With 168M users, Hongguo is making micro-dramas a commerce channel

What happened If you still see micro-dramas as just another entertainment trend, China’s latest viewing figures may change your mind. According to QuestMobile, Hongguo, the micro-drama app owned by ByteDance, logged 168 million daily active users (DAUs) as of July 2026, up 107% year on year, excluding web and TV users. Over the same period, Tencent Video had about 50 million DAUs, iQiyi 45 million, and Youku and Mango TV roughly 30 million each. Combined, the four major long-form platforms reached about 155 million DAUs, meaning Hongguo alone surpassed them all. For readers outside China, the comparison matters. Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku, and Mango TV have long been the country’s main destinations for television dramas, variety shows, films, and other mass entertainment. For years, many of China’s biggest hit series have been built around these platforms. Hongguo has taken a very different route. Its core offering is micro-dramas: episodes that often run for only a few minutes, packed with rapid twists and cliffhangers that keep viewers watching. Unlike traditional TV, which demands 30 minutes or an hour of attention, the format fits neatly into commutes, lunch breaks, and other gaps in the working day. That a platform built primarily around micro-dramas now has more DAUs than China’s four biggest long-form video platforms combined marks a significant shift. Micro-dramas can no longer be treated simply as an add-on to traditional screen entertainment. They are becoming one of the dominant ways Chinese consumers entertain themselves online. The Jing Take: A different way to watch This shift is already playing out in the daily lives of ordinary consumers. Li Yu, who works in advertising in Guangzhou, told Jing Daily that more people around her are using Hongguo to watch micro-dramas in their spare time. “Sometimes I’m too tired after work to sit through a full television episode, so I’ll just watch a few whenever I have a spare moment. Each episode is short, but the plot moves so quickly that it’s easy to keep going,” she says. Jacky Chen, who works in law, has recently turned to Hongguo for AI-generated micro-dramas. One draw, he shared, is that much of the content is free to watch, unlike long-form video platforms, which typically require a subscription. He also finds AI dramas more experimental in their subjects and plots. “Some of the stories are more imaginative, and they’re willing to go further,” he adds. From Li Yu’s habit of watching in spare moments to Chen’s preference for free content and less conventional plots, Hongguo’s growth points to a broader shift: Chinese consumers are not simply moving from long-form to short-form content but reallocating their leisure time. Lower time commitments, fewer paywalls, and plots designed to trigger “just one more episode” allow micro-dramas to fill the gaps of time that long-form videos struggle to occupy. Closing the viewing-to-buying gap For brands, the bigger opportunity is that attention captured by micro-dramas does not necessarily end when the episode does. Hongguo sits inside ByteDance’s wider ecosystem, which also includes Douyin, the company’s mature short-video, livestreaming, and interest-based commerce platform. Recommendation algorithms have long been one of ByteDance’s core strengths; the platform constantly reads signals such as viewing time, clicks, interactions, and purchases, then uses them to decide what a user sees next. That capability is now extending into Hongguo’s micro-drama experience. A user may open the app simply to follow a series, but brand ads, product content, and livestream recommendations can appear between episodes. In a 100-episode drama with episodes of around one minute each, viewers may encounter a brief ad or livestream recommendation every few installments. Crucially, those commercial messages are not random. A user who regularly engages with maternal and baby products or has bought infant formula through Douyin livestreams may be more likely to encounter similar products while watching Hongguo. Someone who frequently buys fashion, footwear, or beauty products on Douyin may likewise see related livestreams and merchandise while following a drama. As one Hongguo user told Jing Daily, “One Friday night, I was watching a CEO-romance micro-drama on Hongguo, and the platform kept showing me MO&Co. livestreams. A lot of the clothes were heavily discounted — much more than I usually see in stores — so I bought four pieces in one go.” She ultimately returned all four items because she was unhappy with the quality, but the experience stayed with her. “I realized how addictive it can be to watch a drama and shop at the same time. You open the app just to watch something, but once you see the discount, it’s very easy to buy on impulse.” Traditionally, television, variety shows, advertising, and shopping were largely separate experiences. A consumer might finish watching something, then decide whether to search for a brand, open an e-commerce app, or enter a livestream. There was still distance between seeing and buying. Hongguo is trying to compress that distance. Users no longer have to finish being entertained before entering a shopping environment. They can move into a livestream or encounter a product tailored to their interests while the story’s emotional momentum is still intact. Micro-dramas hold attention, algorithms identify intent, and livestreaming captures the transaction. Behaviors that once sat apart are beginning to form one continuous chain. Timing the purchase That changes what brands are competing for. Previously, the key questions brands had to ask were where an ad appeared and how many people it reached. On Hongguo, when it appears may matter just as much as where. Users do not open the micro-drama app with a clear intention to shop. They encounter commercial content while being entertained by a story. More than just exposure, brands are competing for the moments when attention is most concentrated and viewers are least inclined to look away. For fashion, beauty, jewelry, and lifestyle brands, a new commercial content environment is taking shape. The challenge is no longer simply to reach consumers but to earn a place within their entertainment time, from identifying products suited to immediate discovery to turning interest into purchase without disrupting the viewing experience. Hongguo’s rise is worth watching because it shows what happens when micro-dramas, algorithms, and livestreaming are folded into the same content system: entertainment can become part of the path to purchase. Brands may soon be competing not only for consumers’ wallets but also for the few minutes of attention already captured by the content, where interest can turn into a transaction at any moment.

With 168M users, Hongguo is making micro-dramas a commerce channel

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back

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With 168M users, Hongguo is making micro-dramas a commerce channel

How 2026 welcomed ‘Too Cool’ back