What are the most used social networks in Korea? That is a difficult questions to answer, it depends on many things! Do you count page views, time spent, on mobile app or desktop? Several different sources say different things, some take KakaoTalk into consideration and others don’t.
This blog post is about:
- What are some Korean SNS?
- Most popular Korean SNS
- One Store
- Demographics
- Platform
- Advertising
What are some Korean SNS?
KakaoTalk – comparable to WeChat
Naver Blog – comparable to Medium
Naver Cafe – comparable to Reddit / Facebook Groups
Most popular Korean SNS
Opensurvey has the most recent data (2020), but does not count KakaoTalk as social media. According to them, the most used SNS are YouTube, Naver Blog and Instagram.
But Hootsuite (2019) does count KakaoTalk, but not Naver Blog / Cafe as social media. According to Hootsuite, the most popular SNS are KakaoTalk, Youtube and Facebook.
According to data from WiseApp (Android users) and Google Play (November, December 2017) are:
|
Rank
|
Google Play
|
|
|
1
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KakaoTalk
Even Obama uses Kakao
|
Band
Band of brothers and sisters
|
|
2
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YouTube
Who doesn’t watch videos here?
|
Instagram
For (wannabe) hipsters
|
|
3
|
Band
Band of brothers and sisters
|
Facebook
Like me or I … you
|
|
4
|
KakaoStory
Old, unfashionable people post here
|
Naver Cafe
Korea’s biggest café
|
|
5
|
Facebook
Like me or I … you
|
KakaoStory
Old, unfashionable people post here
|
|
6
|
Instagram
For (wannabe) hipsters
|
Coinpan
Choo choo! Get on the crypto train!
|
|
7
|
Snow
Korea’s Snapchat
|
Tumblr
Home of gifs
|
|
8
|
Naver Cafe
Korea’s biggest café
|
Daum Cafe
When the biggest café is full |
|
9
|
Daum Cafe
When the biggest café is full
|
Birdletter
Messaging app for gwiyomis
|
|
10
|
Line
There is a “line” at the friends store
|
Naver Blog
Look for $100K influencers here
|
Note: Google Play does not count KakaoTalk or YouTube as social media. Android has roughly 71% market share vs. 28% iOS.
One Store
There is a Korean “One Store” run by telecom companies and Naver that competes with Google Play and App Store, however. It has a 39% market share. Facebook is also experimenting with food ordering, and is helping startups in Korea to go global. Six million Koreans use Instagram.
Want to register your app at the One Store? Then follow the steps below!
- Sign up at “One Store developer center” (https://dev.onestore.co.kr/devpoc/index.omp)
- Business license and address are needed.
- Select “Apps” → Register App
- Fill in app’s name and description.
- Seller’s information
- Product name: app’s name
- Sample description: less than 100 characters
- Product description: less than 1,300 characters
- Images: images size 1024 X 500 pixels
- Representative icon: register app icon 512 X 512 pixel size
- Screenshot: capture app screen and register less than 8 images
- Category: select product type category and use grade
- Keywords: enter keywords describing the app
- Product title for search: enter the subject name that users search for
- Location information: No.
- Personal Information: enter the URL address of the privacy policy.
- Seller info: enter seller name, email address, phone number, website, etc.
- Price and distribution information: Put price and bank account for receiving money
- Request verification
- Registering after screening → Change status to “on sale”
There are images about registering apps on the Onestore: http://wp.swing2app.co.kr/knowledgebase/onestore/
Demographics
As for demographics, younger people (people in their 10s and 20s) prefer Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, older people (40s and 50s) use KakaoStory and Band. According to another study, YouTube is the most popular with teens.
Platform
What about the importance of smartphones and tablets? The majority of traffic now comes from mobile, in categories like restaurants (and with younger people) it can be higher than 57%. In Korea, “84 percent use SNS through their mobile devices while only 1.5 percent used personal computers.”
Advertising
What is the significance of all this? More and more advertising budget is spent on mobile and online. The Korean advertising market grew 15% in 2016 and 32% (1.75 trillion won) was spent on digital. Of digital, 49% went to mobile. This meant a growth of 36% compared to the year before (the largest growth among sectors). Interesting detail is that streaming ads grew the most. Koreans do not like to pay for online news, magazines and books (including webtoons). The biggest agencies are Cheil, Innocean and HS Ad. Respectively, they are associated with Samsung, Hyundai and LG – surprise!
There is also criticism of online commercials. It is not clear on which websites (display, banner) ads appear. Also, some people wonder whether programmatic (automatic) ads are effective. Then, there are new developments like the Brave browser blockchain which has its own cryptocurrency: “it prevents sites from tracking a user and blocks ads, while also bypassing the anti-ad-blocker protection used by major news sites.” (Google AdWords and Facebook ads still show.)
This is the fifth part of the series: What is the current state of digital marketing in Korea and how did it develop in the past few years? Follow the links for the:
- first part (on search engines / portals),
- second part (search engine / portal marketing),
- third part (mobile marketing (KakaoTalk) 모바일 마케팅) and
- fourth part (online shopping).
 marketing in Korea – digital marketing in Korea part 5){kind=link}
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