이 기사는 2021년 08월 20일 08시02분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

South Korea’s Naver Webtoon has revealed its ambitions to become a “global storytech platform”, with its business model Page Profit Share (PPS) playing a key role in the online comics platform’s growth.

Naver Webtoon unveiled its performance and future direction at Wednesday’s Naver Meetup press event. According to the company, its PPS program generated 1.07 trillion won ($909.7 million) in the past 12 months that ended in June this year.

The PPS program is a business model that was first developed by Naver in 2013 to share profits with its content creators. In addition to manuscript fees, all other revenue streams generated from original content, such as advertisements, paid content and intellectual property development, are incorporated into the program.


The company said the highest income earned by a creator through PPS for the latest 12 months was 12.4 billion won. The average annual income of all creditors participating in the program was 280 million won. The annualized income of its creditors with less than one year of titles was 150 million won on average.

“I would say there have been three inflection points that led Naver Webtoon to leap forward,” the company’s chief executive Kim Jun-koo said during the press event. “They are the launch of the PPS program, the global shift to mobile and our entry into overseas markets in 2014.”

Naver Webtoon expects its revenue sources to expand and become more diversified through its IP value chain that includes online novels, online comics and film and drama productions. The company earlier this year acquired Canadian storytelling platform Wattpad and established Wattpad Webtoon Studios by merging the two companies’ studio divisions.

Typically, paid-content revenue is used in the industry for comparison. Kakao’s content business (Kakao Page and Japan’s Piccoma) recorded a total of 361.1 billion won in paid-content revenue in the first half of this year.

However, Naver Webtoon disclosed the PPS volume instead of paid-content revenue to provide a holistic view on the company’s value, Kim explained.

“In terms of a business model, we have both YouTube-like and Netflix-like characteristics,” said Kim. “Some creators would earn a lot from paid content, while others with a large number of unpaid viewers would have higher advertisement income. We want to disclose the entirety of our value.” (Reporting by Seul-gi Kim)