Young People Use YouTube as Search Channel
Google's YouTube is threatening not only Korean players in the video media market but also those in the Internet search market, which had been dominated by Naver. As YouTube has become a black hole that absorbs the Korean Internet and mobile markets as well as the media market, Korean internet companies such as Naver and Kakao are losing ground.
KT Group's digital media rep, Nas Media, analyzed service use behaviors and ad acceptance behaviors of PC and mobile Internet users in Korea. The results of the analysis showed that 60 percent of them answered that they use YouTube for information search. This means that YouTube's influence has expanded from video content to search services.
In particular, seven out of 10 teenagers said that they used YouTube as their search channel. This indicates that the use of YouTube as a search channel is expanding among the younger generation in Korea.
The results also showed that 92.4 percent of Korean Internet users use Naver as their search channel. However, Naver’s position is threatened by YouTube, which is becoming increasingly popular as a search service among young people. In addition to the internet video market, YouTube has been stealing the show in the Korean Internet and mobile contents market from Korean companies.
YouTube accounted for 86 percent of the aggregate use time of all Google Play apps in Korea in November of 2018, according to Wiseapp, an application market research company. A total of 31.22 million people used YouTube for a total of 31.7 billion minutes. This means that Koreans watched YouTube content for about four hours (237 minutes) per person a week on average. On the other hand, domestic video companies such as Oksusu, TikTok, U+ Mobile TV (formerly U+ Video Portal) and Naver TV recorded meager shares.