The Korean startup monopolizing the largest platform market
The ‘Creator Economy’, in which content creators can earn money with their own content, is playing a central role in bringing the initiative to the creator, leaving behind the platform-led era. As the competition between platforms intensifies, creators no longer have to rely on a single platform. The most efficient way for creators to increase revenue is to implement the ‘One Source Multi Use (OSMU)’ strategy and distribute content on more platforms.
Industry insiders all agree that in order to maximize the effectiveness of the OSMU strategy, global channels must be operated. It is a methodology to expand the influence of creators by exposing content to as many users as possible. It is the exact same reason that ‘Pinkfong’ currently operates more than 15 separate channels in different languages(11 million in Korean, 10 million in Spanish, etc.) around the world, including an English channel with 65 million subscribers. In YouTube by country, India has the most users with about 460 million, followed by the United States (240 million) and Indonesia (130 million).
A Korean startup monopolizing the world’s largest platform market
adoba first paid attention to the scale of the Chinese platform market. China has the largest market in the online video platform industry. There are countless platforms such as ‘Douyin’ with 700 million users and ‘Kuaishou’ with 500 million users. The user base of a single platform easily supercedes India, which has the most YouTube users.
adoba has partnered with 12 major platforms in China, securing a market of about 4.8 billion in terms of the number of users. It is the largest single-language group in the world considering that the total number of users in the top 10 regions of YouTube is about 1.4 billion. Chinese content alone can target the 4.8 billion market. This is in contrast to YouTube, where content has to be reproduced in numerous languages including English, Spanish, Indonesian and so forth in order to utilize the OSMU strategy.
The reason why foreign creators have not been able to enter the Chinese platform market so far is the difficult procedures and document conditions. Since the service is operated exclusively for the domestic market, a Chinese ID and a local bank account are required respectively for channel opening profit settlement. adoba resolved those barriers through direct contracts with each platform and paved the way for creators to freely enter various Chinese platforms for the first time in the world.
As the Chinese market opened, creators began flocking to it. For three years, adoba focused on creator management services, increased exclusive creator partnerships in China, and accumulated know-how by experiencing Chinese platform operation practices. A total of 330 creators have opened more than 1,000 channels through adoba. They showed a growth rate of over 300% per month on Chinese platforms compared to existing YouTube channels. adoba’s Cross-Border solution was proving PMF (Product-Market-Fit).
Achieving cost efficiency by converting the cross-border solution into a SaaS platform
Based on 3 years of experience, adoba launched the creator cross-border SaaS platform ‘adobaro’ last October. adoba users can conduct all procedures of Chinese platform channel opening — operation — profit settlement within the platform by themselves without separate management. It also helps creators overcome linguistic and cultural differences so that they can operate their channels smoothly. Each platform’s characteristics and operation guides are continuously updated, and content planning is supported through local trend news. adoba is providing their three years of accumulated know-how supporting creator management services on Chinese platforms by converting them into content.
Transitioning from a management-based platform to a SaaS platform is the key factor in building a stable profit structure, breaking away from the prevalent business structure of entertainment management companies. It is equipped with competitiveness to achieve cost efficiency through IT automation systems and build a large-scale creator ecosystem. Leading MCNs all over the globe who failed to abandon their management models had to restructure and exit their businesses because they could not afford the rising labor and operating costs along with the scale of partner creators.
adobaro has currently attracted about 250 teams of creators. This was achieved in just three months after the initial launch. Through an automated system, channel opening, monetization and certification were completed without additional manpower, turning the possibility of a SaaS platform for creators into a reality. Major creators such as ‘Hey Genie’ with 3.5 million YouTube subscribers and ‘Muxna’ with 16.3 million TikTok followers also knocked on the door of adobaro for new opportunities.
adobaro plans to advance towards a sustainable platform by securing global users
adoba is planning to release the global version of adobaro in the second half of this year. Making a leap from the domestic market with 100,000 active creators, adoba hopes to secure a large number of creator networks in the global market of 50 million creators. After the launch of adobaro, adoba asked global creators if they would like to enter China together. Over 8,000 creators responded positively within only three days. The next five-year goal is to secure 1 million customers with adobaro.
For three years, adoba has been discovering various revenue models for creators entering China and quantifying relative data. In addition to channel subscriber growth and content interaction data, adoba has accumulated data that cannot be obtained anywhere else, such as profit rate per channel, monetization period, ad marketing order rate, and average advertising marketing unit price. Based on this, if adoba secures the number of creators through the global market, adoba can apply a formula that can maximize creators’ profits. Additional values can also be created in the creator ecosystem and earn intermediary revenue as the platform achieves economies of scale.
adobaro also supports brand entry into the platform and provides various opportunities to discuss business collaborations that synergizes with creators like △branded content △PPL △goods planning and production △NFT product planning △ and social commerce for creators. adoba has already carried out a significant number of marketing projects for domestic brands such as Shilla Duty Free and Amorepacific to enter the Chinese market, confirming the demand for global brands to enter the Chinese market.
In order to attract major users, various creator solutions are also being developed to be installed within adobaro. It is a strategy to maximize the creator’s average time spent in the website by providing all the services necessary for content creation and profit generation on one platform. In March, an AI-based Chinese subtitle service will be installed. It is equipped with AI-based voice analysis and automatic translation, so creators can extract Chinese subtitle files just by uploading their videos. In addition, adoba has established a professional translator connection system to provide creators with professional translation services at an affordable price.
adoba is also planning to launch a solution service for creators and companies through data generated from the platforms. adoba has built its own ADC (adoba Data Center) and has been collecting channel, content, and viewer data from a total of 13 platforms for three years. The data reliability has been maintained above 99%, showing accurate information about Chinese platforms. It is a paving stone to build a data solution that can provide insights to creators and companies.
Ahn Junhan, the CEO of adoba, is a data geek who majored in industrial engineering at KAIST. He believes that the entertainment industry currently centered on creators can be innovated with data-based IT solutions. He mentioned that “adoba is the only global company that can help creators enter the Chinese market with a MAU of 4.8 billion, and has sufficient capabilities to bring creators all around the world together on one platform.” He also added that “Once we are settled, there will be numerous opportunities for creators and brands worldwide to collaborate with each other, and the global creator economy will also enter a new phase.”
adoba plans to attract investments of 5~10 billion KRW in the first half of this year. The investment will be committed to preparing the global version of adobaro and making the cross-border creator ecosystem sustainable. This is an aspiration to help realize the creator economy that cannot be fully achieved in the domestic market.
