WEBTOON Is Bigger Than Monopoly Go: Inside a New Game Marketing Channel

Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor of Fun deep dive interview series. I'm your host Jen Donahoe. Every marketer I talk to is struggling with the same thing. UA is saturated. How do I find new channels? Where do I actually find people anymore? So today we're going to talk about a pretty good answer to that question. And they actually reach mobile, PC, and console. Almost nobody is talking about them, but some big names like Square Enix, Blizzard, and Krafton have quietly been working with them. It's a platform called Webtoon. They are a digital comic platform built for Gen Z. They pioneered vertical scrolling comics that let you read them on your phone or your PC. Shockingly, almost 70% of Webtoon readers play games, mobile, PC, and console, and most are under the age of 35, like 90%. It's the perfect gaming audience. So today Christine Yu from Webtoon and Melanie Gordon from Square Enix walk me through how the Webtoon

campaigns worked to launch a few different Square Enix titles, how the programs worked, and a little bit more about how Webtoons can help you reach your audience.
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All right, we're just going to jump right into it. Christine, first, tell me a little bit about Webtoon. When I heard, you know, these numbers, I was just so blown away. So I'd love to get a bit more of the history and and talk me through the platform.
Absolutely. The term Webtoon, we actually created the term Webtoon and we're the leading industry of the web comics. So Webtoon itself is a mobile vertical format of reading a web comic. Webtoon is an app, but also an IP engine at its heart. We're a global phenomenon that fundamentally changed how stories are told and experienced. So we pioneered the visual vertical scrolling style of digital comics that we read on

our screens today. Mind you that most of our users, we have 160 million MAU globally, and most of our users have never been exposed to a comic book. I don't know I don't know about you, but I come from like a comic book era where we were just waiting weekly or monthly for our favorite, you know, authors to release that book, but the community and the users of our platform read content out of a mobile phone and they've never been exposed to a comic book.
I actually am a a comic book reader. My uncle has like Green Lantern number one, so I like read it like, you know, with gloves on because it was so interesting. And I used to do ComiXology, which was it would take basically the format of a comic book and you would kind of go through the panels, but when I I was talking to you before this, I was just so shocked to learn that Gen Z has never actually gone through it as a book. They go through it in a vertical scroll, is

that right?
That's right. So, we're talking about a generation that is so mobile-savvy, tech-savvy, mobile-friendly. They're reading this content, great stories that are human-made, out of a vertical format, and they're consuming these contents, and this is a new way of consuming entertainment. And our users spend about average of 30 minutes on our app. This is not like a scrolling type of content. People are actually reading it and consuming it and enjoying it, right? So, there's a little more focus and engagement towards to it. And we have about 27 million creators on our platform globally. And this is anyone can upload their great story or content on our platform. So, we would have creators that already have like a millions and billions of fan base and our subscribers, but also a great community of UGC where anyone can post their stories. So, basically, we're

kind of, you know, pioneering the web comics industry in a new mobile format.
And Mel, I think you're a fan. Is that I'm having you on the podcast for two reasons. You're a fan and a actually a partner. So, talk to me about being a fan. How did you learn about Webtoon? How did you come to the platform? Tell me about your fandom.
So, I never read comics, but I was really into manga. And so, the time was 2020 where I was on my desktop looking at manga, you know. And I remember getting an ad for one of the Webtoons called The Remarried Empress. And so, it shows like this dramatic scene of like this woman who was an empress who was made redundant, and she came and she said, "I accept the divorce, but I'm also going to request to remarry." And I was like, "Whoa, what is this drama?" Like, I'm here for it. And like, the images were so polished. So, I was like, "Okay, let me check out this Webtoon thing. Like, what is this?" So, I started on desktop, started reading

comics, and I was like, "This is amazing." But on desktop, I was like, "The scrolling method?" I was like, "I think this is on mobile, so let me go get the app on it." And that kind of like took off, honestly. I have completed over 100 Webtoons. I'm currently reading 55. Anywhere between 20 minutes and 3 hours is what I spend on it daily. So, I hit the demographic of Webtoons pretty strongly. Um and as as just like Christine said, there's so many unique stories there, and I love that anyone can tell their story, right? And it's so unique and so diverse that there really is something for everyone there. And as a reader and as a someone who loves stories as well, it's it's an amazing platform.
I love that you started with The Remarried Empress, which is coming out very, very soon and as a series. What's great about Webtoon is that we have already a great number of titles that have already a big fan base. So, it's really easy to be

adapted into titles and series and films. And we've already have more than 900 titles that are being adapted or have been adapted into series and films. So, maybe some of the titles that you are familiar All of Us Are Dead, Sweet Home, Yumi's Cells, a lot of the titles that have been already adapted into films. And Remarried Empress is coming soon.
I think you have the Webtoon IP, a number of them have been on Netflix, they've been made into movies. And so, I think what was interesting is it's actually a birthplace of IP, kind of like games, how games is a birthplace of IP these days. Is that Am I remember remembering that right?
The reason why people love to reimagine the titles that are already on Webtoon is because we have already seen successes of these titles. These titles have been already gaining millions of subscribers, millions and billions of views. So, it's easy to reimagine them

as a series or a film. It's kind of like a guaranteed success of a story. Mhm. People love a great story.
One of the things that I thought, you know, when you mentioned 160 million MAU, I think that number is staggering when I I did a little sensor tower look up, it's more MAU than Monopoly Go. So, in many cases your platform is bigger than a number of mobile games. And I think on a number of different metrics because you actually monetize almost similar to a mobile game where it's free to play, right? For for most part. Tell me actually about the business model of Webtoon just for those and many people probably aren't familiar with the platform. So, walk me through a little bit more about how do you actually make money? What are your models?
Most of our episodes are free, but we make sure a big share of revenue goes to our creators. So, I think in in over 2021 to 2025, we paid out more than 2.7 billion dollars to our creators. We we value this creator

community and we, you know, these are our partners who produce 124,000 new episodes daily. So, we have so many creators that are, you know, within our ecosystem and our platform. But, as a as a partner to gamers and many brands who want to tap into our community of Gen Z, we have couple models that help these brands or work with these brands to really reach to this community because, you know, we we consider our creators as like influencers. You know, they have a really big fan base. They have millions of subscribers. They they go a lot on social media sharing these stories. They engage with their readers. Readers have a comment section at the end of the episode. So, every end of the episode, readers will comment and react and and, you know, give that feedback on the story and the creator, you know, reacts to it and then maybe I don't know if the story kind of changes or not, but, you

know, it's very engaged full way. And what's interesting is we've seen a way where we connect our creators with brands and the synergy was astonishing because this is a part where it's kind of untapped, you know, cuz you know, everyone is into influencer marketing these days. We consider our creators as influencers because they they do influence our reader community, but in a very authentic way still. For example, if we have a brand that wants to
[snorts]
deliver a story, we we we with a creator and the creator will develop content around it, which is kind of different from, you know, trying to sell a product, right? Which is like a one-way type of communication. But, if you have a creator that immerses the brand story or the game universe into their world of content or a big title, people go crazy. People are like, oh, this is a collab that I never, you know, thought that it

existed. There's a really genuine reactions around it. So, there's a way of leveraging that custom part around it. And then there's another part where we have like an offer wall type of product where we reward our users. We found that 69% of our users are gamers, regardless of mobile or console. So, we we know that these users are always looking for a game to play, which game to play next. So, this is a part where we reward our users with more value for the actions that they're taking, right? So, there's multiple ways to engage the gamers within our community.
That was one of the things when we had met a little while ago that I thought was so impactful is your overlap with the gaming audience that I don't think many of us kind of realized. You said, you know, almost 70% of your audience engages deeply in games and across multiple platforms, not just PC games,

console games, but all three, mobile, PC, and console, because many of your audience actually engages on mobile. We'll talk about that in a second, but Mel, I I wanted to go back to you and talk a little bit about how did you realize that you could take a passion, a personal passion, and turn it into a work project? I mean, as we all know, that's like the best possible thing that you can do as a marketer.
[laughter]
So, tell me about that story.
Yeah. So, yes, definitely with my knowledge of Webtoons, I was able to see definitely the community aspect and the engagement. I'm also living in the comments and seeing how engaged the audiences were were amazing. And let's be real, gamers are not just gamers, they have other passions. Webtoons are not just Webtoon readers, they have other passions. And it's great to know that there is that overlap, right? So, when Christine's team came in and pitched the platform, the audiences and the capabilities, that was really interesting to me as both a personal fan and as a marketer because I personally knew the overlap, and because I was so

active in the platform, I knew where the advertisement spots were, that I knew that they were hitting audiences cuz they were hitting me. So, I was like, this is this is just a perfect combination. And there's one advertisement aspect that I think is also so unique to Webtoons, which is what we did, which is the branded epilogue, which really let us really integrate ourselves into the brand and the IPs without feeling like it's an advertisement, right? And I think that's so unique because nowadays there's not many platforms we can create that custom genuine content where the community's already built up, and we are able to insert ourselves in a way where it feels organic and natural rather than like, here's a blatant advertisement. Please go do the thing we want you to go do, right? So, I think that was a really unique thing for us to learn and then definitely trial.
It's like a collaboration, right? So, there's an existing creator with an existing IP, and just like in games how

we see, you know, Brawl Stars with SpongeBob, you know, this was a chance to take your Square Enix IP and put it and collaborate with someone else to be an authentic collaboration. How did that come together?
The first collab that we did was with Visions of Mana, and the Prido that was matched with that game was called The Greatest Estate Developer. This is a story of of a civil engineering student who is reincarnated into a medieval age. He's like thrown into the medieval age as like an estate developer and his family is going into bankrupt, but he has all this knowledge from civil engineering of the modern times. So, he works in this for his house. He knows all this modern infrastructure, all this like business economy. And then we have Visions of Mana characters coming in, which is like really random.
But so much fun. So, the branded epilogue story what it does is we don't try to disturb the story content itself.

What happens is when you read the story, at the end it says, "Let the ad begin." or "Let the partnership begin." and then there's like a spin-off content, right? So, people are just consuming their favorite episode and then all of a sudden there's like a spin-off content. So, the reactions were really fun to read. There was a lot of comment. Of course, there's like, "Oh my god, they have a video game. What's the Sigma? There's I can't like get over the crossover with Visions of Mana. This is like a unique place where people actually like seeing this type of collab." And and they know it's it's advertised or it's sponsorship, but people there's a lot of positive feedback around it. Over this collab, we resulted in 6.3 million impressions, 24% page lift view lift, and 184% above CTR benchmark. So, we saw that there was a really great collab around this takeover. You get it when you actually see the content. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah. We'll do a a little newsletter article and I'll include a bunch of those visuals cuz you're right. Like it we're talking about a highly visual medium. That makes sense. I'm going to play marketer for a second. So, you're inside of of this collab. You come Is Is there like a call to action that takes you to learn more about the game? How do How does that actually work?
Yeah. so I think the great thing about Webtoons is that they are very open to what we are needing, right? So, for Visions of Mana, we had just launched the game and we really wanted to drive awareness for the title. And so, for us, we want to make sure that we respected the IP. So, I did, you know, the marketing research and read all 150 episodes in 3 days to understand what is this comic, right? And it was it was a amazing comic, highly recommend, but I think for for me to know that how do I make sure that I'm not disturbing the community, that it's something that they can really latch on to? And I think that is what made all the

difference in the remarkable pickup, right? It's not something that was like, "Here's a product. Good luck marketing it for me, right?" It was a It was an amazing collaboration. It was very easy, actually. And as a marketer, I think custom content is something we are hesitant about because of how much we have to be involved, but honestly, working with Webtoons and the creator, it was a lot of fun. And, you know, because I was able to read the comics, I was able to tie a theme in, which is an estate developer. They He has like these critter creatures who help him Basically, they're like the the power tools, right? And then so, Visions of Mana, I we have a cute legendary beast called Ramco. And so, we were like, "What if we centered the story around her?" And then it's just this back-and-forth collaboration of like, "How can we integrate Lloyd and his hilarious, you know, personality?" And then how do we integrate the Mana franchise into it? So, it was just honestly a lot of fun and very seamless,

which is something as a marketer I cannot appreciate more because there's so much going on. And so, at the end of it it helped us tell, "Hey, you like these themes in The Greatest Estate Developer? Here's the themes that we have in Visions of Mana." So, it felt very natural, and it really did feel like just an extended story of Lloyd's adventures. And at the end of it, you know, just being like, "Hey, if you like this, like you should go check out our page and like maybe consider bringing Zomana and yeah, as Christine said, the results speak for themselves. We saw an amazing lift as well for the game.
Oh, that's great. So, what and one of the things too is people might make an assumption, oh, it's anime or it's it's comics. That's that's an Eastern that's for an Eastern audience, but a lot of what we're talking about are KPIs driven in the West. And actually, when I isolated just looking at your numbers in the West in tier one Western markets, they're still like just as powerful. Like the Monopoly Go number, I think I cited was looking at tier one only numbers on on MAU. It just found it to

be that big. So, Christine, first tell me a little bit more about like the Western focus that you have, not just Eastern.
Our platform started in in in Korea, of course, but we've been in the US for about 10 years, more than 10 years. Actually, we hit our 10-year anniversary last year. Our presence is growing in North America. I mean, anime manga is not a niche category anymore. I would say about 90% of our users are younger than the age of 34, and this is talking about North America only. I mean, the time that they spend on our platform is about 30 minutes per day. This is as much as Snapchat. And and you compare Snapchat not to not to kind of, you know, put down on Snapchat, but you know, there's a lot of scrolling and videos, but Webcomic is like a content and a story. So, if you lose a panel, like if you lose like a point in a story, you miss the whole thing. So, people are really engaged and immersed in our app, which I think is very strong. I would say we have really big titles that are not only

coming from Korea or Japan, but we have local creators here in North America that are developing stories, and some of the titles like Mafia Nanny and other Fogland. There's so many on Ordinary that all the creators are based in the US. That's why we have really strong presence at like San Diego Comic Con or in New York Comic Con, too.
Okay. That's super interesting. Tell me about I think Square Enix did another campaign with another game brand that's coming out. Walk me through that one.
Yeah. So, we had Dragon Quest VII reimagined, which is a remade game for Dragon Quest VII. And so, that one was really unique because the art style had changed so differently from the original franchise and we were really looking to find a way to bring out that craftsmanship because in the game they're actually made out of real dolls and then incorporated into the game. And so, that kind of craftsmanship idea came where we're like, "Well, Webtoon is a

craftsmanship of themselves." And so, for us we want to kind of pull in those elements, but also like at the base of Dragon Quest as a franchise, it is a fun adventure, exploring lands, and kind of finding yourself. And so, with the diverse level of how many stories Webtoons has, there's no shortage of potential partners. And so, Webtoons provided us a few options and one that stood out was Tabletop, which is basically these fun mini adventures where it's kind of like D&D, which was perfect. So, we're like, "That is such an amazing match. We love it. The art style is very cute. It's It feels like Adventure Time in a way." So, we were like, "Can we do this?" And the team was like, "Yeah, let's try this. Like, we've never done this before." So, it was also nice to bring our developers into something new in a new medium. I remember at one point they created some comics cuz we just provided three pitches. We're like, "Here's some pitches. What do you think?" They came back with an idea and like I remember

looking at one of the panels and I was like, "Hey, what what is this? Can you describe it to me?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah. this is the what the outfit from the original game and all this." They were just telling me these, and I was like, "Wait, you know the original game?" And they're like, "Yeah, we play it." I was like, "What?" And so, again, just amazing to see that crossover where not only the fans, but the creators themselves, a lot of them do game, right? And it makes total sense. And so, again, it was really fun to be able to like toss back and forth of like, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool to like add this little sneak peek for DQ fans?" Like, "Oh, this is a way we can better incorporate the characters into the stories and have an adventure." And so, basically, their characters and our characters were going on different adventures, and again, it was so fun because we're able to incorporate ourselves into their story, they were able to highlight our story, and it just felt like such a seamless partnership. I know I say that a lot, but because of these
is. I love when a creator we reach out to the creator. Basically, what the process

is like, we recommend a number of creators to the brand, and the brand selects. And then we we reach out to the creator cuz they're releasing episodes every week, right? They're really swamped, so sometimes they're not available. But when we reach out with a title, like, "Hey, we have Square Enix, we have a Dragon Quest 7 that's coming out." And they're like, "Oh my god, I want to do it. Like, I'm so excited. I'm a fan." We love that reaction because the more the creators are engaged, they like to bring like added value into cuz they're the ones that know best of their own story, but also the game, right? And I think that's where the synergy happens. And what's more amazing is that the community recognizes that. The community is a big fan of the title, but also of a game. So, we see great synergy when those two IPs come together. There's really genuine and authentic engagement towards to it. Well, but one thing I do want to mention is that not

only we, you know, cuz we're kind of like an upper funnel where more like an awareness level where you know, get the community kind of get engaged. It's more like a lower building, but we also make sure through our platform, you know, using all those impressions and banners and videos and make sure that this content is visible and is exposed and it makes sure that it's, you know, shown around community. We love when our users, you know, screenshot this and put it on Reddit and like, "Oh my god, did you see this?" Because people love sharing a great content, a great collab, right? This is where we see really the synergy explodes.
One of the things as a marketer and you're juggling so many different campaigns, sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze. Like, "Oh, a creator can be a pain in the ass. You know, how many revisions do we have to go through? Are they true to my brand? I have like, what if I have an IP? Do they have brand guidelines?" So, I don't know, Christine, do you want to walk me through like like how long does it take

in the general process? And then, Mel, it sounds like it was super smooth on your end. So, Christine first, like walk me through the process.
So, we have multiple options of working with a creator, right? If you have more liberty on your IP and you have ways to engage, we have multiple ways to engage. For example, one of the ways is maybe driving like a UGC contest. Two years ago, we ran a UGC contest with Capcom's Monster Hunter Worlds. We gave three prompts to our UGC community and one of the prompts was like, "Just draw a story imagining you're the the monster in the wilds." And people went like people went crazy. They were so excited. They were so excited to be part of it, right? So, this is the type of collab that takes about three to to four months, max five months, I would say, because we want to make sure we give enough time for the UGC community to draw and engage with

the content, right? And so we have campaign like those that are very like high impact but also high resource. Sometimes we connect with a creator and create like a branded webtoon, which is like 48 episodes. And we worked with Sega's Atlas to create a four episode around this. It was a single creator creating a content. And this would also take about I would say three to four months. A little less scope. So depends on you know the resource and the time given. We customize the type of scope for the brand. So the ones that we work with Square Enix was called branded epilogue story, which is a spin-off content. And I think to develop this is takes about a month or a month and a half, which is fairly a shorter time compared to other custom contents. Is there are there like approval rights? Like is it hey like give me bullet points of the story, let me see the sketches before you finish it? Absolutely. Mel, why don't you tell me about your experience on the branded

epilogue?
Yeah. So definitely as a marketer, I think we need to nail down like what are the guidelines, what are the hurdles that we're going to be facing that they should know about. And ultimately like do we have a vision or are we letting them, you know, have some themes and then and going for it. So I think that is definitely the key to success. So for, you know, for Visions of Mana and Dragon Quest they're actually very different from our side. For Visions of Mana, we didn't have too many stipulations. We're like, "Hey, here's our idea. This is kind of what we wanted to go for." So that one I think we completed in like a month and a half. And it was pretty quick reviews on our side because we aligned on what we wanted to see and then they were bringing it to life, which was just beautiful and amazing. And then for Dragon Quest, we do have more approval processes on our side. So we were like, "Hey Webtoons, could we have like a timeline of like 3 to 4 months because that's how long it's going to take us?" And they were very accommodating. And that one we actually

gave them three scenarios and we're like, "Let you pick. Like, tell us what you want to create." So, it's very flexible based on what you need. And I think the biggest thing is just making sure you're setting up the creator for success because, you know, if if you don't even know what you want to get out of it or like, for me, reading these comics helped me connect with the brands. And if you don't connect with them, right? Like, how are you supposed to expect the communities to connect with them? So, there's definitely some, you know, flexibility, but I think as marketers we need to come prepared as well.
Can you utilize any of this creative in your own advertising? Like, user acquisition, you know, one of the challenges, you know, especially in mobile, is can you say, "Hey creator, I would like to use some of your content in my advertising for my game?" Is that generally okay?
Yeah, absolutely. What we do is we don't want these amazing collab content to just stay on our platform. We want the brands to use it and use it for their paid media, owned media, or whatever.

So, we we allow that license to be expanded.
Oh, that's great because that could be just a whole other source of user acquisition or marketing or even, you know, owned social content that you could say, "Check out the story." That's so interesting.
Yeah, we actually did that for Dragon Quest 7 where we reached out to the creator. We're like, "Hey, would you be down for a collab on Instagram?" They're like, "Yeah, totally." And we saw a 91% lift in our Instagram page. So, it's amazing to see their community come over and vice versa and support one another. And we had so many comments where we're like, "Oh, I didn't even know you guys collab. Like, let me go check out the episode." So, that was really awesome to see like not just on the platform. It can definitely live outside and the community is just as responsive.
You know, you think about old school product placement like, "Look at the Coke can in the movie and everyone's like, "Ah, that's so cheesy." But But here, I think what have been the keys to have that be authentic and to have the community respected?
Yeah, I think definitely as marketers,

we need to make sure that who we're partnering with, we also understand where the connection is, right? So, if I have a game that's an RPG, let's just say, and I go to a uh Webtoon that is super serious and like a little gritty, those don't necessarily match, right? And so, for us, it's doing our due diligence of finding creators that we can actually connect with, that the community is someone who's not going to reject our brand, right? Cuz then it just doesn't feel authentic. I have seen advertisements where they're just like, here's a product placement, and they did not find any way to naturally integrate, and that's the biggest difference, right? Like, both gamers as well as Webtoons, like, we're into stories, right? And if your stories feel disjointed, it's an ad, right? Like, through and through it's an ad. But when they do connect, then it feels like there's added content, that there is something that, oh, okay, got it. I like this, [clears throat] so I'm going to like that. And so, from our side, that that's important, right? We have to resonate, we have to do a little bit of our

homework and make sure, like, do these line up? And let the creative freedom, right? So, like, when I was working with our Webtoon creators, I let them tell me, like, hey, this is how my audience likes things, and then I'd work with them of like, this is what our audience likes, right? And finding that like perfect merge, I guess.
You really hit the spot, Mel. I think another point is, you know, our platform is really based on fandom. You know, fandom is is born on Webtoon, where we connect, uplift, inspire passionate fans. We build a community-oriented experience on Webtoons to foster strong, loyal fan base that feels connected to both their favorite stories and to their community. So, this isn't more like a forced product placement. This is like an immerse of an existing content but worked by your favorite creator, which is based on fandom. I think, you know, people talk about fandom and building their lore, building the fandom and the loyalty. I think this is really a one of

the unique platforms that really they do still exist, that authenticity.
Yeah, it's so interesting. It's like a combination of Roblox, right? You have all of these creators making these great creations that people become fans of. Then it's also like influencer marketing because like you said earlier, they become influencers. And then there is content, you know, you so you're competing with in a sense like the streamers that are making, you know, the TikToks and the YouTubes. It's just so interesting the intersection of the fandom and the platform and the delivery. And then now as a marketing channel. So, actually this is what I wanted to ask you, Mel, is listen, you probably have lots of different marketing channels and activations. How did your Webtoon campaign stack up in terms of performance and in terms of, you know, maybe like general I mean, I don't not asking for all of the details, but general costs. You know, a lot of our listeners are going to be like you know, actually we and you know, Christine and the the team was there in

LA. And so the first thing that, you know, like, you know, the in the audience were like, "What's the CPM? What's your CPI? What's your ROAS?" Now, but we'll get there in a we'll get there in a second. But Mel, first just tell me about how did it work in terms of your your your overall campaign?
Yeah. So, like we mentioned, for both Vision of the Mana and for Dragon Quest 7, we were using them as an awareness because we want to drive people to understand, "Hey, these two games are out and this is how we connect them to your stories, right?" And so for us, those are great and they work really well, but they don't have that level of personal touch, right? And we're kind of throwing it out to a wider audience. And so with Webtoons, we were able to really narrow into our target, but also keep it pretty broad within that. And for us, we're seeing when we compare it to our benchmarks, we were beating our estimated benchmarks and our cost per clicks and our visibilities. I know for Christine, she was like, "These are doing really well even for our

platforms." So I was like, just to see that again, like when compared to our other performance for awareness at that time, they were beating the benchmarks. So I I not able to go into specific details, but yeah. It's done so well that we are like, "When can we partner next?"
[laughter]
That's what I'm trying to understand. And I think what's interesting is you're you're calling out and you know, the thing I was arguing with the audience is they're like, "What's the ROAS and the CPI?" I'm like, "Well, you have to understand where in the funnel this fits. Not everything can be performance marketing that is attributed to to that level of detail." So Christine, talk to me a little bit about like the performance that you saw on your side against other kinds of IP and then we'll we'll we'll talk a little bit more about maybe some of the other products that you have that do go a little bit lower funnel.
We do have a lower funnel KPI driven product which I will get to next, but I do want to point out that people categorize us as like a anime manga like

a category, very niche. But when we find a research with what video games do our users play, we'll be surprised to see a lot of different genres across first-person shooters, Battle Royale, horror, survival horror. There's also we have a really big genre of horror and thriller of the content, right? So we people think that it's like maybe anime, like maybe just you know, JRPGs very works very well with Webtoon, but we've actually seen very different types of genres, very diverse genres, you know, that our users are playing. We do have like a research that we do can share in terms of like the game genres, top genres. And we would be surprised to see how diverse our users are playing the games.
Well, that's that's super fascinating and I think a lot of people need to realize that yeah, you don't have to have an anime game to come to your platform. In fact, I think Excuse me for this question, Miss Square

Enix, but didn't OverWatch do something with you all around the 10th anniversary if I remember? Like so it's it can be shooters, it can be hero shooters.
Yeah, we did a content around OverWatch which I mean we really don't limit ourselves to any type of genre. I mean, I would love to do more expanded, you know, Right now we're focusing a lot on expanding male audience, the millennials, the male millennials, the real comic fans because we on our platform we also have a lot of Marvel content. We work very close with Disney to bring their IP into our format of vertical reading. So, we want to tap into that audience, too. So, and what what game does the millennial male play? You know, it's it's just that link all goes together. So, I think we have some exciting collabs coming out soon. So, we'll be happy to share with you next.
Oh, I can't wait to hear. You said

Marvel, so and by the way, we just as we record this, Spider-Man just had the biggest opening weekend of all time. You know, we're joking like is Doomsday going to be able to beat it? I don't know. But let me ask you a little bit about You said you said the male audience. I was actually surprised to learn that you have a lot of females on your platform. What's the gender split that you're seeing?
Right now we have about 60% female and 40% male. About 90% of our users are younger than the age of 34. Because most of our very popular titles started as romance titles, we did see a lot of female more female audience. But what's surprising is you see more female audience, but they're all still gamers.
They're gamers. I know. Everyone forgets that women play games. But I think it's so it sounds like you're actually growing your audience with men and slightly older men because Gen Z is predominantly under 34. So we just

talked about upper funnel, a little bit mid funnel. Tell me about your lower funnel opportunities.
Yeah, so we do have a product called, as I mentioned briefly, we have an offer wall. We call it the Coin Hunter. Webtoon is free of service, but sometimes we have paid episodes, right? You have to wait a couple weeks to read the newest episodes. And the currency we use on our platform are coins. You can either pay the coin or you can engage in some activities to be rewarded the coins. So, the Coin Hunter rewards our users with more value for the actions they're already taking. So, we know that our users are already heavy gamers. They're already always looking for which game to play next. So, we work with different gaming brands to incentivize the users in like them apps install or download the game and play up to a certain rounds, and that will incentivize you with coins. But one of

the things that we found very interesting is playing around adding the game to the wish list on Steam because Steam is also on mobile, and because most of our users are reading content on mobile, we just made it very seamlessly working. So, what happens is it's really fun. So, a Webtoon reader sees your campaign, taps in, jumps to Steam, adds the game to their wish list, verify it, and then they get a coin reward. It's so simple, and the proof is in the performance. We see about 10,000 verified wish list adds a week through this campaign. So, it's it's a first product of its kind, and it's like an ad model that guarantees Steam wish list adds. Of course, it's inorganic, it's rewarded, but we've seen that it it has worked. A lot of brands are very interested about this product because this is the only way to get people add the game into their wish list. And what's interesting is people don't actually go back and cancel it just

because it's not like other games or apps that keep sending you like notifications. You just add the game into the wish list, and and that's it. And people are incentivized with coins, and then they just go along and read their favorite content. So, we made it very seamless and fun and easy for users to engage. This pay per conversion, so you pay for that 10,000 verified wish list ads.
Can you tell me a couple of games or brands that have utilized this type of campaign or
Oh, I can't I don't I can't share the names exactly, but you if you go on on our app you'll see it. Yeah. If you go on our app you can see which games are there. It's God, there's a lot of brands that are are, you know, having fun with this product.
That makes sense. I think I think I had heard there was like someone from Hasbro who was on the stage at a GamesBeat event. So, I'll just kind of leave it leave it at that. So, no, super interesting. I think does

this work in a sense for mobile as well? Like mobile games or right now are you just doing the the convert to wish list?
So, the games that are on the wish list are obviously not mobile. [clears throat] They're console games. But, we integrate our MMP, so people can easily just go download and get the coins. That's like the easiest and the most simple way of being rewarded and it you know, it converts. But, it's just really interesting to see how a lot of the brands that we work with are actually console and PC. Most of our users are on our mobile app, about 80% and it's hard to see that correlation between console, but I think what the brands see is that most of their users are very mobile-friendly and they're Gen Z and they're consuming great content. I think that's what they want their brands to integrate on our platform and to expand

the visibility there. What else have I forgotten to ask you all? Mel, you have so many different things coming, you but it sounds like you had a lot of success with these campaigns. What are you looking forward to next and maybe if you had a wish list for Webtoon to give you as a marketer, what would that be?
Yeah, it's a it's a big question. We have quite a bit coming out for Square Enix, so some exciting news coming down the way. Definitely, we're interested in the Steam wish list because man, that PC category is starting to grow more and more. So, definitely I'm looking to do that, but also again, just looking to see how we can integrate into this, you know, into the community like both gamers and Webtoons are huge fans and it's nice to see that the fandoms can combine.
Well, just to recap, it sounds like so on the upper funnel side, you can create a completely custom Webtoon with a creator. You can do some collaborations with the creator and it sounds like there's a lot of flexibility and a brand

reaches out to you and you kind of facilitate you know, what's the right creator, what's the right way that you set up the collaboration. It sounds like there's multiple ways that you run the collaboration and then on the lower funnel, it sounds like there's this, you know, in a sense an offer wall product that allows you to have a bit more pay for conversion type of of mechanics involved. So, I don't know, did I summarize that correctly?
You're an expert an expert now.
All right, yeah, there we go. No, I just the reason why I wanted to talk to you so much is as marketers we are struggling with channels. We are struggling with reach. It feels like everyone's pushing for performance marketing user acquisition or you know, many people are are going back to you know, traditional brand marketing or awareness marketing. It sounds like I I like to talk about a word called brand formance which is the combination or things that live in the little bit of the middle of this. And so in terms of a new brand formance channel, I was excited to talk to you because I don't I

don't you're this channel that no one really thinks of and I wanted to highlight something that you all are bringing to the table for other marketers out there on mobile, PC, and console. And I think that's something that people don't realize too is that you hit you hit all of them. So, thank you both for coming on and Mel, congratulations on getting married this weekend.
[laughter]
Thank you so much. It's lovely being here.
And that's it and thanks to everyone for coming. See you next time.
Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Mel.
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