AVOD player Canela Media is expanding efforts to get in on the microdrama trend, announcing a new free app named Zully that’s launching this fall dedicated to the bite-sized vertical video series format.
The company unveiled plans for Zully this week during its Upfront presentation for brands and ad buyers.
It marks a strengthened step by Canela on the microseries front, having already started testing the serialized, ultra-short episode format last year with what it called Canelitas that are available on its Canela.TV service.
However, Zully is a distinct effort. During Canela’s Upfront luncheon Monday, CEO and co-founder Isabel Rafferty-Zavala likened the app to the little sister of its flagship Canela.TV AVOD service.
With Zully, Rafferty-Zavala said the company knows younger generations are consuming vertical video on mobile and Canela is going after one of the biggest industries of the moment. She cited an $11 billion market for microseries and noted consumers are spending around $20 per week watching this bite-sized serialized content format.
But Canela doesn’t intend to charge for Zully, instead it will be a fully free ad-supported offering.
Per Rafferty-Zavala, microseries on Zully will feature around 30 episodes, with each episode running about 2-5 minutes. The app is expected to launch this fall with over 50 original series, including a blend AI-powered and live action vertical video microdramas for mobile.
And it intends to produce around 30 microseries per month, “so a lot of fresh content,” she noted.
Although there will be so-called AI-enabled series, the CEO emphasized that there will always be a human in the loop, while also saying it provides opportunities for diverse storytellers and voices to create microseries.
Canela, which counts 60 million monthly active users across its ecosystem (including Canela.TV, FAST channels and social), said the content and experience will be designed for discovery, sharing and binge-viewing.
It plans for Zully to be a global platform with “Latinos at the front and center,” Rafferty-Zavala commented, adding “drama is in our DNA.”
The company is also looking to cater to what it boasts as Canela’s younger and diverse audience base, among which 78% are bilingual, three-fourths are between 18-34 years old and 67% watch content in Spanish.
To that end, Canela said Zully microseries will be English-first, but all content will also be available in Spanish.
And with Upfronts focused on capturing advertiser and buyer interest and ad spend, Zully promises to offer custom branded micronovellas, as well as product and other ad integrations, alongside 100% share of voice for brands. Microseries campaigns will also be amplified across Zully, social video and YouTube.
StreamTV spoke with Canela Global President Philippe Guelton last December about the Canelitas microseries plans, which at the time he said was poised to expand in 2026.
That effort involved both reformatting long-form library content as well as plans for original series. Canelitas also utilizes AI – not for generating content but to assist in splicing 60-90-minute shows and films down into a 3-4 min episodes verticalized for mobile.
With cultural roots in content like telenovelas that are high on drama, Canela feels well suited for Zully to serve up microdramas – which often end episodes on cliffhangers or high-intensity plot moments to encourage and entice viewers to swipe to the next one.
"Zully is a natural extension of everything we've built at Canela Media over the past seven years. We've spent years deeply understanding how audiences express culture, move across platforms, and connect with stories, insights rooted in our leadership in the U.S. Hispanic market, where younger, diverse viewers are shaping what drama looks like for everyone,” said Rafferty-Zavala in a statement. “Zully is backed by that experience, combining our storytelling knowhow, audience intelligence, and advanced AI workflows for content creation and distribution scale to introduce a new platform that will bring innovation to how micro-series are developed and served to today's drama lovers."
Canela isn’t the only one looking to tap into the microseries trend.
Last week RoseBerry Media formed as a studio (with plans for a forthcoming DTC app) dedicated to verticalizing and reformatting long-form content from players like All3Media, Banijay, Fremantle, Cineflix, A+E and others into mobile-first microseries. RoseBerry is looking to offer microseries that come in on the premium end, in contrast to the arguably lower-quality, ultra-soapy, and often salacious content and storylines offered by popular existing microdrama apps like those seen on China-based ReelShort, for example.
TelevisaUnivsion has also tested microdramas for its Spanish-language streamer ViX.
And NBCUniversal is getting in on the bite-sized vertical video format. It plans to launch the first Bravo “unscripted microdramas” with two originals debuting on Peacock this summer featuring Bravo personalities. Announced as part of NBCU’s Upfront slate, the shows are expected to have about 60 episodes, with each running an ultra-quick 60-90 seconds.