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By Baek Byung-yeul
Naver and Kakao, which exert great influence on portal and mobile messenger markets, have been unable to break YouTube's dominance in the rapidly growing video streaming market here.
To catch up with the Google-owned video streaming service, the two companies have announced a set of measures to strengthen their lagging streaming services by benchmarking YouTube's competitive features and introducing their own services.
According to a survey of 7,426 online video streaming users conducted by the Korea Information Society Development Institute, 33.7 percent said YouTube was the main platform for viewing videos in 2017, up from 31 percent the previous year.
In contrast, only 6.6 percent said so for Naver TV, Naver's video platform service, down from 8.5 percent in 2016.
Kakao's video platform service, Kakao TV, performed worse than Naver TV as it only attracted 1.8 percent of streaming video viewers. Facebook ranked second with 10.7 percent and Afreeca TV fourth with 3.7 percent.
To attract more video users, Naver and Kakao are trying to beef up their streaming service.
Naver plans to concentrate on strengthening its video streaming service, company CEO Han Seong-sook said.
"While portal service and social networking service seem to be entering a phase of stagnation, video streaming service has seen rapid growth," Han said. "We will strength our video streaming service by allowing users to produce their videos through Naver's blog service."
The company explained that its video creation tool allows users to easily edit their video content. Benchmarking YouTube, Naver will also introduce a continuous video player function that recommends related content to users.
Naver will also simplify the approval process for Naver TV to allow more users to distribute their video content through Naver.
Kakao TV has been running a profit management platform "Biz Station." With the platform, video content creators using Kakao TV can directly add advertisements on their content and receive sponsorship viewers. The platform also enables Kakao TV users to watch video content of their favorite creators on KakaoTalk.
Kakao also recently began offering video on demand (VOD) service through its mobile content platform Kakao Page. Previously, Kakao Page has been providing novels and online comics. Now, Kakao Page users can stream a free 10-minute preview or purchase films, TV entertainment and dramas.
To provide its own content, Kakao acquired two large entertainment management agencies in June. With this acquisition, a Kakao official said the company will begin production of its own content.
Kakao already has a successful example of using its intellectual property as a TV drama version of the web novel, "What's Wrong with Secretary Kim," and is enjoying soaring viewership. The drama is based on a web novel of the same title, which was distributed through Kakao Page.
