Hi there,

This is part of my series about digital landscape and e-commerce landscape in China, Japan and South Korea. If you want to download the presentation version, you could try this Google drive link or slideshare.

Jan 2019 update: since this post is quite dated, back in 2016, here is the updated version “8 key facts about South Korea Digital Marketing landscape (updated Jan 2019)”.

1. South Korea has 34.6M mobile phone internet users in 2015 (with penetration rate of 82%, higher than JP at 67% and lower than China at 87%)

2. Weekly, internet users in South Korea spends about 14 hours online or about 2 hours/day (less than 3 hours/day from Chinese users)

3. Digital ad spending surpassed TV ad spending in 2015 in South Korea ($2.94B,  34% of total media ad spending)

4. Majority (54.4%) of South Korea digital ad spending was on mobile devices in 2015

As you could see from the graph, South Korea has the highest percentage of mobile ad spending in total digital ad spending in the world.

5. Search Ad Spending still commands more than half of the digital ad spending consistently in South Korea

6. 59% of Mobile Display Ad spending is In App ($972.5M) vs. Mobile Web (41% or $675.7M) in 2015

Advertisers in South Korea spent more money on display in-app banner vs mobile web in 2015, similar to other countries.

7. Admob, “Cash Slide” and “KakaoTalk Plus Friend” are the top 3 Mobile In-App Ad Networks in South Korea in terms of Ad Revenue

8. South Korea is the 6th largest retail e-commerce market ($38.8B) in the world, while UK digital buyer spends the most online on average ($2,447/year)

Any comments are welcome,

Thanks,
Chandler

P.S: in another unrelated topic, I recently published a book about team management on Amazon so feel free to check it out.

P.S.S: again since this post is quite dated, back in 2016, here is the updated version “8 key facts about South Korea Digital Marketing landscape (updated Jan 2019)”.