For years, the industry has treated vertical video like the awkward cousin at the family reunion. Many media executives nod politely toward TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels while keeping their real budgets and their real attention on longer-form horizontal content. It’s been dismissed as a distraction, a Gen Z fad, a place for dances and not much else. That posture is getting harder to defend by the week.
Just last week, I made the case that Facebook needs to be on every video creator’s radar because the ad dollars flowing through the platform are real and growing. This week, the case gets bigger. Vertical video isn’t a side hustle anymore. It’s becoming the main event, and the numbers back that up.
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Take Hernan Lopez’s word. He knows this space better than most people in media today.
The Man Behind the Numbers
Lopez isn’t some outside observer guessing at trends. He founded Wondery, built it into one of podcasting’s most successful studios, and sold it to Amazon in 2020. These days he runs Owl & Co and the Vertical Index, and he’s spending his time tracking exactly the kind of shift creators and publishers can’t afford to ignore. His comments here come from a conversation with Amplifi Media’s Steven Goldenstein, one of the sharpest analysts working in podcasting and digital media today.
And when someone with that résumé starts talking about vertical video in terms of tens of billions of dollars, people should listen.
According to Lopez, the growth curve is steep and it’s not slowing down. “Excluding China, (vertical video) is on track to hit $150 billion in 2026, up from $106 billion,” he told Goldenstein. Forget incremental growth. That’s a category exploding in real time.
Lopez was also careful to clarify where that money is actually coming from. “One thing to be clear about that figure: the vast majority of it is advertising on Meta and TikTok, not the buzzy corner everyone fixates on,” he said.
So while creators chase viral moments, the bigger story is happening in the ad infrastructure quietly humming underneath the platforms everyone already uses.
Beyond Dance Trends and Stitches
What’s most interesting, though, isn’t just the revenue. It’s what’s actually being built in the vertical format now. Vertical video has outgrown its early reputation, and the range of content proves it. “We’re already seeing vertical comedy, vertical news, vertical sports, vertical live shopping,” Lopez said. “The Emmy-nominated show Subway Takes is essentially a vertical podcast that happens to live on Instagram. There’s even scripted vertical comedy now, a show called Roomies, native to Instagram, that plays like an early creator version of Friends built for the vertical medium. Peacock is testing vertical NBA content. Whatnot, a live-shopping app worth $11 billion, launched vertical-native instead of retrofitting the old QVC model.”
Read that list again. An Emmy-nominated show. A scripted comedy drawing Friends comparisons. A major sports league testing content formats. An $11 billion company building vertical-first instead of adapting something old. This isn’t a niche corner of the internet anymore — it’s where legitimate, well-funded media businesses are placing their bets.
$150 billion in revenue this year is a massive jump from last year, and nobody needs a crystal ball to guess that number keeps climbing in 2027. Meanwhile, discovery has always been podcasting’s toughest hurdle, and short-form vertical content has quietly become one of the most effective tools for solving it. Shows that struggle to get found in a crowded podcast app can find new audiences through a fifteen-second clip that hits the right algorithm at the right moment.
So no, vertical video isn’t just for teenagers filming trends in their bedrooms anymore. It’s carrying comedy, sports, news, live shopping, and scripted entertainment, and it’s doing it at a scale that traditional media companies can’t dismiss any longer. Creators who keep treating it as an afterthought are leaving both money and audience on the table.
Vertical video deserves a spot at your content table. Make space for it, because it’s not waiting around for anyone’s permission.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.