B (2:24)

To 300 just imagining like a thing that's the size of the Hadron Collider that just fires perfectly sanded stones onto a lake in Minnesota.

A (2:37)

It's the best thing to do, though. It's so relaxing.

C (2:39)

I imagine it'd be a lot easier to do with a subatomic particle than with a stone.

A (2:46)

Anyway, today's real topic, the great behind the numbers takeoff is back. Whether you like it or not, top trends to watch in 2026. All right, in today's episode, our takers or bakers, we'll be cooking up some top trends to watch in 2026. We have three rounds. If you watched the Great British Bake off, this is a complete rip off of that signature take is round one. Round two is the how or technically play out challenge, and round three is our show stopping argument. So let's meet the contestants predictions. So Max, in a sentence, first of all, just what is your prediction?

B (3:32)

That the microdrama craze will mint an entirely new generation of star creators in the United States.

A (3:40)

Okay. And Jacob, yours.

C (3:42)

Basically, that AI is making content creation really fast and cheap. And so just the takeover of AI generated content on the Internet is going to really shake the foundations of trust in digital content altogether.

A (3:57)

Okay, they are the predictions we have for you. Let's get into it. We start with round one, of course, which is the signature take, where our chefs will have one minute each to explain the premise of their trend. And so as Max said, he will be talking about how micro dramas and how that crazed woman. A new generation of creators with dual support from social networks and entertainment studios. It's one of the trends that you wrote about in our larger trends report. Max, tell us a bit more about this one.

B (4:28)

So to me, this is very simple, right? So there is a kind of perfect storm that has formed in the media and entertainment space that will allow for this to happen. And the thing that's really going to allow it to take off is a kind of anxiety in and among the social networks. Right. So according to our time spent with social networks forecast, time spent with social media peaked in 2025 and will flatline over the next two years. And it will actually begin declining among social media users starting in 2026.

A (5:09)

Wow.

B (5:09)

And with that, that will create a kind of panic is too strong a word. But it will compel the social networks to really just promote whatever is hot and do whatever they can to maximize the amount of time that their users spend on their platforms. And it just so happens that one of the things that is hottest at the moment in media and entertainment is microdramas, which are a content format that is almost perfectly designed to live on and get distributed through and promoted by social networks.

A (5:46)

And so I was looking up a definition of what this is. It's basically, and tell me, correct me if I'm wrong, it could be up to a 60 to 90 minute program that's like chopped up into one to three minute long installments that are viewed vertically on devices.

B (6:02)

Yeah, that's basically right. Picture a telenovela or a soap opera made for the person in your life with the worst attention deficit disorder you can imagine.

A (6:14)

And Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal was saying, the budget for some of these micro dramas, it can be a couple hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot less than the millions spent on films, but it's still a fair amount of money for this new format.

B (6:28)

It's relative to the amount of money that is spent on, you know, your typical creator post on. On Instagram or TikTok, it is more expensive. But for the entertainment studios who will, I think, play a pivotal role in this trend coming to life, that's a, that's chump change. You know, like you said, if you are a Universal or a Sony and you're used to spending, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a single movie, the idea that you could produce, you know, 100 of these shows for the same price and potentially, you know, drive an entirely or create an entirely new relationship with consumers you have tried to reach is probably quite intoxicating, which is a major reason why I am so bullish on this. This coming to life next year.

A (7:24)

Yeah. And Jacob, before we go to yours, I just want to. Because this is relatively new concepts for a lot of fol max the microdramas, they're viewed on dedicated apps, correct?

B (7:37)

That is correct. It is possible. One thing that I didn't get into in my prediction, because I think it's kind of an open question, is whether or not we will start to see more publishers try to create these shows and have them live on the social platforms. Right. Because there are. There is the possibility or the capability, I should say, on a TikTok, for example, to gate content behind a paywall and basically have TikTok native micro drama series take root as well. So at the moment, to your point, a lot of the consumption, excuse me, is happening on apps like reelshort. But I don't think we should, you know, discount the possibility that the platforms themselves might say, you know what, we actually would like all this to happen inside of our own walls and do whatever's necessary to. To make that happen.

A (8:35)

Yeah. All right, Jacob, let's go to you. AI's content takeover will shake consumer trust in the Internet. Is your trend or prediction for next year? Tell us.

C (8:45)

Yeah, I mean, it all started back in 2022 with ChatGPT's release. All of a sudden you could make write articles very quickly using AI. And a study from Graphite actually showed that now more than half of written articles online are AI generated. And so, and it's not just articles. It's now images, audio, video, all kinds of AI models now can produce content that you really can't tell the difference between human made and AI generated because it's so good. So it's not really a bad thing. It's actually kind of a good thing in terms of its effectiveness. But then you have a case where a situation where people then can't differentiate between the two. And so there's concerns about accuracy and misinformation and also just apathy. If you don't know if what you're viewing is AI generated or authentic, then it could make people question or real content too. They might think that real content is actually fake. And all this has led to a bit of a backlash among consumers. You have major brands now like Heineken, Polaroid, Cadbury that are now, you know, positioning their content as human made, almost kind of ascribing a premium label to human made content because they're rising concerns about all this proliferation of AI generated content.

A (10:18)

There's a really good quote that I heard about this which basically said, if you've not bothered to write it, why should I bother to read it? Right. If a human hasn't bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it? I guess my question is, will people be able to know unless these things are labeled? Because I read an Atlantic article and Charlie Warzel and he purposely wrote the first two paragraphs with AI because he was writing an article about AI writing for instead of people. And he wrote the first two with AI. And then in the start of the third one he said, oh, by the way, the first two is written using AI. And it wasn't until he told me that I got annoyed.

C (10:53)

Yeah, I mean, at first glance you really can't anymore. And so that's why we've seen the rise of these detectors. Right? But the detectors themselves can be fallible. They not always 100% accurate. I mean, I think there are certain cues that if you do a deeper dive, you can kind of figure out. AI text tends to be a bit repetitive. It sometimes uses. It's heavy on the abstract versus concrete language. Sometimes it kind of seems to miss the full context of the topic that's being discussed for images and video. Sometimes it kind of again looks realistic at first glance, but then something might seem off. And the reason why it seems off is because actually the scene doesn't follow the laws of physics. So there are ways to figure it out. And sometimes as AI gets better, there are instances where you really can't. But I think going back to what you originally said about someone saying that, or people have said that, if you don't take the time to write it, why should I read it? I think that there is a deeper human value here of valuing things that a person has put effort into, and that's where the meaning comes from. Not just, you know, the content itself, not that the words itself, the scene itself, but knowing that there was human ingenuity there that someone can relate to is a huge part of art and content creation.

A (12:25)

Yeah. So when I see someone playing the violin, I just have this deep, profound respect for how much effort has gone into getting to that point, which, as a human, I can understand what another human went through to get there. So, yeah, I like that take. All right, gents, let's move to round two. It's the how it would technically play out challenge. Our chefs will explain in more detail how they expect the trend to manifest itself. So we. We move back to micro dramas with max 2026. Max. How is this trend play out next year?

B (12:58)

So I think, you know, I mentioned before that there's kind of a few unknowns here, like whether or not the platforms will, you know, do what they can to make sure that this is all happening natively. But even if. If that never come, if that doesn't, you know, factor in and it just turns into a bunch of upstart, you know, entertainment apps get traction, or seek to get traction with American consumers. The social networks are already basically, like, perfectly designed to help promote and market this kind of entertainment. Right. So one of the things that I think is really interesting is that people think a lot about, you know, spending time on TikTok or Instagram and spending all that time looking at either content from their friends and family or content from creators, but a lot of people spend an awful lot of time actually just looking at clips of film and television. Right. So, um, we had some research that we did recently which found that 70% of TikTok users say they watch film or television clips on there at least weekly. 60% of Instagram users do. 55% of YouTube users do. So this is already a behavior that is basically, like, integral to the experience of using these apps, Right?

A (14:19)

Yeah.

B (14:19)

And because of that, and that has. That sort of primes the pump for this to take root in two ways. Right. The first is that it again, like, people are naturally kind of acclimated to the idea of watching scripted televisual content in These formats. And so if you're scrolling and you pass by a micro drama episode, I guess you're not going to go, this looks and sounds weird. I don't know if I want to engage with this. It's going to slide naturally into, you know, your smoothing brain while you do it. The other reason is that because people are acclimated to watching that content, advertisements featuring microdramas are much more likely to be received positively by the advertising services. And so it's very cost effective to advertise microdrama content inside of social networks. And the social networks, excuse me, the microdrama platforms already understand this, right? So Sensor Tower came out with some research at the end of last year which found that more than two thirds of the ad spending that microdrama apps do goes towards social networks. Right. So they already instinctively understand that these are natural platforms for this. So I think that's really what you're going to see first is just like a ton more spending on these social networks to drive awareness, downloads, subscriptions and views frankly of all this content.

C (15:44)

Hmm. It's almost like CTV meets social media in a way.

B (15:48)

Yeah, that's a really nice comparison actually. And I think that one of the things that's going to be really interesting to watch is, you know, where the balance of creators come from because you know, Disney Held has a kind of accelerator program that they run every year for different businesses and they invited a couple of micro drama apps into that process last year. And it's, it's going to be interesting to watch whether the, the people who write and star in these things are, you know, folks that are sort of hanging on the periphery of the kind of legacy entertainment business or whether it will be more akin to the people who used things like YouTube or tick tock to build their own brands. People like Brian Jordan Alvarez who, you know, essentially created tech English teacher and built his own brand through, through TikTok, or you know, Alana Glaser and Abby Jacobson who, you know, got famous with skits on YouTube. So it's going to be interesting to see sort of where that balance comes from. But the, the sort of fuel and promotion and awareness raising is all going to happen through social pipes.

A (17:00)

Fascinating. Is this going to become a big trend and if it is, the where, you know, where is this going to live? There was an interesting note from Bernstein media analyst Laurent Yoon who is saying that the growing popularity of the genre of many these micro dramas is a potential threat to long form players such as Netflix. Max, I'm wondering If you agree with that, and whether Netflix sees this and says, well, you know, maybe we'll try to host some of this, this very tiny short form or cut up into short pieces content.

B (17:36)

Oh, they're gonna get, they'll get into it if they see a sufficient amount of momentum building behind it. I mean, you know, Netflix just spent a bunch of time and energy trying to, you know, find space for video podcasts on its platform. Right. I mean, yes, podcasting is as far from, you know, scripted long form entertainment as you can get, really. And yet, you know, TikTok, I'm sorry. Netflix has always been very clear eyed about the way that the digital economy works. Right. You know, in their estimation, anything that takes time away from people sitting on their phones or on their couches watching Netflix is an, an opponent to be dealt with. And so if micro dramas really do start to take off, they will absolutely find a way to shoehorn them onto their app because they have the cash, they have the subscriber base, and they have the, the resources to do it.

A (18:31)

Yeah, yeah. The famous Reed Hastings quote, the founder and CEO for a long time of Netflix Sleep is the biggest competitor for us.

B (18:39)

I was reaching for it in my head. I couldn't get there, but that's exactly what I was thinking of. Yeah, that's right.

C (18:43)

My guess here is that there must be a generational angle to this microdrama trend in terms of certain demographics really embracing it and maybe others not.

B (18:54)

It's absolutely a thing that's overindexed among a couple of generations. But I think as I was reading up on this, it reminded me a lot of a story I wrote many years ago when I was a media reporter about K dramas, which are essentially like Korean soap operas. And they Drama Fever, which is kind of the largest purveyor of those in the United States, held a kind of like Oscars type ceremony for it in New York City, and I attended it. And I showed up at this theater in midtown kind of expecting just a bunch of tweens. And I was shocked by how heterogeneous the audience was. I spent probably like two hours talking to this woman who had spent, I think it was like $2,000 on a VIP ticket. This is a woman who works as an asset manager at Deutsche bank, who's from New Jersey, who doesn't speak a word of Korean, but she would like, you know, wait up overnight to watch episodes as they were uploaded to Drama Fever because of the time difference. And she would watch them before they had added the subtitles. Because she was, that was how obsessed she was with them. Wow. So I bring all that up. Not to say that, you know, there are middle aged female asset managers at financial institutions already really obsessed with this, but just to say that when it comes to entertainment formats, they have a way of kind of breaking out of their expected, you know, demographic groups in a way that's really surprising. And because of how widespread and how easily content can travel on the, on the social web, I think that it's, we're poised to see a similar thing happen with micro dramas.

A (20:42)

There is one data point on the generational piece I found in terms of microdramas growing in popularity. This is from digital media trends from the fall of this year of 2025. And they asked a bunch of questions, but two that stood out. How much would you like to see more micro series content on a subscription video on demand platform that you subscribe to? And are you watching more micro series content now than you did a year ago? Gen Z about 42%, 44%. Millennials, 50%, basically, so more gen X about 30 to 35% and boomers about 24%. So decent shares for all of those microservice content is more compelling than user generated content was a question. And about 40% of younger people, about 2010 to 20% of older folks. So small samples here in terms of the sample size of a study, but higher shares than you might expect already. All right, let's move to Jacob, to your prediction trend for next year. AI's content takeover will shake consumer trust in the Internet. How does this play out in 2026?

C (21:47)

Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see just a lot of controversy play out in 2026, especially with midterm elections coming in the US and concerns about political deep fakes, which we've already seen it. But as AI adoption continues, and especially now with these video generators producing very seemingly authentic content, I think it's going to be a big deal in terms of just sparking controversy. And of course we're see sort of a patchwork of state laws around these types of things emerge in the US and so there's just not a lot of clarity. But I think there are multiple dynamics going on at once. I mean, there are, you know, I think when people know that they're consuming AI generated content, when it's labeled, the reactions can often be positive. I think there's still a novelty factor going on here. People find that, you know, the technological capabilities are impressive. I mean, Sora too, you know, initially got had stronger initial adoption than ChatGPT did. So there are some positive reactions here. But I think things get murkier when people don't know or they're not sure if they're consuming content that's human generated or AI generated. So far, in terms of AI generated ads, the studies are pretty mixed in terms of how effective they are. But going back to what we were talking about earlier, I think historically the point of content creation period is for humans to communicate with other humans. I think the solution to all this is really not to. I mean, AI is here to stay. And of course it can do for content creation. It can do lots of things that people can't do, such as creating personalized ads at scale, for example. And just the speed and efficiency, of course means it's here to stay. I think the problem is when you try and fully automate the creative process, when creativity is just something that is fundamentally human. And so there's some examples of success stories that I think offer a positive tale, I guess, in terms of what's possible. For example, Laser Eye center saw a twofold increase in performance of its ads. AI generated ads over traditional ads. But the key thing was that it wasn't fully automated. There were humans creators working alongside the AI. Then you have another example where an ad agency, episode four, created an AI tool that intentionally creates pretty outlandish hallucinations. And the point is that then humans work with those hallucinations to come up with content that is really outside the box and really novel. So there are some really good use cases to AI and content creation. I think again, the key is that it goes well when there is a human in the loop or even a human directing it.

B (24:46)

How much do you think that we're going to see sort of platform platforms step their efforts up to either rein this in or label. I mean, one thing that I, I thought was so striking was how Quickly Pinterest and TikTok both introduced tools that allow you to effectively like limit the amount of AI generated content you see when you open their apps.

C (25:12)

I do think so. And that's part of the whole controversy issue, is that people don't like AI when it's forced on them. And I think we've seen that with examples from Meta's platforms and Snap as well. Snapchat. So yeah, and I'm glad you brought up the TikTok example because it shows that there's demand for being able to control what kind of content you're getting. And in this case it's AI versus human generated, the issue might come in where the detection tools are imperfect. And so while TikTok might give you this feature to control the amount of AI in your feed, I think we can expect that some of the content, especially as AI advances, is going to slip through the cracks. Even though I think these tools are necessary and that they help at the end of the day because of how good AI has gotten at content creation and multimodal content creation especially, there's this trust issue that's still going to be at play because how do you know for sure that what you're, what you're, you're consuming is authentic, even though these tools are there? Right.

A (26:21)

So yeah, yeah, looking at the content share for a second, the chart that you mentioned earlier from graphite and I wonder if we can throw it up on the screen here. Basically looking at how much new English language, how many new English language articles there are and as you explained before, it's basically hardly anything. And then ChatGPT gets launched and it goes up and to the right. But what's interesting about it for me is that the share, it seems like it's kind of flatlined. It's kind of gotten to about 50% of new English language articles. Being that being published online. Coming from AI, do you see this going all the way up to like closer to the 90 to 95, closer to 100% of the content we consume, whether it's written, whether it's video, whether it's images, is going to be AI generated?

C (27:08)

You know, it's hard to say. 90% would be really high and I think there certainly have been some fears that that's going to happen. I don't think it's imminent. And there was some little tapering off that we saw on the graphite data, but that was more month to month. I think the trend line is still heading upwards. So I think it's, I don't think it's, we're plateauing. I think it's going to increase whether it's articles or video or you know, images. I don't think it's also going to, just going to skyrocket to 90% either. Okay. Because of the backlash that we're seeing, people are now placing a premium on human made content. In addition to the fact that you have this issue where, you know, AI is still largely trained on Internet data and if it's AI generated data that it's getting trained on, then that actually can reduce the quality of the models. So you still, there still is a need for human creativity to Kind of refresh the entire cycle.

A (28:15)

Yeah. All right, gents, let's move to round three. It's time for our show stopping arguments. Our chefs will pull out their best closing arguments as to why their trend, their prediction is most likely to happen. Max, why micro dramas more likely to happen than Jacob's prediction?

B (28:35)

So I think that the best thing that I can point to is something that, as I mentioned at the top of the episode is really just such an unbelievable kind of rarity, which is the entertainment industry and the social media industry sort of being aligned around a shared set of interests, Right? So, you know, you think about the social platforms want you to spend all of your time, you know, gazing into their feeds, watching stuff that lives natively on their platforms, consuming content that's very short, that's highly shareable, that's, you know, mobile native. And up until quite recently, entertainment companies have wanted the exact opposite, right? They've wanted you to get off your butt and go to a movie theater or to put your phone down and watch something on a television, something that is likely to be, you know, between 30 and 90 minutes depending on, you know, what you're, what you're interested in. And there's just been a kind of unbridgeable gap between those two things. But in the micro drama, you have a thing that essentially brings both sides interests together, where you have something that is premium and scripted and, you know, potentially driving of subscription revenue, and you have something that is also, you know, mobile, optimized, snackable. I hate that word, but you know what I mean, very short in duration. And so with both, I guess, kind of camps driving at the same thing, it just seems like as sure a thing as you could get that there's going to be more, you know, oxygen given to this format. And in the process, a new generation of creators and celebrities will kind of blossom as a result.

A (30:32)

Jacob, why do you think AI's content takeover shaking consumer trust is more likely than micro drama craze taking off in 2026?

C (30:40)

Well, I think there's just two things. I mean, the allure of AI is powerful. I mean, it's impressive. It can cut production costs, it's fast, you can scale it much more than you can with a human team. So unfortunately, there's a bit of a race to the bottom in terms of just churning out AI generated content instead of what would be better. And that's trying to leverage AI's capabilities to just make content better, which again involves human collaboration. But I think the trust issue again is eventually the novelty of AI's capabilities is going to wear off. I think we're already seeing some signs of that. And what you're left is with this, you know, you're left with this enduring reality that people are just really drawn to storytelling that they can relate to emotionally. And AI is really good at replicating that. And we can expect that it's going to get better at replicating that. But at the end of the day, it's never going to have subjective human experience, which is what people are really wanting when they consume content.

A (31:45)

Well, that's. We've got time for this episode. We, of course, have to crown a winner before the very end of the episode. And I think today's winner, in terms of most likely, it has to be Jacob's prediction. I think Jacob's so, Max, I think yours is most interesting because it's so new and there's so many ways to go. Jacob, I think yours is most likely Max. I'll give you the last word here because something I didn't get a chance to get to during the episode, but I wanted to ask you about, which was the, as this Wall Street Journal article calls it, notorious flop in recent history is Quibi, right? The short form video streaming service popped up during the pandemic, disappeared within the year, almost pretty much. Why will this not be another Quibi moment?

C (32:31)

So.

B (32:34)

As they say in, in entertainment and everywhere else, timing is everything. There was actually, I don't want to be too glib about this. What there were a lot of problems with Quibi, including the fact that they didn't really, I think, have a really strong sense of, you know, what made short form content compelling. It was just. They just decided they were going to make short form content. And in a lot of cases, what they would. What they would do because Jeffrey Katzenberg had so much money to throw around is a lot of kind of showrunners and screenwriters and film producers took stuff that they couldn't get made in a traditional format and said, let me figure out how to shove this into inside of a mobile phone. And so the content just wasn't that good. And. But what we have fast forward now, I can't believe it's just been five years. That's completely crazy. But you fast forward five years, and what we have now is an entire generation of people who are used to consuming content that is much shorter. They are used to spending much more time on their phones. And frankly, also, I mean, the other sort of simple answer is that there's a template, right? I mean, the micro Dramas didn't kind of materialize out of thin air in the US they are an immensely popular content format in China. And, and so there is kind of a playbook that can be looked to. And it's, you know, obviously important to underscore that Chinese and American consumers are different. You know, in China, for example, live stream shopping is outrageously popular, and it has up until quite recently been not popular at all in the United States. But in, in looking at the kind of, you know, corpus of shows that have succeeded in China, American creators can a kind of get a sense of what works, why it works. They can study it, they can think it through, and that will give them an opportunity to, you know, figure out what will work. I will also say too, that like the definition of success in media and entertainment is, is changing all the time. I, I think I joked with you in the, in the run up to deciding whether you were going to feature me on this episode that I think something like 30 million people watch micro dramas in the United States right now. And that's about the same number of people as practice archery on a regular basis, which, you know, is an important thing to remember. And then you think back to the fact that there were shows that got canceled from network television in the 90s because only 25 million people were watching them every week. And so if the, if the entertainment and social media, you know, dual industrial complexes can turn micro dramas into something that, you know, 85 million Americans watch every every month, I think that would qualify as a, as a pretty significant success. Even though, you know, a media executive who had his heyday in the 90s would say that that's completely insane.

A (35:37)

Yeah, there's certainly a blueprint, as you mentioned, in terms of China and you write in our report in China, where revenues will surpass domestic box office receipts in 2025 in terms of microdrama, money versus video market estimated to be $8 billion according to media Partners Asia. Sorry. According to industry analysts and Media Partners Asia expects annual microdrama. Almost all of that is in China. Media Partners Asia expects annual microdrama revenue to cross the $25 billion mark worldwide by 2018. 30. All right, gents, that's what we've got time for for today's episode. If you want, for listeners, if you want the. The full report, these two reports live within major 2026 trends. Plug Press subscribers can head to eMaster.com to read the full report called Top Trends to watch in 2026. From the next AI ad revolution to retails loyalty reset 11 trends that will shape the digital landscape in the coming year. The link is in the show notes, of course. That's what we've got time for. Thank you, Max, for hanging out.

B (36:37)

Always a pleasure, Marcus. Thank you.

A (36:38)

Thank you to Jacob.

C (36:40)

Thanks so much, Marcus. Been a pleasure.

A (36:42)

And thank you to the whole production crew. Thanks everyone for listening to behind the Numbers new market video podcast made possible by viasat ads. We'll be back on Monday with some very specific but highly unlikely predictions for next year. Happiest of weekends.