BUZZscape: Korean Mobile Advertising Explained

BUZZscape: Korean Mobile Advertising, LUMAscape-inspired

*This article is originally posted on The Buzzvil Blog.

When I was first trying to understand the global advertising industry, LUMAscapes, which visually present a comprehensive overview of key sectors in the industry, were a great resource for me. However, I found that there was no such learning tool for the Korean mobile advertising industry, which can be complicated to understand and navigate. So, I am proud to present this long-cherished project: the Korean mobile advertising landscape, inspired by LUMAscape! As this chart is brought to you by Buzzvil, I felt that “BUZZscape” is a very fitting title for this chart.

This BUZZscape covers some of the unique, must-know characteristics of the Korean mobile advertising industry. Some of the key differences to highlight are:

• Advertising agencies play a huge role in the ecosystem, but the way they work is very traditional and manual when compared to developed markets such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
• Real-Time-Bidding (RTB) is not common yet in Korea. Most of the advertising inventories are either reservation-based O&O (Owned & Operated Property, such as Naver orYouTube) or RTB-disabled ad networks.
• Naturally, DSPs and SSPs are still at the beginning stage. It’s great to hear that some major advertising agencies and media reps in Korea have built partnerships with global DSPs to source technologies and deliver them to advertisers quickly. Additionally, there’s one local RTB-enabled SSP called Adlib, which is doing quite well.

The BUZZscape provides an overview of the ecosystem without getting into too much detail. If you would like to better understand the BUZZscape or have any questions about the Korean mobile ad landscape, please feel free to reach out to me at ohsu.kwon@buzzvil.com or my linkedin account. I’m always happy to chat!

This post is written with support of two industry insiders: Jihong Lee, CRO at Buzzvil and Pilsung Lee, Strategic Partner Manager at Google.