Naver Webtoon will lead global webtoon market with its IP strengths

Naver Webtoon Corp.’s Chief Executive Officer Kim Jun-koo speaks during a press conference at the company’s head office in Pangyo, near Seoul, on April 25. [Photo provided by Naver Webtoon]

Naver Webtoon Corp. has announced its ambition to lead the global content market by expanding its creator ecosystem and building on its strong intellectual property (IP) competitiveness to counter expected competition from Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

As Naver Webtoon is a market leader and has created a meaningful scale, it has a responsibility and a calling to compete in other markets and grow the industry scale itself, Naver Webtoon’s Chief Executive Officer Kim Jun-koo said. He said he is not afraid of competition from big tech companies and that he will roll out a new creator ecosystem strategy to respond to future competition.

His remarks came during a press conference on the 10th anniversary of Naver Webtoon’s revenue sharing (PPS) program at the company’s head office in Pangyo, near Seoul, on Tuesday.

His strategy is to broaden the webtoon industry ecosystem by expanding the layer of mega IPs that generate tens of billions of won in revenue and creators who earn hundreds of millions of won annually.

To this end, Naver Webtoon is reorganizing its PPS program to switch from the existing ‘Page Profit Share’ to ‘Partners Profit Share’ with the aim of increasing the number of works with annual transaction value of more than 100 million won ($74,700) to 2,000 by 2028, and to expand the number of works with IP business revenue averaging 5 million won per month to more than 500 works per year by 2025.

“In the past, the focus was on sharing revenue generated from pages on webtoon and web novel platforms, but in the future, revenue generated from various businesses based on original IP will also grow,” said Kim. “We decided to change the name of the program to serve as a reliable helper for writers to find greater business opportunities for their IPs.”

The program was renamed to recognize the trend of webtoon IPs expanding into games, videos, books, merchandise and more.

“If you ask any user or creator, Naver Webtoon is the number one choice,” Kim stressed. Paid content, such as previews and daily passes, has become a business model that even Amazon and Apple are following, he said. He predicted that Naver Webtoon’s competitors in terms of user time share will be Netflix, YouTube and TikTok.

“Although the Korean webtoon ecosystem has expanded globally and has a large readership base, we are facing fierce competition from entertainment giants in the overseas markets,” Kim said. “As the world’s No. 1 story-tech company, we will responsibly expand our support for creators.”

In this regard, Naver Corp.’s CEO Choi Soo-yeon is accompanying President Yoon Suk Yeol on his state visit to the U.S. Naver is the only internet service company among the 19 large companies included in the economic mission to the U.S.