Beyond Views:
The Metrics That Will Define the Next Growth Phase of Verticals 

As micro-drama expands across APAC, Europe, and North America, one challenge continues to surface among platforms, investors, producers, and advertisers alike: the absence of a common language for evaluating success.

While audience growth and view counts have dominated headlines, the industry's next stage of maturity will depend on understanding a far more important set of questions. How efficiently does micro-drama generate revenue? Which audiences are most valuable? How do viewing behaviours differ across demographics and regions? What constitutes a commercially successful title? And perhaps most importantly, what benchmarks should guide investment decisions?

China remains the world's most mature micro-drama market and therefore offers the most reliable preview of how international markets may evolve. As the sector increasingly shifts from experimentation to scalable business models, the following data begins to reveal the metrics that matter most.

Monetisation Efficiency: The Economics Behind the View

China's micro-drama market is projected to reach RMB100 billion by 2025, according to DataEye, with free-to-watch content expected to account for RMB53.3 billion of total industry revenue.

This shift reflects a broader transformation across the sector, where monetisation is no longer dependent solely on paid user acquisition but increasingly combines advertising, subscriptions, and hybrid revenue streams.

ARPU: Understanding User Value

Monthly Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) provides one of the clearest indicators of platform efficiency.

Industry-wide, ARPU currently ranges between RMB35 and RMB50 per month. Leading platforms such as Hongguo and Douyin achieve higher averages of RMB45–60, while advertising-supported (IAA) platforms typically generate RMB15–25 per user.

The implication is significant. While audience scale remains important, the ability to maximise value per viewer is becoming an increasingly important competitive advantage.

Revenue Per Minute Watched

Perhaps one of the industry's most under-discussed metrics is revenue generated per minute of viewing.

Industry averages currently range between RMB0.8 and RMB1.5 per minute watched. Premium-performing titles can exceed RMB2 per minute through a combination of subscription spending and advertising monetisation.

For investors and producers, this metric may ultimately prove more valuable than raw view counts, as it directly measures the economic productivity of audience attention.

Conversion: The Industry's Critical Bottleneck

Despite the rapid growth of paid content models, conversion from free viewing to paid consumption remains relatively low.

Most In-App Purchase (IAP) titles convert between 3% and 5% of users into paying customers. Premium-performing titles can achieve conversion rates between 10% and 15%, highlighting the importance of stronger storytelling, audience targeting, and retention design.

Interestingly, the advertising-supported model tells a different story. Between 40% and 60% of viewers are willing to watch a 15- to 30-second advertisement to unlock additional episodes, suggesting that audiences may increasingly prefer trading attention rather than cash.

Three Business Models, Three Strategic Outcomes

The Chinese market has largely consolidated around three monetisation approaches.

• Monthly Subscription (IAP by Month) generates the highest retention levels and strongest ARPU performance. However, user acquisition remains challenging and is heavily dependent on traffic from major ecosystems such as Douyin and OTT platforms.

• Episode-Based Purchasing (IAP by Episode) delivers stronger revenue acceleration and remains popular among highly addictive, twist-driven content. The trade-off is its dependence on advertising expenditure, which can account for as much as 60% of total revenue.

• Advertising-Supported Viewing (IAA) has emerged as the fastest-growing segment of the market in 2025. Particularly effective for low- and medium-budget productions, the model offers lower ARPU but significantly broader audience accessibility.

Perhaps most notably, revenue contribution across the market now follows a clear hierarchy: IAA > IAP by Episode > IAP by Month

The finding challenges the assumption that direct payment models will dominate the future of micro-drama.

In Part 3, we explore the question that may ultimately matter most: is China exporting a new content format—or a new business model for entertainment itself? As micro-drama expands beyond its domestic origins, its influence is increasingly being felt across content strategy, platform economics, advertising, intellectual property development, and the monetisation of audience attention worldwide.