What is a typical mobile game marketing in Korea?

What do you think of Korean mobile game market? Is it one of the important markets for your game or do you think it’s just a complex market to grasp?

Definitely, Korea is an Asian country sharing one unique language and culture and the mobile game market is dominated by RPG games developed by a few local publishers.

But, even local big developers are not always successful and opportunities lie in niche titles which get popularity without massive marketing. If you are a mobile game developer who is aiming for global or Asian market, you cannot but pay attention to the world’s 4th largest market.

Localization level to service in Korea is different from game to game, but here I’ll mainly talk about how a typical mobile game marketing is done in Korea so hope you better understand the market and find some your own marketing strategies and opportunities.

Korean Google Play market is expected to grow to $3 billion for the first time this year with the launch of ‘Lineage M’ on June. Due to this game, both Korean Google Play and Apple App Store also recorded the world-best revenue in 3Q.

As of August, Top 3 games including Lineage M take 65 %, top 10 take 78% of Korean Google Play revenue. This ratio is the highest number so far and market growth seems to largely depend on a few big titles.

But on the other hand, we can say there are about 1 billion, 30% of market share is still left to the rest of games if we look on the other side.

Different from big publisher titles, there are often games which rank in the top grossing 25 without massive launch marketing.

Girls’ Frontline by Longchen, a Taiwan publisher hit the top grossing 3 after 5 days from the launch. This game is gaining popularity with 20’s male due to an animation-style graphic and as a ‘Play to win’ game, not a typical ‘Pay to win’ model in Korea. The game keeps top grossing 10 from the launch on June.

Big match-3 game ‘Homescape’ by Playrix is also popular in Korea as well as globally. This game gradually increased top grossing rank from the global launch on Sep and keep top grossing 25. The game seems to be supported by 30’s female.

RPG is the most lucrative genre, but like Girls’ Frontline or Homescape there are chances to the niche games if the game can get and maintain attention from its core users.

Then, what kinds of marketing do local big players do when they launch games? Pre-registration over a month, casting star models and TV commercials are considered as the formula to make a big hit in Korea.

Especially TV ads are used from pre-registration period these days and Cable TV is popular to the medium-sized publishers as well as big players due to relatively low price than National TV and various channels and programs.

Generally, when Netmarble launches a new game, marketing budget is estimated to be $2–3 million. This will include model fee, online advertising on such as Naver or Youtube, mobile advertising and CATV throughout pre-launch to launch period.

NCSoft is guessed to spend more than $10 million when they launched Lineage M. They heavily invested in National TV commercial and portal Naver banner featuring Korean actor Choi Min-sik from the pre-registration campaign.

Of course, all new users through this kind of massive marketing will not be playing users of the game. But, big advertisers definitely can reach to more broad, general user base as well as drive game’s awareness and engagement. After all, it’s a winner’s strategy to take more and longer market share.

Korea is a single country sharing Korean language and culture, so soft launch to test a game’s retention and monetization in other markets is not familiar. As many Korean developers target Korean market as their 1st priority, it usually depends on a publisher’s decision on how much they budget for launch marketing or how much they plan for their user acquisition besides basic ASO, community and Google Play Featured.

Generally in case of small or medium-sized developers, a launch budget ranges $200–300K to allocate on reward ads and non-incentivized CPI. Developers with less budget, they can test Facebook or Google install advertising with organic & social growth.

Below are some details of Korean marketing channels through pre-launch and launch period. Top publishers tend to use brand marketing channels from the pre-launch and others add brand marketing when their game increases the rank to the top chart.

Pre-Launch

1. Pre-registration event: It is proceeded before the game launch to catch users’ attention in advance. Users can get in-game reward for milestone reached by registering the event. The event can be promoted through online community, viral, facebook advertising and brand campaigns.

2. Pre-registration app : There are paid & free pre-registration service apps through which users can make a pre-registration. Advertisers can use this service together with their own pre-registration event.

3. Community : Local publishers typically set up Naver Cafe as their own marketing channel from the pre-launch. This community also can be accessed from in-game by implementing Naver Cafe plugin.

Launch

4. Reward CPI : Reward ads are used for rank boost to the top chart. Cost per download or install ranges $0.2-$0.3 and about 300K-500K downloads for 5–7 days are needed to enter top free 5 on Google Play.

5. Non-incentivized CPI: There are many global and local mobile ad networks in Korea and most installs comes from affiliate networks with overseas traffic sources. Fraud is also a hot issue and is similar to overseas cases & types. CPI Prices ranges from $1.5–$3 on average.

6. Naver brand search: If the user put the brand or brand-related keywords at portal Naver, Naver shows brand advertising images as a result of search. It can have a high conversion rate or quality users as users know the game and search the words with interest.

7. Naver main banner: It’s a display advertising at Naver main screen. It can have a low performance in term of conversion rate, but can reach/expose to huge amounts of traffic who use portal Naver. Price ranges $2K-20K per hour according the day and time.

8. Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is getting attention as a new way of user acquisition. Micro youtubers with 100K- 300K followers can be charged $2K-$5K while star youtubers with +1M followers range over $20K as a contents creation fee..

9. Offline ads: Like Naver main banner, advertisers can reach to the floating population for daily work through subway or bus advertising. Bus ads range $500 to $1,000 per bus for a month and subways screen door ads range $5K to over $10K per spot according to floating population of the subway, ad type etc.

10. TV : TV is known as most expensive but most effective brand advertising to expose to the massive audience. Generally Cable TV budget for a mobile game ranges from a few hundred thousand dollars to 1 million, and National TV runs into many million dollars.

Korean market is not ungraspable, non-breakable market if you can read and find a chance for your games. And your game can succeed if it appeals to its target users even in the very crowded market. Important thing is to find your own market approach and strategy that fits with your game and business strategies.

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