Insightrackr has released the January 2025 Global Short Drama App Download and Revenue Rankings based on its monitoring data of the global mobile market.
The rankings are sorted according to the app downloads and overall revenue calculated by Insightrackr, presenting the Top 15 Short Drama Apps by Downloads and Top 15 Short Drama Apps by Revenues. It also dissects the advertising and creative strategies of the popular cases in January.
Top 15 Short Drama Apps by Downloads
According to Insightrackr's data, among the Top 15 short drama apps by downloads in January 2025, 13 apps saw a MoM increase in downloads, indicating that the growth momentum remains strong.
DramaReels, ranked 4th, and RapidTV, ranked 12th, stood out in particular, achieving astonishing MoM growth rates of 561.99% and 5021.29% respectively in January.
In addition to DramaReels, another short drama app by Skywork AI under Kunlun Tech, DramaWave, also ranked 6th in downloads for January, making Kunlun Tech the only developer with two short drama apps in the Top 15.
On the other hand, ShortMax by Jiuzhou Culture saw a 9.34% MoM decrease in downloads, but still maintained its position at 3rd place in the rankings due to its large downloads.
Another app with a decrease in downloads was Sereal+ by COL, with a drop of over 20%, resulting in an 8-rank decline.
Top 15 Short Drama Apps by Revenues
In terms of revenue, ReelShort and DramaBox continued to hold the top two positions.
StardustTV and DramaWave performed impressively, with their revenues increasing by 41.53% and 56.14% respectively in January.
DramaReels achieved the fastest revenue growth among the Top 15 apps with a 597.96% MoM increase.
Short Drama Advertising Case Analysis
01 DramaReels (FreeReels)
Launched in December last year, DramaReels is issued by Skywork AI under Kunlun Tech, known as FreeReels on Google Play.
Another short drama app issued by Skywork AI earlier, DramaWave, had previously topped the Insightrackr monthly short drama app download and revenue rankings multiple times.
Insightrackr's monitoring data shows that the number of active ad creatives for DramaReels significantly increased from the end of December, with a second rise in mid-January, peaking at over 1200 active creatives per day, before gradually declining at the end of January.
Unlike DramaWave, which follows a paid model, DramaReels focuses on a free model. Therefore, Southeast Asia, represented by Indonesia with relatively lower CPI, has become a major target market for DramaReels.
From the download and revenue estimation data, Indonesia is the largest download source and the second-largest revenue source for DramaReels.
Accordingly, the ad creatives of DramaReels not only feature Indonesian subtitles and dubbing but also undergo many localization treatments.
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Although it uses drama clips as ad creatives like most short drama apps, DramaReels also adds many dynamic texts to the video, such as "tanpa langganan, tanpa iklan, sepenuhnya gratis" (no subscription, no ads, completely free), to emphasize the free nature of the product.
The latter half of the creatives directly cuts into the in-app scenes, allowing users to quickly understand the app's features while also showcasing the rich collection of dramas.
02 DreameShort
Launched in 2023 by STARY, a top player in the web novel app industry with well-known novel apps such as Dreame, Innovel, and Sueñovela covering multiple markets globally, DreameShort brings STARY's strong copyright resource advantages to the short drama industry.
Insightrackr's data shows that DreameShort maintained a stable advertising rhythm for most of January, but saw an increase in the number of ad creatives in the last week of the month, with a peak of up to 2000 active creatives per day.
Looking at the regional distribution data for January, DreameShort's advertising mainly focused on Tier 1 countries in Europe and America. Moreover, over 30% of DreameShort's downloads and revenues came from the US market.
Therefore, the ad creatives of DreameShort were designed to cater to the preferences of American and European users. Several dramas that were heavily promoted in January with a large number of creatives include Runaway Billionaire Becomes My Groom, Got Pregnant With My ex-Boss's Baby, and My Wedding Day Fortune.
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Among these dramas, the number of locally produced dramas with American and European actors far exceeds that of translated Chinese dramas, and they mostly feature Romance, Flash Marriage, Mafia and Boss genres favored by female audiences in the West.
Additionally, through Insightrackr's creative group function, it can be seen that a considerable number of ad creatives are associated with landing pages corresponding to the drama themes, enhancing the ad experience for users.
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03 RapidTV
Launched on Google Play at the end of November last year by the developer account Kennedyy, RapidTV has now achieved downloads exceeding one million.
The data shows that in the last week of January, the number of active creatives for RapidTV quickly increased, reaching up to 300 per day, several times the previous amount.
In terms of regional distribution, the majority of RapidTV's ad creatives were targeted at the Southeast Asian and Latin American markets, which are also the main sources of its downloads.
The content of the creatives for RapidTV is basically translated Chinese drama clips.
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Similar to DramaReels, RapidTV also adds localized subtitles and AI dubbing, as well as eye-catching animation effects to these clips.
By extracting and translating the video dubbing copy through Insightrackr, it can be found that "free" is a common important selling point for this type of product, usually emphasized 4-5 times in the copy and dubbing of a single video.
That's the overview of the download, revenue, and advertising of global short drama apps in January 2025.
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