The other side of the AI short drama craze: Creators await the platform's "reshaping"

Since 2023, short dramas have become a hot track. Especially in the past two years, the scale of short dramas in the overseas market has continued to grow. According to the prediction of the DataEye Research Institute, the market scale of overseas AI dramas/comic dramas will be about $100 million in 2025 and is expected to reach $650 million in 2026, achieving a six - fold increase with huge growth potential.

Platforms have also become extremely popular. Short - drama applications such as ReelShort have appeared in the public eye, showing the market more possibilities. According to the report released at the 13th China Network Audio - Visual Conference, the total downloads of overseas short - drama applications will reach 1.199 billion times in 2025, a year - on - year increase of 268%; the total revenue will be $2.329 billion, a year - on - year increase of 133%.

However, at the same time, there is a huge contrast between the income and development of the creation side. After the emergence of AI short dramas, the income of content creators has not increased accordingly. Most content platforms adopt a profit - sharing model. Even if creators can independently use AI to complete short - drama content, they cannot achieve a win - win profit.

Undoubtedly, the emergence of AI has brought cost reduction and efficiency improvement to creators and made the "OPC" (One - Person Company) possible. However, in the emerging short - drama track, the problems of the model are still prominent.

However, at the end of April this year, a case sparked quite a discussion in the industry. An AI short - drama work "The Persian Revenge" launched by a Chinese AI creator became popular overseas, achieving a GMV of $500,000 within 72 hours of its launch. The platform behind it also comes from China, a content distribution platform called "YourChannel".

In the content industry, there are no longer a few cases of how creators and platforms can achieve mutual success. Now, the AI short - drama industry is also waiting for the "breakthrough moment".

Creators are trapped in the "false prosperity" dilemma

Since the short - drama boom, the content production institutions behind it have included traditional film and television production institutions and small - scale content institutions, and now there are also many "one - person teams". After the emergence of AI tools, the creator economy has heated up again.

However, beneath the wave of popularity, the actual situation is that there are many obstacles in front of creators.

In this industry with rapid iteration and high efficiency, platforms, institutions, and AI tool platforms are more likely to form an "exploitation chain", exerting multiple squeezes on creators.

For individual creators without funds or teams, the first dilemma often comes from the direct profit - sharing of institutions.

Due to the lack of start - up resources and operational capabilities, individual creators often have to choose to rely on MCN institutions to survive. However, behind this approach is an unequal profit - sharing model. After creators produce content, the final income they get may be less than half, and the remaining part has to be shared with the institution. At this stage, MCN becomes the first "harvester" between creators and the market.

As content competition becomes increasingly fierce, creators will soon find that traffic is not easily accessible. Third - party data shows that in 2023, the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of short - drama advertising was only 50 to 80 yuan. In 2025, due to intensified competition, it soared to 150 to 200 yuan, and exceeded 300 yuan during peak hours, with the cost doubling. In the past two years, the supply of content has increased, but the traffic has reached its peak. Platform advertising has become a greater cost, forming a second layer of exploitation. And the short - drama content form often needs to directly reach social media users, which puts individual creators under the pressure of advertising costs again.

This has become a common phenomenon observed by practitioners: Nowadays, short - drama companies are largely working for platforms. What short - drama companies ultimately produce is not the content that best meets user needs, but the content that best conforms to the platform's algorithm logic.

After the emergence of AI tools, creators then face a third layer of cost pressure. Currently, the application of AI in short dramas has covered from script creation, picture rendering to editing, subtitle translation, and even channel placement. In the initial stage, in order to increase the number of users, tool platforms often use a free or subsidized model to attract creators. However, with the commercialization of tool platforms themselves, creators have to pay costs at each stage, and the profits of individual creators are "siphoned off" again.

Some industry insiders said in an interview with the media that although AI short dramas have reduced the original production cost, the computing power cost of the model alone accounts for half of the total cost.

Under the triple squeeze of MCN, platform algorithms, and tool service providers, most long - tail creators have become contributors to the interests of "others", and the income distribution mechanism is out of balance. In the long run, the short - drama creation ecosystem will also be damaged.

The overseas track of AI short dramas is getting hotter and hotter, and the industry is sending out signals waiting for structural changes.

New possibilities for "one - person wealth creation"

Similar to the development process of every industry, when the old order urgently needs to be broken, new entrants often change the situation in unexpected ways.

72 hours after the launch of the YourChannel platform, the revenue of the short drama "The Persian Revenge" attracted industry attention. This 5 - episode short drama independently completed by a Chinese creator attracted the willingness of overseas users to pay with its dramatic conflicts, high - density reversals, and unique visual style.

The core breakthroughs in achieving such results lie in two points: on the basis of no team collaboration, "The Persian Revenge" achieved "one - person production" using AI tools. Observing the YourChannel platform, it can be found that the AI tools in its background have covered from script creation to post - production editing and placement. The application of AI tools makes one - person creation possible.

Secondly, the popularity of short dramas depends on traffic distribution. In the case of "The Persian Revenge", the creator can bypass traditional intermediate links and directly reach the market. This also benefits from the distribution model and distribution network adopted by YourChannel. After helping creators distribute short - drama content to overseas platforms, creators can still get a 90% share of the revenue.

"The Persian Revenge" demonstrates the one - person AI productivity in the current era. Its greater significance lies in verifying the feasibility of the "de - institutionalized" model, that is, creators can bypass traditional intermediate links and directly contact the market, thus maximizing their own income.

The emergence of this successful case is by no means accidental.

Different from other platforms, the path that YC is practicing is a "de - institutionalized" narrative. Currently, YourChannel mainly helps creators maximize their income in three ways. First, the platform helps AI creators distribute their works at home and abroad. Content distribution covers its own YourChannel, as well as overseas social media such as X, Facebook, and TikTok.

Secondly, the platform supports creators to upload 3 - episode content for market testing, which is convenient for creators to adjust their creation direction in a timely manner and judge the value of the content.

Finally, and also the most direct factor determining the creator's income: YourChannel adopts a dynamic profit - sharing mechanism. When creators distribute independently without introducing platform resources, the platform provides a high - proportion share of nearly 90%, maximizing the "retention" of user payments. It is understood that if the platform intervenes in distribution or advertising support in the subsequent stage, the relevant costs will be deducted from the total income before distribution, and the profit - sharing ratio will be adjusted accordingly.

In terms of customer acquisition and monetization models, creators can independently attract traffic to YourChannel through media channels such as X, Facebook, and TikTok, as well as private domain channels.

YourChannel's exploration of this model is inseparable from the rapidly changing industry background: the emergence of Seedance at the beginning of the year has reduced the cost of producing short dramas, and both production capacity and the number of creators will explode. In this situation, the pain point of the industry lies in how to distribute good content and monetize it. And the cost threshold of public - domain advertising often blocks good content out.

Generally speaking, AI has reduced the production cost of content, but not the customer - acquisition cost of creators. What YourChannel is doing is to let creators enter the market with their own traffic instead of buying traffic.

Breaking it down, YourChannel is achieving breakthroughs in distribution logic and tool chains. On the one hand, YourChannel conducts distribution logic with "people" as the core. When users browse the home page of YourChannel, they will find that the Creator channel of the platform is placed in the primary position. After clicking, users will see the channel pages of different creators. The works are placed first. After clicking in, users will see the channel pages of individual creators. The episodes are listed under the creator's name, and users can directly pay for the works.

On the other hand, YourChannel also solves the problems of equal creation rights and income at the tool level. From the official website information, it provides a full - link tool of "integration of production and sales" from AI editing, drama selection to automated distribution, supporting creators to customize prices and unlocking rules. This set of tools includes "Wisdom Eye" for disassembling popular videos, "Creativity" for automatically generating storyboard scripts and promotional copywriting, "Multilingual" for supporting original sound reproduction and emotion - driven translation, "Skillful Hands" for providing intelligent editing and duplicate removal processing, and so on.

"The Persian Revenge" once again proves that the core value of AI tools is not to replace human creators, but to break the threshold barriers of the traditional film and television industry and make creation itself truly democratic. On this basis, creators still look forward to a brand - new platform that can not only lower the creation threshold but also break the traffic monopoly, directly reach the audience, and ultimately achieve income.

In fact, since the emergence of short dramas, many domestic and overseas platforms have been exploring different models.

Among them, Netflix, which focuses on long - form videos, adopts a subscription - based payment model without limiting the number of dramas watched. Platform members can watch TV dramas, theater movies, and self - produced dramas through a monthly - fee model. Similar to the field that YourChannel focuses on, emerging players such as ReelShort and FlexTV focus on vertical - screen short dramas, but these platforms are different in terms of characteristic categories, distribution, and profit - sharing ratios. OnlyFans, which also distributes content centered around creators, is more similar to YourChannel. Both encourage creators to directly reach C - end users, but this platform does not involve AI content production.

The biggest breakthrough of YourChannel is that it combines full - link AI creation, overseas traffic, and independent distribution for distribution, taking a different path in the overseas track. Regarding its own positioning, YourChannel emphasizes decentralization and is a "one - person content monetization platform" for a new generation of creators.

Creators call for pattern reshaping

The rise of "The Persian Revenge" is just the beginning. After the "AI + creation" ecosystem has developed to this stage, de - institutionalization is inevitable.

Since its establishment, YourChannel has been clear that what it does is not to compete with institutions but to reconstruct the ecological chain, making the existence of institutions "unnecessary".

In the current short - drama industry model, the profits of creators are taken away by the structure and platforms, but they have to rely on institutions and platforms. The core of solving this problem lies in returning value to creation and enabling creators to truly monetize overseas. Judging from what YourChannel has done, their goal may not be to let one creator earn 10 million, but to let 1000 creators earn 10,000.

To achieve this, the platform certainly also needs to achieve business - model sustainability.

Still taking YourChannel as an example, the core reason why the platform can maximize the profits of creators also lies in the exploration of a new profit model. In the traditional platform model, the popularity of short dramas depends on paid advertising, and the input - output ratio continues to decline, resulting in platform losses, and creators also find it difficult to make a profit through the content itself.

YourChannel adopts a three - layer funnel distribution model. In the first step, creators upload content to the platform to generate a unique link and then publish it on social media. Users can directly pay, and creators get 90% of the revenue. In the second step, the platform helps creators connect with influencer resources for distribution, expanding the reach of the content. In this process, creators can still get a partial share. Finally, for high - quality content, the platform provides advertising support to further amplify the value of the content.

However, only when the data performance of a work is good enough to verify the market demand will YourChannel use the distribution system to help creators with advertising - this ensures the autonomy of creators in terms of traffic and operation to a certain extent. At this level, YourChannel also forms a symbiotic rather than a purely competitive relationship with traffic platforms.

As the platform economy has developed to date, the importance of a healthy ecosystem is definitely greater than short - term profit - sharing, which has become a consensus among industry insiders.

In the past two years, AI short dramas have entered a "mad - dash stage". In 2024, the market scale of Chinese micro - short dramas reached 50.5 billion yuan, and it is expected to rise to 63.43 billion yuan in 2025. As of June 2025, the number of micro - short - drama users nationwide has reached 696 million, accounting for nearly 70% of the total number of netizens.

However, the old path of simply relying on paid advertising and advertising monetization is no longer sustainable. Industry data shows that the profit - sharing of leading overseas short - drama platforms is generally between 30% and 60%. Most of the revenue is used by platforms to cover advertising, operation, and technology costs, and the revenue truly belonging to creators is very limited.

This situation has made platforms gradually shift from the early "land - grabbing" traffic competition to the ecological co - construction centered around creators.

One phenomenon is that the profit - sharing ratio of leading platforms is tilting towards creators: Douyin offers a super - high profit - sharing ratio of 90% to 95% for comic dramas, and some IP adaptation projects can also get an additional 50% support; iQiyi's exclusive new - film membership profit - sharing ratio is as high as 100%; Bilibili's animation short - drama support plan offers a maximum profit - sharing ratio of 80% and covers 30% to 100% of the production cost.

The logic of the healthy development of platforms is becoming clearer: only by enabling creators to obtain real income and growth space in the ecosystem can platforms build an irreplaceable value barrier in the global content competition.

Recently, the official Douyin account of YourChannel released the "Million Incentive Plan" policy, further increasing the support. According to the work rating, creators can get a guaranteed amount ranging from 300 yuan to 10,000 yuan, plus a maximum 90% revenue share. Meeting the target playback volume and payment rate can also trigger additional rewards. According to the platform's disclosure, as of April 2026, more than 50,000 OPC creators have settled on the platform, with more than 100,000 content - copyrighted works covering more than 50 markets around the world.

Industry change is an irresistible trend. The emergence of YourChannel has shown the industry brand - new possibilities.

However, this path is not easy. In the overseas track of AI short dramas, large companies have already made in - depth layouts. At present, players like YourChannel have chosen a differentiated path, clarified their own positioning, and coexist with large companies rather than confront them head - on.

For any platform, as long as it can truly solve users' pain points, it can find its own position. And the emergence of more emerging models may provide a more sustainable survival path for creators and jointly build a prosperous short - drama ecosystem.