Mumbai: The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD) has announced a strategic partnership with DramaBox, becoming the first-ever demand-side platform (DSP) partner for the vertical short drama platform. The collaboration enables advertisers to programmatically integrate this emerging content format into their omnichannel media strategies across global markets.
The partnership comes at a time when the open internet is witnessing rapid evolution, with newer content formats reshaping how audiences consume media. Short drama, a mobile-first format that originated in Asia, has quickly gained global traction due to its alignment with fragmented viewing habits. Consumed in short bursts, it complements long-form formats such as connected TV (CTV), offering advertisers new ways to engage audiences across multiple touchpoints.
According to industry estimates, the global short drama app market is expected to generate $3 billion in revenue in 2025, with the top 20 apps reaching a combined 250 million monthly active users. Markets such as the U.S., Latin America, and Southeast Asia are emerging as key growth drivers, underlining the format’s expanding global footprint.
Through this partnership, The Trade Desk integrates short drama inventory into its unified programmatic ecosystem, enabling advertisers to plan, manage, and optimise campaigns across CTV, mobile, and other premium open internet environments within a single platform. This approach aims to enhance cross-channel consistency while improving efficiency and measurable outcomes.
“Short drama has become a powerful new growth engine for the global open internet digital content market,” said Wang Hefei, Head of Commercial at DramaBox. “As a leading global platform, DramaBox is committed not only to delivering high-quality short-form content to users worldwide but also to exploring sustainable monetization paths. We have chosen programmatic advertising—particularly our partnership with The Trade Desk—because of its proven global infrastructure and capabilities within the open internet ecosystem. This allows us to explore a monetization approach that is scalable, measurable, and capable of delivering real value to advertisers.”
Douglas Choy, General Manager of Inventory Development, North Asia, The Trade Desk, added, “As a new complement to the open internet, short drama—through its short duration and serialized storytelling—not only meets consumers’ fragmented viewing needs, but also provides advertisers with a high-value environment combining scale and frequency. When combined with other premium open internet content such as CTV, it further strengthens brand storytelling continuity across environments. Through this partnership with DramaBox, we look forward to helping advertisers allocate budgets more efficiently into this fast-growing content environment and unlock the full value of the open internet across channels.”
