Korea Naver Ads

Naver PPC Search Ads Korean SEM

Naver is an important search engine in South Korea. Depending on which statistics one looks at, it is between 22% (Statcounter)* and astonishing 68% (Acecounter)*. Either way, Naver does have a significant market share – eventually the dominant part. Looking into Naver PPC for marketing your company does definitely make sense!
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Leo Ling, Search Expert
Leo Ling Asian SEO & PPC Expert
Qing He, Head of Search, Jademond Digital
Qing He Head of Search
Advertising on Naver offers a whole new experience compared to Google

Advertising in South Korea: Naver Ads

The search results pages on Naver.com are a whole lot different from what you night be used to by Google, Bing, Baidu and Yandex.
They are always(!) heavily ads loaded in the top, segmented by types showing Naver blog content in block, UGC / Q&A / Forum content in a block and regular websites results in a block. SEO is possible but totally different from the SEO you know.
The best chance for fast results is Naver PPC Advertising. Let us help you plan it thoroughly.
15+
Years in Asian PPC
10+
Years in Korean PPC

Naver is More Than a Search Engine

Naver is not like Google

“Compared to Google, Naver is considered more than a search engine by Koreans. Naver also plays a big role in news and media, providing information about weather, shopping, popular topics, and so on.” - Qing
Qing He, Jademond Digital Head of Search
Qing He, Head of Search
Learn About Naver Ads

Advertising in Korea – FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION

Have questions about running Naver Ads campaigns in South Korea? Naver Ads powers 68% of South Korea's search market — but the platform works fundamentally differently than Google Ads or Baidu. Below are answers to the most common questions we hear from brands launching their first Naver campaign: how bidding works, keyword strategy differences, conversion tracking setup, and why your Google Ads expertise won't directly transfer. If you don't find your answer here, reach out — Jademond Digital manages Naver Ads for international brands entering the Korean market.

Which Search Engine is the most important in South Korea?
That highly depends on the statistics you want to believe. The international internet stats service provider Statcounter says Google is the largest search provider with 71% share, the Korean service Acecounter says that Naver is the most important search engine with 68% share. So depending. In both cases Google and Naver together have the majority of searches on their platforms. We tend to believe the Korean service being more accurate for South Korean data, as these services are based on numbers on clickstream data, which we believe the Korean service has better coverage of Korean web users, making the statistic more believable.
Should we run Ads through Naver?
Definitely you should. Our experience shows that most of our clients (not all) get more and better conversions through Naver Ads than Google Ads.
Should we run Ads through Google Korea?
Of course! Although Naver Ads are most likely the more effective Ads channel, Google Ads still has some market share and lead to meaningful conversions. The mix of different channels makes sense.
Should Naver Ads be in Korean language?
Yes! People in Korea often only search for English keywords, if they want to get a translation to the Korean language. So if you want to attract clients, you need to target Korean keywords and serve Korean ads.

68.56% Marketshare for Naver (via Acecounter)

Search Engine Market Share: Naver

The Korean online statistics provider Acecounter sees the Korean search engine Naver (Naver.com) with the highest share of the Korean search market of 68.56% in Q4 2020, follwed by Google iwth 22.91% market share and the second best known Korean search engine DAUM (daum.net) with still 6.95% market share. Clearly stating Naver to be the most important search engine and therefor Search Ads platform in South Korea. (Source: https://www.acecounter.com/www2/ education/ trendReportDetail.amz?rno=231)
Korea Naver Marketshare via Acecounter
Naver Marketshare via Acecounter

23.01% Marketshare for Naver (via Statcounter)

Search Engine Market Share: Naver

The international internet stats tracker Statcounter sees a different marketshare for these search engines: In their data sample Google is the top player with 45.72%, followed by Naver with 45.46%.

But which of these two totally different statistics is true now? Even though this statistic still shows Google being dominant by very little, Naver still holds a market share of 45.46%, which is stronger than Bing, the worlds second strongest search engine, in any other market. (Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/south-korea/)
Search Engine Market Share: Naver Statcounter
Naver Marketshare via Statcounter

Naver PPC revenue more than 54%

The local Korean media AceCounter says that Naver still has more than 68% of search market share and its PPC revenue more than 54% makes the understanding of Naver PPC very important if to succeed in Korea market. Naver Brands Ads count for another 10.6% and Naver Shopping Ads for yet another 6.5%.

So all together Naver counts for 71.6% of Ads market share with Google Ads only counting for 18%, which makes Google still the second most important Ads provider in South Korea – but if you want to reach the right audience, you need to go for advertising with Naver.

To give you an idea of the uniqueness of Naver, below you can see a comparison between Google Ads and Naver PPC.
naver ppc revenue
Naver PPC Revenue

1. Naver Ads has more formats than Google Ads.

Compared to Google, Naver is considered more than a search engine by Koreans. Naver also plays a big role in news and media, providing information about weather, shopping, popular topics, and so on. In addition, Naver’s social media products, such as Naver Café, are much more influential and are heavily used by Korean users.

Therefore, Naver Ads offers not only Search Ads, but also Display Ads, including Search Ads (called PowerLink Ads), Product Search Ads (called Shopping Search Ads), Content Display Ads (called PowerContent Ads), Brand Search Ads and Location Based Ads / Places Search Ads.
Naver Search Ads Example
Naver Search Ads Example

2. Naver Ads offers fewer different matching options for keywords.

Google Ads offers four keyword match types: broad match, broad match with modifier, phrase match and exact match.

Naver Ads offers two keyword match types: exact match and keyword expansion. The latter is in the testing phase and is not yet available in the backend control panel.

The disadvantage of Exact Match is also obvious: difficulties in expanding the keyword pool. As a result, a certain number of keywords with conversion potential are lost.

Naver’s “Keyword Expansion” feature, which is similar to Google’s Broad Match feature, is usually triggered by a large number of irrelevant search queries, and the budget was quickly used up when this feature was activated, and the CTR dropped to 1/5 of the usual. Therefore, excluding negative keywords is crucial when using the Keyword Expansion feature.

If the Keyword Extension feature is set to ON, your ads may still appear with synonyms even if the ad group keyword is turned off or paused, and you may have to pay for a click. Therefore, you need to set both the ad group and the function to OFF when you pause or stop the ads.
Naver has only Exact Match and Keywords Expansion
Naver has only Exact Match and Keywords Expansion

3. Naver has more Paid Listings on its SERP

Google usually places a maximum of 3 ads on top of its first SERP (Search Engine Result Page).

Naver, on the other hand, can easily place 10 paid ads before the organic ads. As a result, the click-through rate is much lower than Google. If you are used to 2% CTR being just an acceptable metric, you need to be prepared for the fact that you will very often see an average CTR of 0.5% in Naver’s PPC reports.
Naver Ads Dominance
Naver Ads Dominance

4. Naver Ads Tracking is less automatic than Google

If you use Google Analytics, you can track your Naver PPC performance, but this requires you to manually add the UTM code to each ad. Naver has a semi-automated tool (see below) that can save you this labor-intensive work, but still can’t compare to Google, as you still need to work with multiple tables that allow you to combine the Naver template sheet and your GA tracking sheet to see which keywords from which campaign are performing in Google Analytics.
Naver’s semi-automated Keyword Performance Tracking Tool
Naver’s semi-automated Keyword Performance Tracking Tool

5. Naver Ads has stricter censorship than Google

You can enable the features to insert dynamic keywords and site links in Naver ads, but the censorship of the ad texts is very strict. Naver will ask you to provide documents such as brand certificate when you insert your brand terms in ads, and when you insert location-based ads, you need to provide business registration of stores, etc. Regulated industries like medical and hospitals cannot run ads with dynamic keywords. Also, if you insert images into the ad, you need to prove that you own the copyright of the graphic elements.

We hope the above paragraphs give you an idea of the differences between Naver PPC and Google SEa as you know it. There are many more that we can list if we cover them exhaustively. If you are curious, please feel free to contact Korea digital marketing.
Kun Tang
Kun Tang Founder & CEO

If you thought the Search and Advertising market in China is different – you have not experienced the South Korean search market yet. On the page above you can read about some of the differences you can experience if you want to advertise in Korea. But every industry is different. I want to offer you to have a free consultation call with one of our experts for the Korean market, to find out if and how the best online marketing strategy should look like for your business.

Fill out the form on the right and an expert will contact you for the free consultation.

— Kun

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