📱 The New Wave of Vertical Series in MENA

Nov 26, 2025

∙ Paid

Hey streamers,

Today we’re talking about Vertical Series in MENA 👇

Vertical series are growing fast worldwide.

And now we’re seeing the first signs of this trend in our region too. Two local apps launched this year. Scene and Tesliya.

They are still new. They are still small.

But they give us the first real idea of how vertical series apps could grow in MENA.

📱 Top Vertical Series Apps in MENA: How Saudi entered the global top 10 and which apps are leading the charts.
🆚 Scene & Tesliya: Two new local platforms with very different strategies.
💡 So What? Why vertical series matter and what the local players should do next.

I went to Dubai International Content Market earlier this month. And like almost every media event today, there was a panel about micro drama ;)

Rising Joy shared some interesting numbers. One of them shows something important. MENA is now joining the vertical series wave.

A lot changed between Q4 2024 and Q3 2025 outside China.

Let’s start with downloads:

The US used to be the country with the most downloads of vertical series apps. But 3 countries passed it in 2025.
India moved from #6 to #1. It now has more than double the downloads of Indonesia, which is #2. Brazil stays #3.
And here is the big point. Saudi Arabia is now in the global top 10. It reached 4.7M downloads in Q3 2025.

If we look at in-app purchase revenue, it’s a different story:

Now let’s look at Saudi Arabia and see which streaming and vertical series apps are at the top:

This post is for paid subscribers