{"id":94525,"date":"2026-09-20T15:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T15:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/94525\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T15:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T15:58:14","slug":"naver-webtoon-takes-japan-ad-sales-in-house-courts-game-makers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/94525\/","title":{"rendered":"Naver Webtoon Takes Japan Ad Sales In-House, Courts Game Makers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LineLine Manga, Naver Webtoon’s distribution channel in Japan, ran a storytelling ad for “Persona 3 Reload,” a title from Japanese game maker Sega. Photo courtesy of Naver Webtoon<\/p>\n

TOKYO \u2014 Naver Webtoon has shifted its Japanese advertising business from outside agencies to direct sales and begun a full-scale sales push. The strategy is to use Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2026, Asia’s largest gaming expo, as a stage for finding global game advertisers. The company judged that demand for collaboration could grow because webtoons and games share much of the same user base.<\/p>\n

Line Manga, Naver Webtoon’s distribution channel in Japan, will sell advertising products directly in the local market starting in the second half of this year, according to information technology industry sources on the 20th. Line Manga had previously entrusted its Japanese advertising business to outside agencies, but has worked since the start of this year to move to direct sales, as it already does in the Korean and North American markets.<\/p>\n

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The main targets are large global advertisers looking to enter the Japanese market. As part of the transition, Naver Webtoon set up a business-to-business booth at TGS 2026 and held business meetings with officials from about 100 game companies.<\/p>\n

Roh Kyu-ho, head of global advertising business at Webtoon Entertainment, said the company had overhauled its advertising products for the Japanese market and was now beginning sales in earnest. “At this TGS, we met global game companies including Japanese ones, as well as local agencies, and discussed partnerships,” he said. He added that the company plans to keep taking part in events such as China’s ChinaJoy and Korea’s G-Star.<\/p>\n

\"NohNoh Kyu-ho, head of global advertising business at Webtoon Entertainment, explains the company’s advertising strategy in Japan at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2026 venue on Sept. 17. Tokyo \u2014 Lee Jin-seok<\/p>\n

Behind Naver Webtoon’s entry into the Japanese advertising market is the high degree of user overlap between webtoons and games. Both types of content are built on fandoms, leaving ample room for collaboration, the company said. Among the titles shown at TGS, a considerable number were based on Japanese comics or webtoons, a sign that the two industries are finding more common ground.<\/p>\n

Advertising formats are also diversifying. They range from traditional banner ads to “splash” ads that fill the entire screen with a brand when an app launches, and rewarded ads that give users “cookies,” the currency used to unlock webtoon episodes, when clicked.<\/p>\n

\"AA collaboration between Naver Webtoon and global gaming platform PlayStation. Photo courtesy of Naver Webtoon<\/p>\n

Storytelling ads, which turn the narrative of a new game into a webtoon to deepen engagement, are a strength the company emphasizes. Naver Webtoon has built up experience combining games and webtoons through production partnerships with major Japanese game companies such as Sega and Capcom, as well as Sony’s PlayStation platform.<\/p>\n

Revenue diversification is another reason Naver Webtoon is investing in advertising. Webtoon Entertainment’s advertising revenue in the first half of this year was $90.6 million, or about 125.3 billion won, up 6.5% from a year earlier. Revenue from its Japanese business over the same period fell 5.2% to $324.5 million, or about 448.9 billion won. With growth in Japan stalling, the need to build advertising into a new revenue source has grown.<\/p>\n

Growth in Japan’s advertising market itself also provides a favorable backdrop. Internet advertising spending in Japan rose 21.4% in two years, from 3.333 trillion yen in 2023 to 4.0459 trillion yen in 2025, according to Japanese advertising agency Dentsu. Dentsu attributed the market’s growth to advertising demand in entertainment sectors including games and other hobbies and leisure activities.<\/p>\n

Roh said this year’s Tokyo Game Show was the company’s first external stage since it moved its Japanese advertising business to direct sales. “It gave us a chance to show Japanese game companies that Webtoon Entertainment is a company that has both advertising formats familiar to the Japanese market and global supply,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Line Manga, Naver Webtoon’s distribution channel in Japan, ran a storytelling ad for “Persona 3 Reload,” a title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[217,215,22229,58636,58635,214,216,58633,58632,36511,58634],"class_list":["post-94525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-business-of-japan","tag-dentsu","tag-game-advertising","tag-japan-advertising-market","tag-japans-business","tag-japanese-business","tag-line-manga","tag-naver-webtoon","tag-tokyo-game-show-2026","tag-webtoon-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}