WEBTOON has grown the medium of webcomics into one that stands alongside some of the most popular ways to consume content in the world. Taking advantage of the digital ecosystem that most people have in the palm of their hands via smartphones, WEBTOON partners with creators to publish original and compelling content. Webcomics are unique in that they are easily accessible and can be produced in a wide variety of genres, much like print comics. This is just one of many reasons for the platform’s explosive growth since its launch in the early 2000s.
On the heels of the platform’s growth, WEBTOON had a large presence at Anime Expo for the first time this year, offering a variety of interactive content at their booth, meetings with legendary creators like SIU, creator of Tower of God, and multiple panels breaking down some of the different elements that go into creative content and structuring the world of a story. Alongside those opportunities for attendees, members of the press had the opportunity to sit down with two executives from WEBTOON. Taking part in the conversation were Yongsoo Kim, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global WEBTOON, and Sinbae Kim, Chief Growth Officer at LINE Digital Frontier (WEBTOON’s Japanese business).
The conversation covered a myriad of topics, including how anime adaptations are a growing part of WEBTOON’s business, how the platform’s marketing strategy has evolved in recent years, the company’s position on the use of AI, and how WEBTOON in general works with creators.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.
Q: With the recent popularity of WEBTOON series that have been adapted into animated series, live action, and the like, how has WEBTOON shifted its focus and prioritization on different kinds of series?
Sinbae Kim: For example, in this year, we are aiming to have anime adaptations for over 20 series in development. The 20 series means that we are operating production pipelines. So some anime will come next year, and some will come three years later. We are having more and more anime adaptations. Actually, that’s why we are here to attend Anime Expo right now. We want to make our webcomic users resonate with this anime fandom. In Japan, we are having really good partnerships. And in Japan, for those kinds of anime adaptation projects, we are creating production committees. For example, Aniplex and Toho and Bandai — those big anime players are now working with us because we have a variety of titles. And we can target the globe at the same time. Previously, actually, most Japanese anime were only considering the Japanese market first. But right now their view is changing to more and more global. And this is a perfect time for having a great partnership with them. So that’s why we have this kind of movement right now.
Yongsoo Kim: Until now, most of our video adaptation IP was from Korea. And then all the Korean famous IPs are becoming TV series and animation. But recently, we also tried to develop our US original IP and Japan original IP to be more adapted to the other format. So I believe that in a couple of years, you will see some kind of success case. We are working with many global OTT players here in the US as well. They’re producing Hollywood style, English-speaking content. I think that we can see that kind of result as well.
Q: WEBTOON has had some pretty impressive marketing strategies, like the McDonald’s collab in 2023, or your subway campaign in New York. As a global team, how has your marketing strategy evolved over time and how has it been impacted by the target market?
Yongsoo Kim: Our marketing has been focused on specific IP. We are the platform, but the famous IP is a really great tool to share what WEBTOON is and engage with our potential users. And then, of course, the IP-based performance marketing and social network service is our main tool. But we believe that sharing what WEBTOON is and then sharing the brand and our platform to a wider audience is really critical, especially for the US market. That’s why partnership with existing brands or existing players in the US is one of our top priority marketing strategies right now. You mentioned that you already saw the McDonald’s collaboration. Last year, we had a huge one with Duolingo. This year, we are working with so many U.S. publishers like IDW and Dark Horse. It could be a good tool. We are using the existing IP all the US users know. And then, we change it to the WEBTOON format. Then, that could be another good marketing tool. At the same time, now we are developing some other kinds of partnership with U.S. traditional players like some telco players, some restaurants. I hope I can announce more partnership cases soon.
Sinbae Kim: In Japan, we opened our LINE Manga service from 2013. It’s been more than 12 years. And also, we are using our LINE brand. Actually, brand awareness is good enough. Most manga readers and webcomic readers already know about our service. We are actually number one there. In Japan, we are very focused on title marketing — performance marketing and social marketing. We are really focused on title marketing itself. If you have a really great title, then we push it.
Q: Why do you think WEBTOON in particular is having such a big cultural moment? We’re seeing so many adaptations and the comics themselves are doing well. What do you think about WEBTOON makes it stand out from the competition?
Yongsoo Kim: I believe the core competency of WEBTOON is all about the creator. You may know, but we don’t own any content as WEBTOON. All the content is owned by our creators and developed by our creators. All the revenue generated by content is shared with the creator. So, with that kind of policy and our creator ecosystem, the number of creators in our ecosystem is getting larger every year. Not just from Korea and Japan, but from the U.S. and all over the world. That’s why we could have more content in our library from all the great talent out there. And then, number one, the diversity and huge library of content and creators. And number two is our really fast process. For example, in Korea or Japan, a typical comic publisher process will take a couple of years to share content through the existing manga platforms or some publishers. And then, going to the U.S. market, it will take another couple of years. But with WEBTOON, as a digital platform, they’ll launch the new title. And then, every week, they’re launching a new episode. Every week, they can see their performance. And then, if our creator makes great content, then they can see the result every day, every week. And then, whenever they achieve a meaningful result in their home market, WEBTOON always helps them to distribute their content to other languages, the other 10 languages, and reach out to a global audience. It will take just a couple of months. So, that’s why. I met some of our local Japanese creators. I asked them, “Why did you choose WEBTOON, not Shueisha or the other Japanese publishers?” He said, “This is the fastest way to share my story with the U.S. audience.” That creator’s content actually achieved number one in the U.S. market and in the Korean market as well for a couple of weeks — The Savior of Divine Blood from No. 9. studio, one of our Japanese original studios. They chose us because they want to be global.
Q: What are thoughts on not only the webtoon to anime pipeline, but the webtoon to K-Drama pipeline?
Sinbae Kim: For example, one of our big titles, Marry My Husband. It’s super popular globally. Last week, we opened the remake version live-action J-Drama for that title. It’s the same story, but a very different style of drama. So, the movement is like that. In Korea, actually, right now, it’s hard to say the number, but there are so many K-Drama adaptations with WEBTOON IP right now, and that’s why we have some Netflix number one — or sometimes among the top ten we can see three or four WEBTOON adaptation live-action dramas. Then in Japan, we have some J-Drama adaptations. So, actually, that kind of movement is operating in Korea, in Japan, and in the U.S. also. For the IP business, we have these three main regions, and then right now, we are producing so many different titles — not yet open — but it is going to be more and more.
Yongsoo Kim: I believe that we have enough in our pipeline for the K-Drama adaptations as always. Then it’s all about our partners’ plans — how many new series they want to launch — and we are working with multiple players for the K-Drama adaptations as well. So, I believe that we can maintain the number of new series going forward. It depends on the situation around the broadcasting systems and the OTT players, but we have enough backlog for our pipeline, so you can enjoy more series soon.
Sinbae Kim: Actually, in addition to that, usually, our partners are seeking very good and popular titles, but it’s not always true that the most famous IP will be successful as a drama. It’s not 100% the case, but actually, they are seeking new stories, and some new trends, or some very different genre of drama, or some live-action and anime. In the US, Japan, and Korea, our library is really huge. We already met some user groups with those titles and we have that data. Sometimes, they are finding some story-based ones, sometimes, they really want to focus on targeting teenagers, and according to those kinds of requests, we are suggesting, okay, this is a really great title, and even though it doesn’t have 10 million users it’s actually perfect for your taste. Those kinds of things really change year by year.
Yongsoo Kim: As I mentioned, other than K-drama, J-drama, and Japanese animation, we are really working on the Hollywood style, the English-speaking AV adaptation projects. And I’m really curious about how our US audience will react when they see that a WEBTOON IP-based TV series or movie has come up, because we’ve never seen that kind of case yet. We have some WEBTOON IP-based AV adaptations that really work well. There are many good series, but how about WEBTOON IP becoming an English-speaking TV series or movie? That will be another interesting part, and as I said, it will be coming soon, within a couple of years. Then there will be a huge opportunity for us and for our creators.
Q: There are some impediments to the recognition of the WEBTOON brand in the general public. Do you have any strategy to overcome them, and make this brand stand out?
Yongsoo Kim: That is a really great point, because even internally, we call our Japanese offering LINE Manga. In Korea, we have NAVER WEBTOON, but globally, we are using WEBTOON. Our corporate brand is WEBTOON, and, since our IPO last year, we are really thinking about how we can make one company branding as WEBTOON, because WEBTOON is our corporate name and our corporate brand. Going forward, we will make really big one brand policies under WEBTOON, but of course, each platform, each brand has their own name, but we really want to keep focusing on sharing what WEBTOON is and what Webtoon means for the global audience. And then, especially for the US market, they know some big IPs, but for example, I met some of our potential users, and they mentioned, “Oh, I love the Tower of God animation from Crunchyroll,” but even they don’t know that is coming from WEBTOON. That kind of part is where we should do a better job. “This story originated from WEBTOON,” or that kind of subtitle or caption should be there. We are really working with our IP adaptation partners, and everything is going well, but please put where the story comes from, from our creator, then our platform. So, that is part one.
And then part two is, like this Anime Expo, we should let them know that Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint is from WEBTOON, that Tower of God is from WEBTOON. That kind of branding effort and branding campaign is something we need to do better with our partners, then for McDonald’s or the other big platforms or US players we will do more of that kind of branding campaign going forward.
Q: This question has to do with AI. With the increasing prevalence of it and the tools that use it, what kinds of rules, structures, and strategies would you put into place to balance creator interest with having access to different kinds of tools?
Yongsoo Kim: Fundamentally, our company believes that AI cannot replace our creators. What AI can do is support our creators. That’s our basic, fundamental approach for AI. That’s why we keep developing the AI creation supporting tools for our creator so that they can save their duplicate work, like making a background. Then they can do a quicker and better, more productive job for any kind of duplicate task.
We want to hear from our creators because I know that our creators are really sensitive to AI creation. That’s why we keep developing better tools for supporting our creators, but how we can adapt, how we can share this kind of thing, our creators will be different. We really want to hear from our creators when they want to use that kind of tool more aggressively. What we need to do is we need to be ready. Once our creators want to use more tools from the AI technique base, then we will be ready. But again, that kind of tool will just be a supporting tool for our creators; it cannot replace the core creation. Our company is really using AI technology for our anti-piracy work, then machine learning-based technology for our user campaign and the title recommendation for our users. So that area is really already helping our platform. You may notice our big product update for our US WEBTOON app. It’s all about the personalization from the home tab, because we have a bunch of users. Our platform has more of a skew to younger female users. That’s why naturally in our top five ranking we can see many romance titles, but that’s not fit for all the users. So that’s why we want to curate our home tab. Once we detect someone is coming, then we know their reading history. We want to show them what they may like. That kind of curated approach is done by all of our AI internal technology. That part is our focus area for right now, but that is our AI strategy for now.
Q: I would like to ask about the changes to the user interface and Daily Pass because I think people were really surprised by it. How do you think it will enhance user experience and engagement in the future?
Yongsoo Kim: It has been a while since our major UI and UX changes happened. That’s why there are so many reactions from our users. We really hear from the older users’ reactions. Before making that kind of the user interface change, we have done so much user research. And then we have also done quite intense A-B testing before the official launch. Our content library is getting larger. And our user audience has very different appetites. And they don’t have that much time to find the content that they may like. That’s why the key focus of our UI and UX update is all about content discovery. How can we optimize that process? That’s why from the Home tab, when our new users come, we show a very quick and simple onboarding process. What you may like, genre-wise or keyword-wise, please pick any keyword. And then we show the content lineup you may like. And then once we have the minimum amount of reading history of a user we start the personalized curation. Then we saw that the meaningful metric increased for the reading amount and reading time from our users after we updated that part of the product. And then they can save time when discovering new content. And it seems like they like the result. They might not know why the machine learning recommends some kinds of content. But once they experience it they say “Oh, actually I like it.” And then going forward, they are actually spending and reading more and more. So those are the kinds of changes we are seeing right now. We believe that we definitely need to keep developing more and more how we can personalize our user experience in our platform as much as possible. That is key, the principle for our UI UX update.
Regarding Daily Pass, we try to upgrade ways to enjoy our episodes for the user, especially the paid episodes. And then we hear lots of feedback from our users and creators. One piece of feedback was that it’s too complicated and that we have so much language about Fast Pass, Daily Pass, and Ad Pass. But we try to make it simple and then we try to find the best way to support our creators. As I mentioned, all revenue coming from our platform is shared with our creators. For most of our creators, income from the platform is their main source of income. That’s why creator income is really important for us. Then our new updated way is just simple.
Of course, we have so many free episodes for the new titles. And then for the latest episode for the title, there are two ways: just using a coin and or you can watch an ad. We believe that this is the simplest way for our users to understand our business model. Then even for completed series, our users would just open one new episode and then wait one day for another if they didn’t want to use their coin. But right now they can just watch an ad. They can enjoy all the episodes in one day. So we actually believe that we just provide a better choice for our users. At the same time, using ad pass also contributes to our creators’ success. So I believe that our creators understand this way. But of course, most of our users actually understand why we have to take this route. We got some feedback that the users think that this is a better way for our creators, because they understand making our creators successful is very important to keep building our content library in the platform.
Q: There is a diversity of voices seen on the platform. Is that something that WEBTOON is actively cultivating or actively looking for these diverse voices? Or is it that these just so happen to be some of the best people to tell different stories?
Yongsoo Kim: That’s a great question. Actually, as I mentioned, one of our focuses is to cultivate our creator ecosystem. And why we care about the number of creators and why we want to cultivate the larger ecosystem is all about the diversity. Because, of course, we can provide some editorial support for the creator in the amateur creator system or the professional creator system, but we are not shaping what kind of genre or what kind of title we want. Because it’s not how we foster diversity. We believe that once we have a really large base of creators, then all the diverse content will come. Diversity and the amount of content will guarantee high quality content. So that’s how we view our content ecosystem. To get back to your question — it happens to be there. Because what we care about is being able to create the ecosystem for our creator. If you are sharing your story on WEBTOON, if the story is good, then you will meet the larger audience of users, and then you can earn enough income from WEBTOON. That is our basic policy.
Q: Recently more and more of the WEBTOON Unscrolled print publications have rolled out. What is the process for curation, whether it’s domestic creations or whether it’s from abroad, and what goes into choosing that?
Yongsoo Kim: We have our own team for the publication, and definitely research all the market demands. And at the same time, we are working with all the great partners in the industry, like Penguin Random House. There are many top publishers, and we have mutual decisions about what kind of IP should be adapted to the hard copy books. So it depends on success in our platform and how there will be potential demand from the hard copy book market. And that’s how we handle that kind of process. Of course, we don’t have any limitation about whether that IP should be coming from the US market or the Korean market. For the legal needs of the origin of the IP we’re just working based on the market demands and potential user needs.
Q: Focusing on the creator side, like you said, creators really depend on the platform for income. WEBTOON had a lot of different methods for increasing creators’ income in Korea. Do you have any specific ways or methods to increase income for the US platform as well?
Yongsoo Kim: I have a firm belief about that. My top two priorities: one is that our US platform should be getting larger. More of an audience, more readership, and definitely more revenue from the platform will help our creator income. That’s one. The second part that I’m really pushing for is because we have so much great talent here and because so much great content originates from the US market and US local creators, I believe that we can do a better job at cross-bordering US local content to the Korea platform, Japan platform, and South Asia or European platform. So once our US creator content can meet a larger audience, their income will definitely go up. Then of course we have some internal systems that make all cross-bordering content possible, but I believe that we can do a better job of exporting our US-originating content to the other regions. I believe that you can see that there are some upgrades with that process.
We’d like to thank Yongsoo Kim and Sinbae Kim for taking the time to have a roundtable discussion with members of the press and for sharing their perspectives on WEBTOON’s position in the broader entertainment space. We’d also like to thank Anime Expo for putting on such a fantastic convention this year.
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