Naver focuses on expanding short-form content

Courtesy of Naver Corp.

South Korean platform giant Naver Corp. will expand revenue-sharing for creators who upload short-form videos starting in 2025, a move aimed at growing its creator ecosystem in a market dominated by big tech companies.

The company announced on Thursday that its Clip Incentive Program, currently in beta service, will be officially launched and expanded to all Clip creators that year. The program will widen the scope of revenue-sharing to include more creators, transitioning from offering incentives only to a select few who met certain criteria, after the company revamped its mobile app in November 2023 to place its short-form service Clip at the forefront.

The strategy involves directly recruiting, supporting, and nurturing Clip creators to secure high-quality content. Currently, 2,500 creators who were officially selected by Naver are active on Clip, and the company expects to significantly increase this number in 2025.

Naver attracted over 36,000 applicants to its creator recruitment program in January 2024 alone, with Clip’s content production and daily views growing fourfold and sixfold respectively as of August this year compared to January.

Growth was especially high among users in their teens and 20s, who prefer short-form content.

“We have been testing and refining the incentive program this year to shape the direction for 2025,” and aim to develop a revenue-sharing model optimized for Naver’s unique content ecosystem,” Kim Ah-young, an official from Naver Clip, said.

The competition to attract new creators is heating up as platforms strengthen their revenue-sharing programs.

TikTok is reportedly lowering its Creator Rewards program threshold from 50,000 followers to 10,000 by the end of 2024. It also plans to introduce a new program called TikTok One that connects creators with advertisers, potentially increasing creators’ earnings and loyalty to the platform. TikTok Lite, a lighter version of TikTok, is rapidly increasing its user base thanks to its generous reward policies.

Instagram, which offers the short-form service, Reels, introduced a revenue model at the end of 2024, while YouTube also opened its YouTube Partner Program to short-form creators who meet certain conditions, allowing them to earn revenue.

Efforts to lower the barrier for video production continue as well.

YouTube plans to introduce AI-driven features in 2025 that will allow creators to automatically generate videos for its short-form service, Shorts, as well as offering automatic dubbing powered by AI.

Meta unveiled Emu Video, a tool that generates drawings from text input and animates them, in 2024, which could potentially be integrated into Meta’s core services like Instagram and Facebook.

In China, the short-form platform Kuaishou, which competes with TikTok’s Chinese version Douyin, introduced an AI video creation tool, Kling, in June 2024.

Korean platforms are also striving to break into the short-form market, which is dominated by foreign companies. Kakao introduced a short-form tab on its mobile platform, Daum in March 2024, while local platform Danggeun Market is running its short-form service, Story.

Naver is focusing on a select and concentrated strategy across its platform, with short-form content being a key focus.

Reflecting this trend of short, concise content becoming mainstream, Naver plans to shut down its Series On movie and TV content service by the end of 2024 to focus on growing new services such as the feed-based short-form service Clip and game streaming service Chzzk. The company also added a new Clip tab to its integrated search results in September 2024, reflecting changing user search behaviors as they become more accustomed to short-form content.

According to global market research firm Statista, the global short-form market, valued at $40 billion in 2024, is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 60 percent over the next five years.