Digital Advertising
South Korea’s digital advertising spending showed a two-digit growth in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. The personal computer (PC) advertisement market shrunk, while the mobile and video ad market expanded.
Naver still has an overwhelming portion of PC display ads (DAs) and mobile DAs but YouTube and Facebook have well over half of portion of video ads.
According to a “2017 Industry Analysis Report” released by CJ E&M Mezzomedia on August 3, the total domestic digital advertising spending amounted to 608.6 billion won (US$539.3 million) in the first half of this year, up 19 percent from 512.5 billion won (US$454.51 million) at the same period last year.
By ad type, the share of PC DAs in the ad market decreased from 46 percent last year to 39 percent this year, while the share of mobile and video DAs increased from 26 percent and 28 percent to 28 percent to 33 percent, respectively.
By media, Naver had the highest advertising revenues in the PC DA sector with a large gap with other media. The company’s PC DA revenues in the first half of the year stood at 110.76 billion won (US$98.15 million), accounting for 46 percent of the total, followed by Daum with 50.6 billion won (US$44.84 million), or 21 percent, and Nate with 26.7 billion won (US$23.66 million), or 11 percent. In addition, Zum and YouTube recorded an advertising revenue of 41.4 billion won (US$3.67 million) and 41.1 billion won (US$3.64 million), respectively, making a breakthrough.
Naver also put up a good show in the mobile DA sector. The nation's largest search engine raked in 40.3 billion won (US$35.71 million) in the mobile DA sector in the first half of this year, taking up 24 percent of the entire market. AdMob and Cauly also earned revenues of 19.4 billion won (US$17.19 million) and 19 billion won (US$16.84 million), accounting for 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
Naver had the highest share of the PC and mobile DA market, while Google and YouTube had an overwhelming share of the video DA market.
YouTube earned 74.17 billion won (US$65.72 million) in the first half of this year, making up 37 percent of the total domestic video ad market. Facebook saw its shares significantly increase from 24 percent to 31 percent on-year, recording video ad sales of 62.26 billion won (US$55.17 million). The combined share of the two companies totaled 68 percent.
On the other hand, Naver had video ad sales of 23.85 billion won (US$21.13 million), accounting for 12 percent of the total, followed by Daum with 16.88 billion won (US$14.96 million), GOMTV with 7.37 billion won (US$6.53 million), imbc with 4.5 billion won (US$3.99 million) and SBS with 3.58 billion won (US$3.17 million).