Why Meta is winning the micro drama wars

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has become a huge beneficiary of the micro drama boom by harvesting ad dollars and free content at the same time.

Finn Gomez/Getty Images Micro dramas are huge in China, and growing in the US and the rest of the world.

The mini-shows are starting to turn into real ad money for Meta, the platform micro dramas depend on.

The ads are also free, very engaging content for Mark Zuckerberg and Co.

Some ads run as long as 20 minutes.

Micro dramas are booming outside the US.

They're beginning to see traction stateside too, with lots of startups trying to convince American consumers to pay a few dollars to watch soapy stories on their phones.

But right now, there's one clear winner in the US micro drama industry: Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg's Meta is by far the most popular place for micro drama producers to market their stuff, industry players tell us.

Some estimate that startups are directing up to 75% of their marketing budgets to Meta's various properties, in the hopes of getting Facebook or Reels users to come to their sites.

"What I hear consistently from apps is, Meta gets more than half of the customer acquisition spend by most micro drama apps," said Hernan Lopez, founder of research firm Owl & Co.

He pegs micro drama ad spending at $1.5 billion globally — excluding China, where the genre started.

But Meta isn't just harvesting ad dollars from the micro drama business.

It's also getting tons of free content: Micro dramas advertise themselves by showing users multiple episodes of their shows for free — and sometimes they'll show them many, many episodes.