The volume of materials has surged by 324%, the social media sector is on the rise, and is the dividend of short drama's overseas expansion beginning to shift?

In 2026, "going global" has become a new boom in the short drama industry, with the concentrated release of AI-generated drama production capacity and continuous increased investment from platforms. However, the most notable point of short dramas going global today is not the rapid expansion of the market, but a quietly occurring change.

The market size is huge, but the dividend is shifting.

I. The Dividend Shift of Short Dramas Going Global

First look at the overall market structure, the "DataEye 2026 H1 Overseas Short Drama and AI Drama Data Report" shows that the market size of overseas micro short dramas is expected to exceed 6 billion U.S. dollars in 2026, a 50% increase from 4 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Of this total, 3 billion U.S. dollars is the market size on the APP side, and 1.8 billion U.S. dollars is the size on the social media side represented by TikTok.

It is worth mentioning that the social media side is the fastest growing part this year. Taking TikTok as an example, in January this year, the official disclosed the revenue-sharing data for short dramas for the first time: the single-month revenue sharing in January reached 7 million U.S. dollars. By the second half of the year, the latest data shows that the revenue sharing amount of short dramas on the TikTok platform in August this year has reached 31 million U.S. dollars (equivalent to more than 200 million RMB), with a growth rate of 342.86%.

Then look at the supply side, benefiting from the accelerated industrialization of AI short dramas and comic dramas, the overseas market size of AI dramas and comic dramas in 2026 is expected to exceed 4 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for nearly 70% of the overall overseas market. The content supply structure of short dramas going global has shifted from focusing on live-action shooting to taking AI dramas as the core.

Then look at the traffic investment side, the data from the above report shows that in the first half of this year, the number of overseas micro short drama delivery materials reached 19.61 million groups, a year-on-year increase of 324%, but the download volume in the same period only increased by 79% year-on-year.

The growth rate of the number of delivery materials is about 4 times that of the download volume, and about 6 times the estimated annual market size growth rate. This gap does not mean that the delivery is invalid, but it can be seen that in the environment of continuous expansion of content supply, shorter material life cycle and expanding material volume, the marginal efficiency of traffic investment is declining. Therefore, how to spend the budget correctly, make good materials, and improve the traffic investment effect is changing from a plus point to a passing standard.

This is exactly the structural shift of the short drama going global dividend: the industry has entered a new stage from "producing dramas and selling them out" to "buying the right traffic and doing a good job in operation". At this stage, the demand for professional advertising marketing services for traffic investment and user acquisition has been forcibly pulled out.

II. How to Seize the Dividend?

The importance of traffic investment and user acquisition continues to highlight, how can enterprises in each link seize this wave of dividend?

DataEye Research Institute believes that advertising marketing services do not necessarily need to start from short drama production or self-operated distribution, as the natures of the two capabilities are different.

First of all, let's talk about an easily overlooked premise: content production, distribution, marketing and delivery are different capability requirements in the short drama going global chain. Producing dramas relies on content capabilities, market judgment and production capacity management; distributing dramas to various markets relies on channels and copyright; marketing and traffic investment relies on operation capabilities and material production capabilities.

Therefore, a team that can continuously produce hit dramas may not be able to build a stable and efficient delivery system; conversely, a team that focuses on traffic investment may not be able to judge what kind of dramas the current market needs.

This confirms what was mentioned above: when AI flattens the threshold of the content side, the advantages of the supply side are diluted and the efficiency gap of the traffic investment side is enlarged, the market dividend shifts from the content side to the operation side, and advertising marketing services become the most easily transferable entry in the industry resources.

Therefore, no matter the enterprises in the short drama industry or the enterprises outside the industry that want to enter the short drama going global track, the key to getting this wave of dividend is not to redo the content from scratch, but to measure the existing resources in hand and how to transfer them to the marketing and delivery side.

Specifically, for teams with customer resources, they have gone through the customer development stage and know what kind of services customers of different types need, which exactly corresponds to the front-end demand of advertising services, that is, where customers come from. What they need to supplement is only the capability on the delivery side, so as to precipitate data performance and market feedback in their own hands.

For teams with content and material capabilities and industry understanding, these resources are closest to the delivery side, and are also the most direct link that affects the effect of advertising marketing. The understanding of the industry, market and users can also help guide the production of traffic investment materials. Such teams often have more advantages in migrating to the marketing and delivery side.

For teams with overseas delivery and marketing experience, they have practical traffic investment experience, know account construction and delivery rhythm, and what they may lack is only the cognition and understanding of the micro short drama industry. The core of such teams is how to migrate the delivery experience of other industries to the micro short drama track.

III. How to Connect Your Own Resources with Marketing Business?

At present, the demand in the short drama going global track is concentrated on the marketing and delivery side, while the capabilities of enterprises that want to enter the market are scattered in all parts of the industrial chain. How to connect their own resources with marketing business?

What is missing in the middle is the layer that connects capabilities and demands.

How much imagination does this layer have? The previous market structure has given the answer: in the expected 6 billion U.S. dollars market size in 2026, the APP side accounts for half, and the social media side represented by TikTok accounts for 1.8 billion U.S. dollars. The traditional APP link and the social media in-site link have formed parallel bearing capabilities, and social media is the fastest growing end.

When the scale of short drama operation on the platform expands at such a speed, who will help the content side invest the budget correctly becomes particularly important.

The product evolution on the platform side is also making this matter more specific. Taking TikTok as an example, the in-site link of the platform has been divided into two paths: one is released in native form through the Drama Center, and the other is carried in the form of TikTok Minis mini-programs. The continuous evolution of the two links makes the delivery scenarios and conversion links of short drama advertisements more mature. Since this year, the revenue sharing amount of short dramas on the TikTok platform has also been continuously increasing.

According to the data released by TikTok for Business, the overlap rate between users reached by the in-site link and users reached by the APP link is very low, and the proportion of incremental converted users exceeds 40%.

This once again proves one thing: when there are more marketing links, the decision-making complexity of short drama delivery is also increasing, and the value of professional marketing and traffic investment service capabilities also rises accordingly.

Therefore, when the platform lays out the links and runs through the revenue sharing mechanism, who will undertake this layer of services in the middle has become a new industry proposition. For enterprises that already have customer resources, material capabilities or overseas delivery experience, the question is not whether to enter, but which link of this layer their own resources can match.

IV. What Value Does This Layer of Service Create Exactly?

To answer this question, let's first look at what value the marketing service layer creates.

The first layer is customer connection. At present, the short drama going global market is hot, so there is no shortage of customers. What is missing is how to better connect customers. For content providers, the biggest cost of selecting partners is the judgment cost: whether a delivery team is reliable often requires real money to test before it can be known. This is why platform-side service provider certification has become a common trust medium in the industry. Passing the certification means that the delivery capability has been verified by the platform side once, which can greatly reduce the communication cost between both parties.

The second layer is marketing services. The real difficulty of short drama delivery is never spending money, but how to spend money more effectively and turn the budget into effective exposure and conversion as much as possible. What kind of materials have better conversion? What kind of delivery forms are suitable for dramas of different themes? Which one is more suitable, native in-app or mini-program? The value of service providers is to reduce the decision-making cost of customers, and at the same time make customers willing to pay for the effect.

The third layer is operation delivery. Marketing and delivery is not a one-time business. The final delivery effect determines whether customers can recognize the service and stay for a long time. Relying on these three progressive layers, the business can grow along with the delivery scale of customers.

Of course, this path also has thresholds. The platform-side cooperation system is not a channel that can realize monetization as soon as you get the identity. It requires enterprises to have corresponding professional capabilities and meet the access and review requirements. But for enterprises with customers, materials or delivery experience, the logic of this path is valid: first have the capability to undertake, then achieve business growth.

V. After the Dividend Shift, the Competition Focus Has Changed

Looking back at the full text, three numbers constitute the coordinates of this shift: in the 6 billion U.S. dollars overall market, the social media side already accounts for 1.8 billion U.S. dollars; TikTok's monthly revenue sharing has risen from 7 million U.S. dollars to 31 million U.S. dollars; the number of delivery materials has increased by 324%, while the download volume has only increased by 79%.

The first two figures show that there are more traffic entrances, and the third figure shows that the volume that can be purchased with the same budget is decreasing. The combination of the three points to the same conclusion: short dramas going global have entered the operation-driven second half from the content-driven first half. The first half is about who can produce dramas, and the second half is about who can calculate the efficiency of every dollar of budget clearly.

This puts different requirements on two types of players in the industry. For content providers, production capability is no longer a moat. How to convert content capability into sustainable delivery efficiency is the next watershed; for service providers, the opportunity is not to produce dramas by themselves, but to connect any one of customer resources, material capabilities and delivery experience to this growing marketing link.

Dividends will not disappear, they will only shift to another position. Whether you can catch them depends on how fast your existing resources can be migrated.