The global micro drama boom has already rewritten the rules of television in China and the US. Now the next battleground is Europe – and according to COL Group executive Timothy Oh, the UK could become one of the format’s most important future markets.
Speaking to TellyCast during a visit to London, Oh outlined why broadcasters, producers and platform owners are suddenly paying attention to vertical drama, despite lingering scepticism around a format often dismissed as little more than soapy, melodramatic clickbait.
That scepticism is understandable. Most of the micro dramas currently reaching western audiences are full of billionaire CEOs, revenge plots and love triangles delivered at breakneck speed in two-minute vertical episodes. They are deliberately heightened, often knowingly over-the-top and, in British terms, undeniably cheesy.
But behind the melodrama sits a market growing at extraordinary speed.
In China, micro drama revenues have already overtaken the country’s theatrical box office. COL Group, one of the country’s biggest producers and distributors in the sector, has been at the centre of that rise. Originally founded as an IP business 25 years ago, the company built its early success through ebooks and serialized mobile storytelling before moving naturally into short-form video.
“We used to work with telcos to send chapters every day,” says Oh. “So it is very similar to the concept of micro dramas. It is a natural progression.”
That background has given COL Group an unusually deep reservoir of stories to adapt. The company claims to be China’s second-largest IP company and has used that catalogue to build one of the largest micro drama ecosystems in the market.
Outside China, COL incubated Crazy Maple Studio, whose app RealShort has become one of the biggest players in the US. It has since expanded further with platforms including UniReel, Zero Plus and FlareFlow, one of the fastest-growing micro drama apps in America.
The strategy is not to create radically different services for different audiences. Instead, COL operates multiple apps simultaneously to test different routes to market.
“Because it is so new, you do not know how it is going to work,” says Oh. “Having one go-to-market strategy for one app is not viable enough.”
The result is effectively a giant live experiment. Different apps, different promotional approaches and different versions of the same content are constantly tested against audiences in different territories.
That data-driven mindset is one of the reasons micro drama has been able to scale so quickly.
A successful show can be produced for between $150,000 and $250,000. A hit can generate many times that in a matter of weeks.
Oh points to one recent Chinese series, From Rags to Rank One, a historical time-travel story that attracted one billion views within a week. Produced for around $250,000, the show proved so popular that viewers were demanding a second season almost immediately.
Traditional television would likely have taken a year or more to respond. COL Group took two months.
“Within two and a half months we released the next series,” says Oh. “The ability to commission shows that quickly allows us to capture the audience and grow the IP a lot faster.”
The speed comes partly from the economics of the genre. Micro dramas are cheap to make compared with television, but expensive to market.
Production budgets may run into the low hundreds of thousands, but marketing budgets can easily exceed $1m. The reason is simple: viewers do not discover micro dramas in the same way they discover television.
There are no long lead publicity campaigns, no talent tours and no carefully staged trailer launches. Instead, viewers are served the first few episodes directly in their TikTok, Instagram or Facebook feeds. If the hook works, they download the app and pay to continue.
“We would put a show up for two or three days and see how the performance is,” says Oh. “We would edit the show if necessary. We would do thousands of versions of trailers and episodes to test who is paying and who is watching it.”
COL Group says it runs around 400 experiments every month, constantly refining its marketing and its storytelling. If a show performs well with a particular demographic, the next series is shaped around the same audience.
One US example involved a boxing drama called Goodbye After 99 Forgiveness. Analysis of the audience led COL to create a follow-up, 99 Chances, built around a similar emotional formula but with a different setting and characters.
The process has far more in common with TikTok than with traditional television development.
“It is always about iteration,” says Oh. “You see someone do a silly dance and then the next moment you do the silly dance again and improve it.”
That mentality presents both an opportunity and a challenge for European broadcasters.
On one hand, the rise of vertical viewing is undeniable. Younger audiences increasingly consume entertainment on phones rather than televisions, and even premium streamers are beginning to respond. Disney+, TikTok and Google are all exploring micro drama in different ways, while Fox has invested in HolyWater, one of the best-known companies in the sector.
On the other hand, western broadcasters have yet to find a version of the format that feels right for their audiences.
Oh believes the UK, in particular, needs a distinctly British version of micro drama.
“The content does not sit 100 per cent well with the UK audience,” he says. “British people love dry humour. The content has to be UK-audience friendly and mobile first.”
That probably means moving away from the highly melodramatic Chinese and US template and leaning instead into existing British IP.
Soap operas, continuing dramas and reality brands may provide the clearest route in.
Rather than simply re-editing existing programmes into a vertical format, Oh argues broadcasters should build new storylines around existing brands. An EastEnders spin-off following a single character, a Hollyoaks side story or a mobile-first extension of a dating format could all make more sense than trying to squeeze a conventional television episode into a vertical frame.
“You cannot just edit it down,” he says. “You have to redo the stories.”
That matters because micro drama works according to very different storytelling rules. Every episode lasts roughly two minutes and every 90 seconds must end with a new hook, revelation or cliffhanger strong enough to persuade viewers to keep watching – and, ultimately, to pay.
“You cannot tell four stories or five subplots in two minutes,” says Oh. “Most of the time you have one character you are rooting for.”
So far, most British companies appear to be watching from the sidelines.
Oh says producers and broadcasters are curious, but few are willing to make the first move because success requires more than producing a handful of short-form series. It requires an ecosystem.
“It does not work if someone is going to produce two or three shows,” he says. “Where do they put them? Where do they monetise them?”
That is the key question.
In China and the US, the micro drama economy works because there are dedicated apps, sophisticated recommendation systems, performance marketing infrastructure and audiences already accustomed to making small payments for content.
The UK has none of that yet.
However, Oh suggests the answer may not be for broadcasters to build everything themselves. Instead, there may be opportunities for partnerships between established British IP owners and specialist micro drama companies such as COL Group.
“The UK market is a really good market. There are really good stories,” he says. “We are constantly looking for options.”
That could eventually mean a dedicated UK-focused micro drama app built around British storytelling and British sensibilities.
The signs are that Europe may not be far behind. Oh says COL is already in discussions with broadcasters and OTT platforms in several European markets. Germany has emerged as a surprisingly strong market, while interest is also growing in French-speaking Africa.
Perhaps most significantly, broadcasters are beginning to realise that the real issue is not whether audiences want vertical video. They already do. The question is whether television companies can create a version of it that feels native to their brands.
The industry has spent years talking about becoming digital-first. Micro drama may be the first genuine test of whether broadcasters are prepared to follow through.
