YouTube says microdramas passed 6.5bn views in the first half.

YouTube says serialised microdramas on Shorts passed 6.5 billion views in the first half of 2026, with watch time up more than 50% year on year. It plans to make members-only episodes easier to buy on mobile in the coming weeks.

The figures come from a YouTube blog post published on 27 October. YouTube says microdrama-related views rose more than 70% year on year across Asia-Pacific markets, where creators such as Japan's GOKKO CLUB and India's Shorts Break write multi-part stories told in scenes of around 60 seconds. It also says 40% of views and 30% of clicks on these episodes came more than 30 days after a video went live, so early episodes keep earning ad revenue long after release.

The monetisation change builds on Shorts series, announced at Made on YouTube in September, which lets creators group Shorts into seasons and episodes with custom thumbnails and sequential playback. The coming update will let a viewer join a channel membership from inside the series to keep watching the next members-only episode. YouTube also points to multi-language audio tracks, AI-made subtitles and localised metadata as the tools that let a series shot in Tokyo or Seoul reach viewers in Brazil without dubbing costs.

YouTube has not said when the membership change will reach every market, how revenue from members-only episodes will be split, or how much of the 6.5 billion views came from outside Asia-Pacific. Rivals are moving too: TikTok launched branded microdramas in June and Snapchat has published its own research on the format.

For brands in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, microdramas offer a way into long-running, episodic stories without commissioning a full series. YouTube's own case study notes GOKKO CLUB makes branded short dramas for large companies, a model local creators and agencies can copy in Arabic, with the auto-translation tools helping a Saudi-made series travel across the region.