, ShortTV, and DreameShot, have been launched in the United States. As early as 2023, ReelShort has been downloaded more than 11 million times in the United States and has reached $50 million in revenue, surpassing TikTok in the entertainment category of the Apple App Store many times to become one of the most popular apps.
In addition to the United States, ReelShort also has a large number of users in countries such as India and the Philippines, with over 24 million downloads worldwide. As of March 2024, the duration of global short drama App users has increased by 16 times compared to the previous year, and the limelight of short drama players was once comparable to cross-border e-commerce.
There are various signs that the global Internet needs short dramas, but this is not good news that can be accepted calmly, when scientific and technological innovation cannot outrun the werewolf, the Internet track may have to reflect.
What is missing from the short drama “Made in Local”?
In the global short drama track, our country occupies most of the market.
According to the statistics of the short drama study room, there are about 431 short drama applications in the world, and the top 50 applications in in-app purchase revenue account for 98.45% of the market share. Of these 50 applications, 40 were developed by Chinese companies, accounting for 80%. Platforms developed in China contributed 68.75% of the in-app purchase revenue to the overseas short drama market, while overseas local platforms only shared 29.58% of the market share.
Such a huge gap has gradually given overseas markets the idea of making short dramas.
Up to now, the United States, Japan, and South Korea have set off a wave of local manufacturing of short dramas. In 2024, Spoon Labs, an audio platform company from South Korea, launched Vigloo, a global short video platform, and announced in November that it had received an equity investment of KRAFTON1200 billion won from a South Korean game company.
At the same time, the Busan TV Festival will host the “First Asian Micro Short Drama Awards” in May this year. Coincidentally, Japan has launched the local short drama platform BUMP. Last year, local companies such as Japanese television, operators, brokerage companies, and advertising companies began to make short dramas, including Nippon TV and TV Tokyo.
Among them, Nippon Television’s Tsutomu Suzuki produced UniReel’s first work, “The Last Lesson – Only Survivors Can Graduate”, and TV Tokyo released original short dramas, and plans to release short dramas at a rate of one or two per week, and more than 50 short dramas after a year.
In the North American market, due to the maturity of the film and television industry chain here, the annual production capacity of local dramas is about 1,000 films, and the monthly production capacity is about 100 films. In addition to some international students and Chinese teams, there are more and more local producers in the United States. After our country, the enthusiasm for short dramas from all walks of life overseas has also been stimulated.
The reason for this should not only be as simple as filling the regrets of the Internet, but more importantly, the “sweetness” of short dramas is becoming more and more tempting.
First of all, as the short drama market becomes more and more fertile, many international companies are filming short dramas for their corporate image, such as Starbucks, KFC, and McDonald’s. Statistics show that in just one year, 354 companies around the world devoted themselves to short dramas for publicity, which directly increased the commercial value of the entire track.
Secondly, the recovery of the global labor market is facing huge challenges, and the short drama industry can provide some jobs. According to public information, at present, short dramas provide at least 20%~25% of jobs in Los Angeles, USA, and Hollywood short drama actors are in short supply, and the salary of the head leading actor can reach $2,000 per day.
But overseas locally made short dramas are not as simple as imagined. In addition to the success of our country short dramas and a wide audience, the mature manufacturing of upstream and downstream is also very critical.
At present, there is a major difficulty in the filming of overseas local short dramas: the cost remains high, especially in the United States.
According to 2024 data, the cost of filming a short drama in the United States is about $100,000 to $150,000, and even Dianzhong Technology predicts that the production cost of overseas short dramas may reach $300,000 by the end of the year. In contrast, in 2024, the average production cost of short dramas in our country will be about 500,000 yuan, which is only about half that of the United States.
In 2025, with the ups and downs of tariff turmoil, the cost of manufacturing short dramas will become more and more uncertain.
Especially for the Chinese team filming overseas, relevant data shows that the customs clearance fee for 10 boxes of costume headdresses sent to North America by a crew in Beijing has skyrocketed from $322 to $842.
The overseas consumer market has been sluggish in the past two years, and once the asking price of short dramas rises, the consequences can be imagined. Therefore, some overseas short drama filming and production are being transferred to Southeast Asia and Mexico in order to reduce costs. According to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, China’s exports of film and television equipment to the United States in the first quarter of 2025 fell by 43% year-on-year, while Mexico’s exports of similar products increased by 39% during the same period.
But the production team can migrate, and the platform is difficult. At present, overseas local short drama platforms operate in limited areas, mainly distributed in the United States, Germany, Turkey, South Korea, Ukraine and other countries, and have not yet formed a global layout. What is missing from overseas short dramas “Made in Local”? Maybe it’s time.
When the “double tops” of the Internet meet?
It is undeniable that short dramas, with their “short, flat and fast” genes, are reshaping the rules of global Internet traffic distribution.
In China, Aiyou Tengmang, Byte, Kuaishou, Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Meituan, Bilibili, 360, Huawei, Xiaomi and other Internet giants have entered the short drama in a high-profile manner. Overseas, the living space of streaming media and social platforms has been further squeezed by short drama apps.
According to a Netflix survey, in the second half of 2024, streaming time per user was 20% lower than in the first half of 2023, with only 1 hour and 46 minutes left per day. On the contrary, the popularity of short drama applications is increasing, and traditional content forms such as long videos and graphics are not as good as before.
When short dramas broke out last year, the Internet seemed to have returned to the era of short videos, and the argument of “entertainment to death” reappeared. By 2025, the infection of short dramas on the global Internet track will begin to transition from the atmosphere level to the impact of technology and capital. A typical example is AI short dramas, which have written one traffic myth after another.
For example, “The Strange Tale of Xing’anling”, which received 50 million views on the whole network, and the native revenue of Douyin exceeded 300,000 yuan; The popularity of AI short dramas such as “Unknown Commando”, “Fantasy: Starting from Pulling the Erhu”, “Mountains and Seas”, “New World Loading”, “Floating Dreams” and other AI short dramas is also remarkable.
In terms of personal creation, such as “Underworld Delivery Man”, “Pregnant Man Fish”, “Brother Cat Picks Up a Snail Girl”…… A series of weird pictures are common on short video platforms. When the popular short drama meets the AI in the limelight, the sparks created by the collision of the double “top streams” of the Internet are particularly intense.
Following OpenAI’s release of the first Wensheng video model Sora, generative AI video creation tools such as Pika, Runway, and Keling have been released one after another. On February 18 this year, Kunlun Wanwei opened up China’s first video generation model for AI short drama creation, SkyReels-V1, which can realize the generation of film and television-level character micro-expression performances, supporting 33 kinds of delicate character expressions and 400+ kinds of natural action combinations.
On the one hand, there are more and more groups watching short dramas, and on the other hand, there are more and more groups who are keen on AI-generated short dramas and entertaining themselves. Taking our country market as an example, the survey shows that as of December 2024, the number of micro-short drama users will reach 662 million, with a usage rate of 59.7%, an increase of 7.3 percentage points from the first half of the year.
At the same time, the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence is changing the way online audiovisual content is produced, and the proportion of users using AI tools for image and video production has increased from 25.6% to 31% in half a year. The new list “2024 Content Industry Annual Report” points out that AI-generated content accounts increased by 218% year-on-year.
What impact will the short drama “infect” the AI track bring? Like the entire internet caught in a whirlpool of short videos, foundational progress in this field may unconsciously stagnate in the façade of prosperity. This is not groundless, the basic layer investment in the AI track has shrunk sharply last year.
According to industrialist statistics, the financing events of the AI basic layer have plummeted from 104 in 2023 to 70 in 2024, a decrease of 32.7%; The peak of a single financing has shrunk from 2 billion yuan (Suiyuan Technology Series D) to 500 million yuan (Wuwenxinqiang Series A), and the capital intensity has shrunk by 75%.
Perhaps for capital, instead of a long investment cycle and uncertain basic development, it is better to bet on what is already there, and there may be unexpected surprises. For example, AI generation meets the world’s popular short dramas, and in the future, as AIGC technology further lowers the creative threshold, short dramas may evolve from a phenomenal format to a “basic species” of Internet content.
