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Paid channels in Korea: where the money leaks
Korean paid media has a few billing rules that surprise foreign marketers, and all of them are written in the platforms' own help pages. This page lists the three that cost the most when missed, then adds what we know about Toss and a checklist for hiring a local agency.
1. Naver Place ads bill a tap on "directions"
Naver Search Ads, "How is Place ad billing scoped"개별 플레이스 업체 페이지로 이동하는 클릭 및 광고 노출 요소 중 '전화', '예약', '저장하기', '길찾기' 아이콘, '방문자 리뷰', '플레이스 플러스(beta)' 등) 클릭에 대해서 과금합니다.
Our rendering: "We bill clicks that open the shop page and clicks on the call, booking, save, directions, visitor review and Place Plus elements."
Same document길찾기 출발 아이콘, 공유하기 아이콘 클릭에 대해서는 과금하지 않습니다.
Our rendering: "Clicks on the 'start navigation' icon and the share icon are not billed."
A tap on "directions" is billed; the "start" button inside it is not. On desktop map search, clicking the map marker alone is billed; on mobile, only the summary card that opens after the marker. The same campaign bills at different moments on different devices.
2. Local keywords get three slots, not ten
Naver Search Ads, "How is Power Link ranking decided"다만, 검색 품질 향상을 위해 검색 사용자가 많이 찾지 않는 일부 키워드의 광고는 파워링크 영역에 최대 3개까지만 노출될 수도 있습니다.
Our rendering: "For some low-volume keywords, at most three ads may be shown in the Power Link area, to protect search quality."
Neighbourhood keywords are usually low-volume. Rank fourth and you may not appear at all. Ranking itself is described as a combination of relevance between query and site, bid (with auto-bidding), and creative quality. The word "quality index" that agencies use appears only in the shopping-ad documents, not in Power Link's.
3. Meta's learning phase restarts when you change creative
Instagram and Facebook ads in Korea follow the global rules, and the Korean help text is explicit. A
Meta Business Help Centre (Korean), "The learning phase"머신 러닝 단계에서는 광고 세트의 성과가 안정적이지 못하며 일반적으로 CPA가 높아집니다.
Our rendering: "During the learning phase, ad set performance is unstable and cost per action is generally higher."
The phase ends about a week after the last significant edit, once roughly 50 results have come in. Six kinds of change restart it. Any targeting change. Any creative change. A change of optimisation event. Adding a new ad to the set. Pausing for seven days or more. A bid-strategy change. Meta also says testing new creative is necessary over time. The point is not to freeze the campaign but to avoid changes without a reason. A small budget increase is usually safe; the document's example is that 100 to 101 dollars is unlikely to restart learning while 100 to 1,000 may.
Toss: built for national campaigns
Toss (토스) is a finance app with a large user base and an ad network. We could not obtain any document published by Toss itself; what we have are two 2024 agency decks. On that basis only: banner products are bid per click. The money-alert push product is priced per send, with a minimum audience in the tens of thousands. The thumbnail banner is sold by time slot at a price in the tens of millions of won. All example clients in the decks are national brands. Treat this as unverified. B
What field experiments say about ad value
Two randomised field experiments are worth knowing. In one, thousands of US restaurants were randomly given free advertising on a review platform; the effect was larger for independent shops with higher ratings and more reviews. In the other, a large marketplace measured no short-term effect from ads on its own brand-name keywords, and the experimental return was reportedly far below what non-experimental dashboards suggested. Both are secondary for us and measured intent, not revenue. B Our editor's note joining them: advertising pays when it reaches people who do not yet know you, and rarely when it targets people already searching for your name.
Hiring a Korean agency: five questions
- Is the ad account in your company's name, not the agency's?
- Can you see the billing history yourself?
- Does the proposal avoid any "guaranteed position" or flat monthly fee for ranking?
- Does the contract name the metric: impressions, clicks, or orders?
- When you leave, do the account, data and learning history stay with you?
Naver's own guidance describes search ads as auction-based and billed per click, and lists "inducing payment on a flat monthly fee" as its first example of impersonation fraud. A flat-fee ranking offer contradicts that. B