The duel between foreign and local network service providers over the mobile advertising market, which will be worth KRW1 trillion in 2015, has already begun in earnest.
Facebook Korea (CEO Cho Yong-beom) recently held a meeting, and announced that it would start advertising marketing for small and medium-sized enterprises next year. To this end, the company is planning to prepare a separate window for domestic advertisers early next year, and start selling it. As the domestic advertising marketing is still in its infancy, now the focus is on connecting the link.
Kim Gi-yeong, director in charge of SMB Marketing, Facebook Korea SMB Marketing, said, “Facebook has 1.35 billion monthly active users (MAU) around the world, and 1.12 billion people use their Facebook on their mobile devices.” They account for 83% of all monthly active users. “The mobile Facebook allows target marketing based on personal information,” he added. “We are planning to further reinforce our activities for SMEs next year.”
Facebook is not the only company interested in the domestic mobile advertising market. Not only Naver and Daum-Kakao, but also Google and several SNS startups joined the bandwagon, and the market competition is forecast to further intensify.
Naver held a marketing event for 1,000 advertisers on November 22.
At this event, Naver introduced a search technology-based advertising product and mobile search advertising. It also released a mobile business support platform and payment service for offline operators too.
“Advertising and shopping are so important contents that 40% of Naver searches are search words related to commerce,” said a Naver insider. “We applied the search technology that understands users` mind to advertising as well.”
Daum-Kakao is aiming at the advertising market with mobile platforms like Kakao Talk and Kakao Pay and Daum search. Daum-Kakao generated KRW17.6 trillion in sales until Q3 with Kakao only, e.g. Plus Friend, B2B emoticons, Kakao Talk PC and Kakao Story advertising. This figure is expected to be much bigger next year. The influence of the mobile platform will grow sharply and the No. 1 messenger company is highly likely to benefit the most.
“Next year the entire domestic information device search and display advertising market will be worth about KRW2.67 trillion,” said Gong Yeong-gyu, senior researcher, Shinhan Investment Corp. “PC advertising will slow down, but mobile advertising will continue to grow, and next year the mobile advertising market will grow by 40% over this year to more than KRW1 trillion.”
Lee Kyeong-min | kmlee@etnews.com
