Microdrama Audiences Getting Younger & More Male, Holywater Tech Report Finds

The percentage of men watching microdrama used to be a “rounding error” but has exploded in the past two years, according to a new report from vertical video behemoth Holywater Tech, which said microdrama audiences are being “redrawn.”

In Q2 2024, men made up just 1.1% of monthly active users to Holywater’s microdrama content, but this figure had rocketed to more than 30% just two years later.

Holywater described the growth in male microdrama viewers as “steady” rather than “driven by a single quarter or campaign” and said it is testament to the expansion of genres in the vertical video space.

Where once microdrama was dominated by romance, it is expanding rapidly into sci-fi, fantasy and other genres that are more palatable to the male viewer. “Romance is the spine of the audience – but the taste profile is broader than one genre,” said the report, which noted that horror and thriller remain “underserved” but are growing as the popularity of the likes of Backrooms and Obsession explodes with young people.

According to the report, 74% of users watch romance but 64.5% watch traditional drama and 54% comedy. Nearly half of respondents said they wanted to see more “stories adapted from books, films, or shows you already know.”

Holywater, which has big hits including Chained by Her Love, Young Elite and Secret Society: Till Blood Do Us Part, pointed out that its overwhelming majority audience remains female, who watch more frequently than men and for longer stretches of time. Men are “lighter viewers” and are far less likely to “fall into the super-heavy bucket” of audiences who watch more than seven hours per week, it said.

Ukraine’s Holywater is one of the largest in the exploding vertical video industry, has a content deal with Fox and recently received investment via a $22M capital funding round, the biggest of its kind in the microdrama space. Bosses recently told Deadline that microdrama has moved well beyond cheap, schlocky imitations of traditional TV and film. “People used to say YouTube was just a platform for cat videos, or Netflix would never succeed,” said co-founder Bogdan Nesvit back in May. “Naysayers should look back in the past because that will tell you a lot about the future.”

Holywater compiled the State of Microdrama Report with consulting firm Owl & Co, which pegged the global vertical video economy excluding China at a colossal $150B in 2026, up 41%.

Notably, the report’s authors found that the average microdrama viewer is getting younger.

Audiences aged 22-27 nearly tripled share of viewing over the past five quarters, now making up around one quarter of overall viewers to Holywater’s content.

Along with the shifting gender balance, this is also driving changes in what people want to watch, while it is making “in-bed viewing” more popular, a preference of the younger demographic, according to the report.

“In 2024, the microdrama audience was caricatured as a single demographic: women, 35-54, watching at night,” said the report. “Two years later, very piece of that picture is being redrawn in real time. The audience is still female-dominant. But it is also, increasingly, male, younger, and global.”

Numerous executives from the traditional TV and film world have moved into microdrama of late such as 5X Media’s Alon Shtruzman and Scott Einbinder, who yesterday unveiled New Short Media with a “consortium of investors” and projects including a “Mr. and Mrs. Smith-style action romance thriller.”