Los Angeles, July 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — HOLYWATER TECH, the AI-first technology company behind vertical streaming platform My Drama, in partnership with management consulting firm Owl & Co, today released “The State of Microdrama 2026”. This report combines proprietary product data and behavioral insights from My Drama and My Muse (HOLYWATER TECH’s platform for vertical series produced with the support of generative AI) with a May 2026 survey of 2,737 My Drama users.
“When Bogdan Nesvit’s team approached me to jointly present this report at the Vertical Media Summit, I was thrilled,” said Hernan Lopez, founder of Owl & Co. “For the first time, we’d get a real look at behavioral data from two of the leading microdrama apps in the West. But observed behavior tells you only what people did, not why, which is why it was important to complement that data with the users’ own words.”
The findings point to a structural shift in how global audiences consume entertainment: vertical series have outgrown the emerging-niche label.
Among the report’s most notable findings:
- The $150 Billion Vertical Economy: Owl & Co estimates the global vertical video economy (excluding China) will reach $150 billion in revenue 2026, up 41% in a single year, of which dedicated microdrama apps account for $4 billion.
- The Massive Male Influx: Long stereotyped as a female-only medium, the microdrama audience is diversifying in real time. The male share of monthly active users for My Drama grew 28-fold in seven quarters, from 1.1% to 30.3%.
- The “Bedtime App” Ritual: Moving away from standard daytime scrolling, vertical series are officially competing for linear TV prime-time. On My Drama, 70% of viewers watch vertical series in bed before falling asleep, while 59% watch on the couch. Heavy viewers average 13.1 hours of watch time per week, up from 9.5 five months earlier.
The report also documents AI-generated vertical series as a commercially viable format. On My Muse, HOLYWATER TECH’s AI series app, 89% of surveyed users want more AI-generated stories. Users converted to paying subscribers at the same rate: 23.6% on My Muse versus 23.9% on My Drama. And on My Muse’s flagship title, 9 in 10 paying subscribers were still watching after 100 minutes of cumulative viewing, matching or edging out My Drama’s flagship at every checkpoint.
For HOLYWATER TECH and Owl & Co, the broader conclusion is that “microdrama” may no longer be the right term for the category.
“The category started with romance. Other genres can make it much bigger, and we already see them starting to work in the data,” said Bogdan Nesvit, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of HOLYWATER TECH.
“AI is the engine of that growth: testing a new genre used to take months, and on My Muse it takes weeks,” added Anatolii Kasianov, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of HOLYWATER TECH. “A category that spans many genres needs the name of a format. We are calling it, vertical series, and the platforms that host it are vertical streaming services.”
The full report is available via the link.
About HOLYWATER TECH
HOLYWATER TECH is an AI-first technology company reshaping entertainment by pairing creators’ imagination with AI efficiency to bring stories to life and deliver them to global audiences. Its content ecosystem reaches over 100 million users and includes My Drama, the #1 vertical streaming app among U.S. and European companies and winner of the 2025 Webby Award for Best Streaming Service (People’s Voice); My Passion, the leading independent digital book publishing platform in the same markets; and My Muse, a platform for vertical series produced with the support of generative AI. In 2025–2026, HOLYWATER TECH was recognized as one of the fastest-growing startups in Europe.
About Owl & Co
A management consulting firm servicing tech, media and the attention economy.
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