As studios begin to embrace the potential of vertical micro-dramas, should their rise be dismissed as merely a fad or a profound shift in the production, consumption and gender-bias of global storytelling?
Bite-sized video series designed for mobile viewing are taking the world by storm and even the $26bn in annual revenue predicted by 2030 seems conservative.
“That number is very realistic – if not bigger,” says Vivian Wang, Head of Content at Crisp, an app dedicated to vertical content, based in LA. “Vertical storytelling has limitless potential, and we haven’t even fully seen it yet.”
When people talk about vertical content, they often call it “micro-drama,” but industry professionals usually refer to it as vertical drama, vertical series, or simply “verticals.”
When the format first emerged in China, most of the content was...
You are not signed in
Only registered users can read the rest of this article.
Network Control: Turning 5G into a production tool
Speed, flexibility, and reliability – that’s the dream for many a live production. However, when public network coverage is patchy, what’s a broadcaster to do? The 2026 Accelerator Project, Network Control, deploys standardised network APIs to tackle this problem head-on.
Film University Babelsberg to preview immersive Auschwitz project at IBC2026
Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf will present an immersive digital reconstruction of a little-known site associated with Auschwitz at IBC2026, as part of EIT Culture & Creativity's first major presence at the show.
.jpg)
Innovation Awards: Investigating 2026’s Content Creation finalists
What does it take to win a technological innovation award in content creation? Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, assesses the top three projects in the running – revealing the key characteristics of each of the most competitive submissions.
Branded entertainment: Money, freedom, and audiences unite
As traditional broadcasters battle decreasing budgets and attention spans, brands have come to the fore as collaborators in an increasingly lucrative and creatively fertile strand of the media business.
FRAMES: Automating the archive end-to-end
Despite the availability of hundreds of generative AI tools, pre-production environments are still struggling to find a semantic archive search solution that is technically feasible and effective in the real world. Enter FRAMES.
