Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
Naver, Kakao short-form videos go head-to-head with YouTube Shorts
Seen are short-form video services of Naver, left, and Daum, a mobile portal service of Kakao, Captured from companies
By Baek Byung-yeul
Naver and Kakao are bolstering their short-form video services, launching initiatives to compete with YouTube, which has dominated the domestic mobile platform market thanks to the popularity of its Shorts service, or videos with a maximum length of 60 seconds, according to industry officials Monday.
Since December 2023, YouTube has surpassed KakaoTalk, Korea's most frequently used messaging app, in terms of monthly active users (MAU) within the domestic mobile platform market.
The industry views the strong popularity of YouTube's short-form video service, YouTube Shorts, as the video-sharing platform's key success factor in securing the top spot.
According to market researcher Mobile Index, the total time spent watching YouTube on mobile devices in Korea last month was about 1.96 billion hours, significantly outpacing KakaoTalk's 548 million hours and Naver's 357 million hours.
In terms of MAUs, YouTube recorded 45.65 million MAUs in December last year, overtaking KakaoTalk, which recorded 45.54 million, for the first time and has since widened its gap with the messaging app. The gap was about 100,000 in December but increased to 540,000 in March.
In response, Naver and Kakao are enhancing their short-form video services to meet the growing demand for short-form videos.
Kakao introduced a Shortform tab in its internet portal service Daum's mobile app at the end of last month. Users can scroll through short-form videos produced by partners such as news agencies, broadcasters, sports channels and influencers.
Previously, Kakao reorganized its portal service operation organization Daum CIC into Content CIC to strengthen content services, including short-form videos.
The company also announced plans to enhance collaboration with content creators, saying it would recruit partners to create short-form videos for its video streaming services, such as KakaoTV and the PC and mobile versions of Daum, and offer them a share of the revenue starting this month.
Naver offers a convenient, enhanced short-form editing feature for its blog service users to help produce short clips. Courtesy of Naver
Naver also launched editing and viewing features for its short-form video service, Clip, last month, allowing creators to more easily edit short videos for Naver TV and Naver Blog.
Furthermore, to encourage content creators on its blog service to more actively create and distribute short-form videos, Naver integrated its short-form service, Moment, from Naver Blog into Clip. This integration expands the exposure of short-form content created by blog users, making them visible not only in the Naver Blog app but also in search results within the Clip tab of the Naver app.
Experts said the efforts of Naver and Kakao, the two major mobile platform operators, to enhance their short-form video services are a response to the explosive increase in demand for this type of content.
"Short-form video has become an essential service to attract more users, which is why mobile platform operators in Korea are strengthening this service. The service is becoming increasingly important as it allows them to show ads to consumers or entice them to pay for products," an official from a local internet service company said on condition of anonymity.
According to app analytics service operator Wiseapp, the average monthly usage time of short-form platforms per smartphone user in Korea in 2023 was 46 hours and 29 minutes, suggesting Koreans spend over an hour each day watching these brief videos.