Overseas AI Short Drama Going Global Survey: Volume-Run Window Narrows, Money Is Not So Easy to Earn

Kechuangban Daily reporter Wang Nai, editor Mao Mingjiang, 2026-10-23 15:29

① "This year's overseas AI short dramas feel like a replay of last year's domestic short drama land-grab market," one AI short drama practitioner lamented; ② multiple interviewees noted that the current extensive volume-stacking phase of overseas AI short dramas is closing, and relying on "premiumization" alone still cannot solve everything once and for all; ③ Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of iiMedia Research, believes that the next stage is not "who does more," but "who can form a closed loop fastest."

Kechuangban Daily, October 23 (Reporter Wang Nai) — "This year's overseas AI short dramas feel like a replay of last year's domestic short drama land-grab market," one AI short drama practitioner lamented. This has almost become the footnote of the 2026 industry.

Lü Qian'er's feelings are very concrete. Her company Magic World began making overseas short dramas in 2024, choosing South Korea as its first stop. "When we first entered in 2024, short dramas did not have much presence in the Korean market, and making short dramas was a minority pursuit. By 2025, a large number of established traditional film and television companies had entered, and the Korean market already had more than 80 short drama apps; this year it should exceed 100, and the overall market is relatively booming."

But the other side of booming is crowding. People from all kinds of backgrounds in the industry are switching careers and crossing over—those in gaming, apps, foreign trade, IP, and MCN companies have all poured in. Wu Jieqian, founder of FilmAction, recalls, "At the beginning of this year, everyone was still saying that 2026 would be the key year for the industrialization of video large models. Less than half a year later, the competition has already become so fierce that a batch of companies in the industry have died."

Many practitioners mentioned the same feeling in interviews: "Everything is developing too fast." The dividend period passed quickly. The early "wild growth" seems about to end soon.

Wang Cong, COO of Youshi Yinghua, said bluntly that overseas is still in a "land-grab" cycle, but this phase "may last only two or three months, and then it will basically consolidate; what comes next will definitely not be about winning by volume." Zhou Zhipeng, co-founder of Shuimu Intelligence, gave a similar timeline: "The overseas low-cost volume-running process is expected to end completely in just these few months."

A one-step lead, and a not-so-easy going-global journey

Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of iiMedia Research, offered a judgment: compared with the Chinese market, overseas short dramas have a lag window of about 1 to 1.5 years, and the domestic market is ahead. He judged that if future growth space is calculated over three years, "there is at least a range of more than $20 to $25 billion," and if volume is expanded, there should still be a chance for the overall scale to grow by about another 40%.

"After the domestic market became so competitive that there was little profit left, everyone found that overseas returns were still decent, and they all rushed to go global," said Wu Jieqian, founder of FilmAction. This year the company shifted more of its production-services business toward self-production, taking on more risk while also gaining greater returns, "trying to open up more possibilities for the company."

Li Jingmin, CEO of Huayu International Culture Communication Co., Ltd., judged that overseas comic dramas may have reached a node, but not the later stage. "Now is not the best stage, but the best reshuffling stage. At this time, everyone will not compete on quality, but on volume, or on their own creative workflow."

According to the latest September micro-short drama data from DataEye, the United States contributes about 28% of the overseas market share, Japan about 6.7%, the United Kingdom about 4.3%, South Korea about 4.09%, and Australia about 4.08%, with the top five totaling about 47%.

What are the best-selling AI short dramas in North America? Zhou Zhipeng told reporters, "Making vampire, werewolf, and local domineering-CEO stories for local audiences—that kind of content has relatively the best paid performance." Besides that category, another is to use AI face-swapping on Chinese short dramas that sell well, changing the faces to white actors and telling similar domineering-CEO or vampire stories; "that can bring in some revenue, but not as much." The easiest category is direct translation, with poor localization and relatively poor returns.

Image source: Poster for a popular AI short drama on DramaWave, owned by Kunlun Wanwei

However, some short drama companies did not start with the large North American market first, but instead cultivated other markets in depth.

For example, Lü Qian'er's company Magic World only began trying English-language original audio and testing the North American market this year. Previously they had always worked in the Korean market. She believes that "South Korea, culturally, belongs with China to the East Asian sphere; compared with directly entering North America, where cultural differences are huge, South Korea is easier to enter."

Wang Cong's Youshi Yinghua was founded in 2017. On the overseas distribution side, it began testing TikTok in April this year and started expanding the AI simulated-human category from Q3. Wang Cong said that it currently targets the European and American markets with about 100 titles per month, and in the pure production stage one to two people can complete one title in two or three days. He also defines the two sides differently: they have been rooted in the Japanese market for many years and focus more on premium deep cultivation there, while in Europe and America they are currently taking small, quick steps and iterating gradually.

At the same time, some AI short drama companies choose to take root in niche regions. Li Jingmin, CEO of Huayu International Culture Communication Co., Ltd., told reporters that the company previously did international communication, and after short dramas and comic dramas emerged, "it was equivalent to giving us another way out." At present, the company focuses on the Middle East and North Africa. "Fewer people work in the Middle East, and cross-cultural understanding and Arabic localization are very difficult; there are also fewer local people, so this is a market that has rarely been cultivated."

Competing overseas, but still "competing"

Going overseas—and then what? The market is growing, but for every company and every team, the competitive pressure has not eased just because they went overseas. Going-global companies each have their own cultural DNA and overseas backgrounds, and their strategic choices differ as well. Moreover, cross-cultural communication, localization adaptation, and commercialization conversion are all involved—going overseas is no easy task.

One intuitive change is the decline in production fees; many production companies are even willing to take orders as long as they cover costs. An industry practitioner who declined to be named told the reporter, "Pricing in the industry is extremely chaotic now. Some companies take any job if there's money in it—they'll accept 100 yuan a minute and make a dozen or so yuan a minute. Take on more and just run volume, and you might make tens of thousands of yuan a month, about the same as a salary." This price stratification further thins out profit margins that were never thick to begin with.

The hit rate is another metric that makes practitioners anxious. "During last year's domestic comic drama volume-running phase, crudely made works and low-cost works couldn't earn much income; the hit rate for achieving commercial monetization had to reach about one in a thousand. Now overseas AI comic dramas are almost at that stage too," said Zhou Zhipeng.

What unsettles practitioners even more is that this market has yet to develop a replicable playbook. Li Jingmin said, "With so many dramas going overseas recently, no one has filtered out what products with a truly good rhythm look like. Everyone is still crossing the river by feeling the stones, and there's no ready-made manual to consult for a hit."

She boils down the way forward for content companies to two paths: "One is to decide that I'm just a production company—I'll take any job at any price, as long as it covers the company's costs; the other is to say I want to pursue something in content, so I compete purely on premium quality. Actually, whether overseas or domestic, content is king—the script matters more, and the visuals need to be good. There is no third path."

With no "hit manual" available at present, many companies have begun actively choosing to go deep into premium content, and some go further still, appearing at international film festivals such as Cannes. Zhou Zhipeng's company, Shuimu Intelligence, is one such example. They are currently shifting their focus to horizontal-screen medium-length dramas, web films, and theatrical films. "Everyone probably can't compete much in short dramas anymore; it may also be that these premium content types suit our DNA better. Horizontal-screen medium-length dramas cost eight or nine thousand to over ten thousand yuan per minute, but the return rate is also higher."

This year, two premium series produced by Shuimu Intelligence, "Mojin: The Dream of Heaven's Secrets" and "The Hungry Tower," were selected for the Fantastic Pavilion section of the 79th Cannes International Film Festival—the first time AI short dramas have been formally accepted by the international mainstream film festival system. He judges that overseas markets "have already begun entering the premiumization stage one after another," with per-minute costs "already racing to over 2,000, 3,000, 4,000," and Cannes-winning works "basically already at seven or eight thousand to over ten thousand per minute."

Speaking of the premium methodology, Zhou Zhipeng believes the key lies in IP selection and script polishing: focus on top-tier premium works, emphasize world-building, and let characters and stories from different IPs interconnect; at the same time, professional talent such as well-known screenwriters ensures audiovisual language and emotional density, rather than following a pure AI volume-running model.

But he also admits that premiumization does not mean guaranteed profit: "In the industry, when investing in works, the vast majority still lose money." Top-tier works siphon off roughly 70 to 80 percent or more of the traffic. An ordinary work with over 100 million views "earns roughly only tens of thousands to a hundred-some thousand yuan."

Is the platform business profitable?

Looking only at the revenue rankings, the top platforms seem to be doing well. DataEye data shows that from January to September 2026, overseas micro-short drama apps are estimated to have generated over $2.1 billion in in-app purchase revenue across both platforms, with over 2.2 billion downloads. The top five in the revenue rankings remain stable: DramaBox (incubated by Dianzhong Technology), ReelShort (under Maple Leaf Interactive, with Chinese Online holding a stake), and NetShort (under Maiya Media) sweep the top three, and the combined revenue of the three products accounts for 50% of the TOP20 total revenue—a very pronounced concentration effect at the top.

VibeShort (Lingdong Xiangxian) and StoryReel (Equinox Technology), which focus on AI short dramas, both broke into the revenue TOP15. Both products launched in the first half of this year and reached the first tier in just half a year, showing outstanding growth momentum. iDrama under iReader and JoyReels under Zhangzhongyun also made the TOP15, with cumulative in-app purchase revenue for both products exceeding $22 million.

Among overseas local short drama apps, three products—My Drama (Ukraine), Vigloo (South Korea), and Inkitt CandyJar (Germany)—made the revenue TOP20, ranking 10th, 16th, and 17th respectively.

ByteDance's approach to overseas short dramas is also worth noting. As of September 2026, PineDrama's global cumulative downloads exceeded 100 million, with about 7 million daily active users, making it the world's seventh standalone short drama app to surpass 100 million cumulative downloads and the only new product among them that has been online for less than a year.

The overseas version of Hongguo, "PineDrama," is rising rapidly. Do overseas users also love "free"?

"After ByteDance's overseas short drama platform PineDrama launched, everyone kept crowding into it, including launching simultaneously on TikTok," Li Jingmin admitted. "A massive number of dramas crowding in also disperses viewers' attention, and the current commercialization results are not good, with relatively low returns."

When the paid logic gives way to the traffic logic, it is hard for creators not to be swept up by "traffic." But does buying traffic guarantee a hit? Wu Jieqian said, "Whether a drama becomes a hit depends on too many factors; there is no fixed formula. But with stronger traffic buying and marketing, the probability of success is higher, because at least there is a safety net that can drag it up from underwater."

Judging from the current monetization models of overseas platforms, IAP (paid) and IAAP (free + paid) remain the two main monetization models, together accounting for nearly 80%.

Zhang Yi divides current platforms into two categories: "Paid models like ReelShort rely on in-app purchases, with concentrated users and high gross margins; this is a mature market. The free model of ByteDance's PineDrama relies on advertising and scale; this is the incremental growth of emerging markets." Capital values cash flow for paid targets, while for free targets it values the commercial closed loop and traffic scale more.

Benchmarking against the domestic market path, Zhang Yi judges that "in the future, the share of free and hybrid monetization products will continue to expand. Judging from the domestic situation, this model has basically (suppressed) the paid model."

Data is also confirming this change: platforms based on "free + traffic" are rising rapidly overseas. According to DataEye, IAP (paid) products fell 2% month-on-month; IAAP (free + paid) products rose 4% month-on-month; IAA (free) products rose 8% month-on-month, the fastest growth, with ByteDance's PineDrama as one example.

Zhou Zhipeng said that compared with many paid and subscription-based overseas short drama platforms, PineDrama "follows the free logic, using free to attack paid, and quickly seeking traffic." This is "also very appealing" to overseas users, equivalent to the "free logic" sweeping the whole world.

Regarding the window period, multiple interviewees mentioned that the current stage of extensive volume stacking in overseas AI short dramas is closing, and relying only on "premiumization" still cannot solve everything once and for all. In Zhang Yi's view, this track "still has a certain traffic attribute, but overall a comprehensive playbook has already formed: first, there must be traffic; second, the content must stand out; at the same time, the monetization logic, whether advertising, paid, or other methods, must form a closed loop." The next stage is not "who can make more," but "who can form a closed loop fastest."

Cailianshe statement: The content of this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors who act on it do so at their own risk.

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Overseas AI Short Drama Going Global Survey: Volume-Run Window Narrows, Money Is Not So Easy to Earn

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