Dedicated short-drama apps are a sliver of a $150bn market

The figure or the record

On 19 August 2026, the consultancy Owl & Co published its Vertical Economy Report 1H26, stating that it put 'the vertical video economy outside China at $150B for 2026, up from $106B in 2025'. A companion piece published the same day, Vertical, a Concentrated $150B Market Today, frames that total as concentrated, asking in its own headline why three companies hold 94 per cent of it. Owl & Co describes the report as 'the first systematic map of how value flows through this category'.

What the documents establish

The $150 billion figure is Owl & Co's own modelled estimate of a broad 'vertical video economy' spanning advertising-funded vertical video across major platforms, not only dedicated short-drama apps. An earlier Owl & Co post, The Short Report, published 17 September 2025, states dedicated short-drama apps were 'on track to make $3 billion this year outside China — nearly triple last year', calling that 'still small compared to Netflix or YouTube'. Together the two documents show dedicated microdrama apps make up a small fraction — roughly two per cent on this evidence — of the far larger vertical-video total, the rest built from advertising and platform-level video the firm has not itemised publicly.

Scope and caveats

Both totals are ex-China and both are Owl & Co's own modelled estimates, not measured transactions; the model's inputs are not disclosed on the public pages, and the breakdown by company and revenue type sits behind a paid subscription and a linked document this ledger did not access. The 94 per cent concentration claim appears only as the firm's own headline question; which three companies it names, and by what measure, is not stated where this record could verify it. The $150 billion and $3 billion figures sit on different bases — one a full vertical-video economy, the other a narrower app-revenue estimate — and should not be subtracted from each other to infer an ad-driven remainder.

What to watch

Editorially, the number worth tracking is whether Owl & Co ever publishes the component breakdown behind the $150 billion figure on an open page, since a total split later into a paywalled concentration claim is difficult for anyone outside the subscription to verify against other analysts' figures.

• Does the $150 billion figure include advertising revenue, and if so, how much of it?
• Which three companies does Owl & Co say hold 94 per cent of the market, and by what measure?
• Does a dedicated short-drama app total belong inside or outside a broader 'vertical video economy' figure?

The gap between a $150 billion vertical-video economy and a $3 billion short-drama app market is itself the useful fact here: it shows how much of the reported 'vertical' boom is advertising around vertical-format video, not spending inside dedicated drama apps.