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MPA unveils new research on the success of K-content
Mumbai: New research prepared by Frontier Economics on behalf of the Motion Picture Association credits the South Korean government’s supportive policy environment and proactive efforts in copyright protection as key factors behind the growth and success of K-content. The MPA released the Frontier Economics report yesterday at an invitation-only event – Secrets of Success: the K-Power Story – during the 29th Busan International Film Festival.
K-Content has become a cultural phenomenon, known as the “Korean Wave” (Hallyu), that is fueling South Korea’s rise as a global cultural powerhouse. Korean dramas, films and webtoons have gained massive followings around the world, generating an economic boon for the country and increasing Korea’s soft power exponentially.
The report confirms the premise that sales of Korean content around the world drive Korea’s exports. In 2021, content sector exports reached USD12.4 billion (KRW16.0 trillion), and, recognising this success, the ministry of culture, sports and tourism has set a goal to double Korean cultural exports by 2027.
Noticeably, the role of international VOD services has been critical to K-content exports. Frontier Economics highlights that 60 per cent of Netflix global subscribers have seen at least one Korean title. K-content’s popularity drives demand for online services in the Asia Pacific region: nearly 50 per cent of audience time spent on subscription VOD services in Asia Pacific involves watching Korean content.
Opening the forum, MPA president & managing director Asia Pacific Belinda Lui said, “The success of the K-content industry is not accidental. It stems from a combination of creative genius, the freedom to tell stories and smart government action. Action in the form of a policy framework that encourages investment supports world-class production and backs development in talent and infrastructure. What comes next for the sector requires an informed conversation, and Frontier Economics’ findings provide a valuable contribution to that debate.”
Film critic Yoon Sung-eun moderated a dynamic panel session featuring prominent executives from the film, television and streaming industry.
“The arrival of streaming services in Korea over the last five to eight years refocused the Korean government on the importance of the screen sector”, said Kim Jong Hak Production CEO Sohn Gi-won. “The spotlight shone brightly on the industry and a wide range of funding was made available to smaller production companies.”
Detailing some of the smart governance implemented over several decades, Film Business Division, Korean Film Council, director Kim Hyun-soo said, “Financial support ramped up in the 1990s. New SMEs started to invest in film and television. Following the Asian economic crisis, the government realized that more investment was required to stimulate the business. They introduced the idea of project financing. CGV and Lotte started to build multiplexes. These companies also invested in films to screen in their theatres. What is most important is that new films were funded through government agencies. With this injection of investment, screenwriters and directors entered the market. In summary, deregulation fundamentally contributed to positive developments from the government and private sectors.”
Proposing what the Korean industry might consider as the next phase of its development, Schuyler Weiss, producer of the Academy Award-nominated film Elvis, said, “Opening up the Korean market to international production will benefit the entire Korean entertainment ecosystem and the local economy will profit. Korea has so much to gain from more collaboration with producers from around the world.”
SLL Central team leader Seong Won-young added, “In the future, it would be good to see a higher proportion of non-scripted content – in the entertainment or sports sectors – shows like Chef in Black and White or Strongest Baseball, produced by Netflix, for example. In other words, I believe we need to diversify the portfolio in addition to series content.”
The Motion Picture Association has partnered with the Busan International Film Festival for more than a decade. This year, the association is hosting the second annual MPA x KOFIC American Film Night, the MPA Chanel x BIFF Asian Film Academy Workshop: Bridge to Hollywood, and a feature film pitch competition in partnership with the Korean Academy of Film Arts.
View and download Frontier Economics Policy + The Rise of K-Content 2024 here.
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How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
