Let’s go vertical, vertical 🤸🏻♀️ Sounds familiar? Don’t blame me, blame Olivia Newton John for that newsletter intro or blame the non stop headlines on what became THE industry trend of 2026.
It indeed feels like every major broadcaster or streamer’s mobile app now has a vertical feed, is in the process of rolling out a vertical feed, or has announced plans to do so soon.
To clarify, by “vertical feed,” I mean a swipe-able, full-screen stream of short clips built into the streamer or broadcaster’s own app. The vertical content is typically re-cut/verticalized long form content on the app designed to lead users to bookmark, share and watch the full movie or series within that same app.
By mimicking dedicated social media apps from TikTok, Instagram Reels to YouTube Shorts, or even standalone micro drama apps like ReelShort and DramaBox, streamers and broadcasters hope that they can claim a piece of that scrolling action. Their vertical feeds ultimately need to drive engagement, promote existing content and keep users on the app a bit longer. For them, the vertical feed is more about discovery than endless scrolling.
Who’s doing it? Is that working? Do viewers embrace these feeds? To what end? Full transparency, we don’t know, well I don’t know as no public data was released as far as I could find. In an unexpected, yet perfect timing, Bango did release today the results of a US survey trying to answer just that.
Which apps have vertical feeds
It’s only recently that global streamers have started launching vertical feeds, but several European broadcasters incorporated vertical feeds into their apps years ago (yes we did it first, not so boomer of us right?!). First, BBC News launched a curated vertical newsfeed back in November 2016.
And France’s M6+ was later, but still two years ahead of the curve. M6+ included its vertical feed “M6+ Stories” in the app’s initial launch in May 2024.
Arte followed a year and a half later with its “Shorts” feed in October, 2025.
Only in 2026 did the global giants start following suit in part due to the relentless growth of social video and the buzzy micro drama trend (a whole different ball game, one I hope most of you won’t follow blindly due to the ill conceived business model it runs on, a topic for a future edition of Streaming Made Easy).
So when did global players pull the trigger on vertical:
Disney+ launched “Verts” (sorry Disney that’s a boomer name for vertical content) in the US in March;
Paramount “Clips,” Netflix “Clips,” and Peacock’s vertical feed all launched in April;
BBC launched “Shorts” feeds on BBC Sports and updated BBC News’s feed throughout June;
HBO Max Shorts launched at the end of July.
P.S: Did your app launch a vertical feed? Hit reply and tell me about it. I’ll add you to this visual.
