Marketing Ecosystems in Asia: A Look at South Korea's "Alternate Reality"

This is part of a series where I do deep-dives into different digital marketing ecosystems around Asia. This is an excerpt; I'm sending the full version to members of the APAC Marketers Roundtable. You can sign up here.

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Whenever I look at how digital marketing works in South Korea, I'm always kind of confused.

You know those movies where someone gets transported to another dimension, one similar to theirs but just different enough that things are off?

South Korea's digital marketing ecosystem reminds me of that. It's not like China where it's a completely different universe ... it's just familiar enough to make you think.

Google isn't banned, but South Korea is one of the very few countries where Google isn’t the dominant search engine, and because of this and many other reasons, has developed its own unique marketing ecosystem.

Let’s dive in:

TLDR: Naver. Naver is a Core Part of The Digital Marketing Ecosystem in Korea

Any conversation about digital marketing in South Korea has to start by talking about Naver, its historical omnipresence and why most “digital marketing” as we know it is equivalent to “doing stuff on Naver."

Naver is winning because it is 100% focused on Korea, and thus is completely optimized for Koreans, the Korean language, and Korean online behavior. 

Contrast this with Google Search, which currently is really just the Google you get everywhere else but with some localizations for Korea.

Comparing Naver and Google Search is problematic though, since Naver is much more than a search engine. It’s a portal, which you can think of search engine plus content consumption & discovery.

That's why Koreans spend a ton of time on Naver, to the point where you can compare it to social network usage patterns. (also, whoa YouTube. we'll get back to that in a minute.)

Here's a snapshot. It's kind of like Yahoo:

One big difference though. Yahoo's growth coincided with the rise of blogs and personal websites. In South Korea, blogs and personal websites also blossomed in the early 2000s -- not on the open web, but on Naver itself.

Take a second to think about this.

Many marketers think in a Google / organic / owned media paradigm: obsessing over keyword research, building up email databases from lead gen activities, increasing traffic to our websites, map SEO, etc.

All of this information is near-useless in South Korea because of Naver.

Here's why. This is what a SERP looks like on Naver:

You have to scroll allllll the way down just to get to the "results." This is sort of what I meant about living in an alternate reality. There's still a portal, you still search for stuff, it's just ... different.

If you want to "get traffic" and build an audience, you pay to play, and build everything on Naver.

Btw, if you really really want to learn more about the technical aspects of Naver SEO, check out this guide from Dan Taylor and this guide from JK Song.

Let's Talk Social Media

The social media ecosystem in South Korea is not vastly different than what you see in most countries.

Here’s a chart of the most active social media platforms (source) and we'll go over some of the key bits.

A Little Bit About KakaoTalk

KakaoTalk is the WhatsApp / LINE / WeChat of South Korea, and it dominates messaging. For all intents and purposes, you can assume pretty much every smartphone in the country has KakaoTalk installed.

But from a marketers’ perspective: there’s not much going on. The primary way to use KakaoTalk for marketing is banner ads.

A neat analogy is WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger: giant userbase, but as a marketer your ways to get drive awareness from the platform are limited, and the platform itself is still experimenting with B2B monetization.

Facebook Ads Work How You'd Assume, Except For This One Thing

I looked at some of the Facebook ads for companies in Korea. It's pretty much what you'd expect to see elsewhere. Big brands use it for awareness-building or to run multi-channel campaigns. No surprises in ecommerce or gaming, it’s all the same: click here to buy this thing, click here to download this app.

What I found interesting was from a lead gen perspective. 

Remember what I mentioned earlier? People don't really go to websites. Therefore, landing pages aren't a thing. If landing pages aren't a thing, how do you collect leads?

Something like this:

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about at the start of this post: the Korean digital marketing ecosystem is familiar, but different. Facebook is used as a lead gen platform, but not in the way most of us are used to. Sometimes it’s like the screenshot above; sometimes the call-to-action is to join a chat group on KakaoTalk.

YouTube: Finally, Something That Works in a Way Outsiders Can Grasp

YouTube is massive in South Korea. As you’ve seen in the previous charts, Koreans spend a ton of time in YouTube, and it’s almost as widely used as KakaoTalk. 

Interestingly, despite Naver having its own video service, YouTube continues to dominate. 

This makes things interesting for international marketers: there’s a built-in habit of Koreans going to YouTube, a medium that most non-Koreans understand. And there’s a vibrant Korean YouTube influencer scene, with all the familiar niches (makeup, beauty products, reviews) you would expect to find in most countries.

For marketers looking to expand into Korea, YouTube appears to be an excellent starting point.

You have a shot at building a meaningful, semi-organic presence on YouTube. And there’s “ad inventory” you can tap into — especially if you’re in B2C, it’s a no-brainer to start experimenting with YouTube Ads or working with influencers.

A Few Closing Thoughts

#1 - Naver will continue to dominate, but Google is chipping away at their market share

Naver is going to be around for a long time. But Google has a demographic advantage — younger Koreans are more open to using Google, and because of Android’s dominance in South Korea, more and more people are being exposed to Google Search.

However, given the country's likely status as a “Tier 2” market for Google Search (not as big as Japan, not a giant potential market like China, not as accessible as Southeast Asia/India) — it’s unlikely that Google will invest the resources needed to properly take Naver head-on.

#2 - Social media platform usage will continue to increase

In addition to the platforms we discussed, any B2C marketer should be keeping its eye on TikTok, or any platform that young people suddenly start using. Koreans spend a lot of time on their phones + time online, and this keeps increasing.

We also haven’t talked at all about LinkedIn, which is basically non-existent in South Korea (prove me wrong, Koreans who are reading this!) I found this surprising. There aren’t any local LinkedIn alternatives, and having a several social media accounts is normal, so I’m guessing it’s because Korea isn’t yet a big enough opportunity for LinkedIn to jump in.

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If you enjoyed this, comment below and tell me what market I should look at next!

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