Short-form, vertical video has moved far beyond TikTok and Instagram. It’s now reshaping how audiences discover, consume, and connect with content in streaming platforms. Whether it’s professionally curated highlight reels, scripted microdramas, or user-generated clips, these formats are rewriting engagement rules.

According to INMA’s 2025 social media trends report, Gen Z viewers now spend more time watching vertical reels than traditional horizontal videos (inma.org). It’s not just about shorter attention spans, it’s about fitting into everyday life: a quick episode during a commute, a football highlight reel at lunch, or a clipped scene from your favourite comedy show before bed.

Different Forms of Vertical Video

• Scripted Microdramas (Duanju) – Bite-sized series with 1–2 minute episodes, often with dozens of installments. Originating in China, they’re becoming a global phenomenon. (We’ll dive deeper in our upcoming blog on microdramas.)
  
• Curated Highlight Reels – The funniest lines from a comedy, the key plays from a match, or iconic scenes from a film. These give older or niche content new life and make discovery engaging.
  
• User-Generated Reels – Authentic clips created by fans or audiences, building community and extending engagement beyond professional productions.
  
• Discovery Feeds – TikTok-style swipeable feeds designed for discovery. Netflix has started testing this scrolling behaviour in its mobile app, not vertical video itself, but the familiar feed mechanic designed to keep users exploring. (techcrunch.com)

The Shift in Viewing Habits

ReelShort, DramaBox, My Drama and Vigloo owes their massive viewership to the appeal of these “micro-dramas”. But the nascent success of their shows is just the beginning of a worldwide consumption shift. Crazy Maple Studio’s (who are behind ReelShort) CEO Joey Jia believes that seconds-long, vertical video dramas will be the future of entertainment.

This shift is now being echoed by major global platforms: Disney+ has announced plans to introduce a TikTok-style vertical video feed, blending short-form clips with its premium content to boost daily engagement and attract mobile-first audiences. Analysts also suggest Netflix’s experiments with a scrolling mobile feed could become a key way to attract younger subscribers while lowering acquisition costs. In Asia, Astro’s streaming platform sooka has launched a dedicated microdrama feature, investing in locally produced, short-form scripted series to capture viewers’ shrinking attention spans and growing appetite for snackable storytelling.

It’s a sign of the times that competition is heating up, and audiences are increasingly choosing instant entertainment, driving a shift away from purely traditional watching habits. Beyond scripted microdramas, curated reels and UGC are becoming essential tools in the streaming media space. With the right strategy and framework, user-generated content can add authenticity, strengthen community, and even feed back into a platform’s marketing library.

What the Future Holds

Short-form content in streaming platforms is moving from experimentation to infrastructure. It will become an integral layer of how platforms structure discovery, retention, and monetisation. Vertical feeds will become the first point of contact for users (in a lot of cases this is already evident), offering faster paths into content and more frequent engagement.

Microdramas will continue to grow, but the real shift will be in how they’re distributed. Rather than living in standalone apps, short scripted content is being absorbed into broader streaming media ecosystems, bundled with premium libraries, telco services, and ad-supported tiers. 

Sustainability will depend less on content volume and more on efficient discovery and seamless conversion into long-form viewing.

Monetisation will also evolve beyond simple ad insertion. Expect more hybrid models combining free sampling, sponsorship-led vertical formats, premium bundles, and targeted advertising within scrollable feeds. Short-form will increasingly function as a revenue engine that supports, rather than competes with, long-form programming.

Sports and live content are likely to accelerate this shift. Highlights, key moments, and real-time vertical clips already drive some of the strongest engagement in streaming, and platforms are using them to funnel users toward live matches, replays, and subscription upgrades.

In the next industry phase, success won’t be defined by who has the most short-form content, but by who uses it with intent, designing vertical video experiences to guide discovery, reinforce brand identity, and turn quick views into meaningful platform engagement.

How DIAGNAL Powers Reels and UGC

For streaming platforms, the challenge isn’t deciding to add short-form, it’s building and maintaining the infrastructure to make it work at scale quickly. That means managing uploads, rights, metadata, moderation, and delivery through one connected system.

DIAGNAL’s Enhance Shorts → Enlight Shorts workflow is built to do exactly that.

Surface short form content through pre-built ready to launch workflows

• Curated reels – Operators upload/ingest clips into Enhance CMS, link them to parent assets where needed, and publish. Enlight Apps can surface these reels across the apps discovery methods such as; the main navigation, dynamic rails, and detail pages to support discovery and engagement.
  
• UGC reels – Users can record content directly in-app via the Enlight SDK. Reels flow into Enhance CMS, where automated and/or manual checks and moderation tools ensure compliance before anything gets published.

Scale your operations with intelligent tech

• Scalable metadata enrichment – AI-driven auto-tagging and enrichment workflows make short-form content easier to find through search and recommendations, improving both discovery and relevance.
  
• Intelligent video transcoding – Content-aware encoding and bitrate optimisation generate multiple renditions tuned specifically for short-form viewing, ensuring fast loading and consistent quality across devices.
• Adaptive streaming optimisation – From deep player-level performance tuning to network-aware multi-CDN orchestration, DIAGNAL’s proprietary technology delivers sub-2-second startup times across diverse devices and operating systems.

By tightly connecting ingestion, moderation, metadata, and playback, DIAGNAL ensures short-form is a seamless, scalable part of the OTT experience.

At DIAGNAL, our mission is to deliver awesome experiences for our customers and to continuously develop ourselves. We have a strong commitment to efficiency, trust, and flexibility, and work with major media companies around the world, including Celestial Tiger Entertainment, Intigral, LoungesTV, Optus Sport, WRC Promoter, and more. 

To find out more about how we can help, please reach out to us.