Zugesagte Unternehmen:

BOOKPAL:

Bookpal is one of the few mobile content sites that succeeded in persuading smartphone users to pay for mobile content either via pay per view or via subscription-based payment model. It is the favored mobile platform for aspiring young fiction writers to publish their online novels serially. Bookpal has somehow succeeded in turning initial free riders into paying customers by emulating the lessons it learned from the major subscription-based online games in South Korea: you are free to play games at beginner-level stage but if you want to join the league of advanced players, you will have to pay or buy some fancy arms. Bookpal has figured out some golden rules in the monetization of mobile content in terms of content design as well. The majority of the serial fictions it publishes are targeted at adults and storytelling is full of cliffhangers and key rules of page-turners. If you are dying to know what happened to protagonist NOW instead of waiting until the next week, pay now. This is one of the usual tactics favored by South Korean champions in mobile monetization and Bookpal is no exception. The company is currently testing the same model for mobile comics and is known to be earning additional money from online advertising as well.

CONTENTA:

Contenta is an online market place that facilitates transactions of gigs between freelance writers and creators and corporate clients that are in need various content for their commercial publications such as stories, news articles, press releases, marketing consulting and even info graphics. Launched with the slogan "Create content easily at scale", Contenta  has a total of 694 registered freelance writers, editors and marketers' who have so far submitted a combined total of 567 projects for 247 corporate clients. As the submitted articles are being screened and edited by its internal staff before final delivery to the clients, the company claims it can assure quality of its content. Prices range from free to KRW5,000,000. It is possible that its future client list may include existing news media that wish to outsource editorial gigs.

OHMYNEWS:

Meet OhmySchool, a 365-day brick-and-mortar journalism school for the masses started by OhmyNews, the world pioneer of citizen journalism. The whole idea seems to be designed as a public service from the outset, but it actually makes a good business sense for the company since it relies on the quality news reports compiled by citizen reporters. It is like DIY industry--when people are suddenly doing everything themselves, some huge industries will pop up to feed them with tools, education and daily supplies. Being located in the center of DMC, the visit will give the delegation a nice opportunity to have a glimpse of the sprawling media industry complex. The pioneer of citizen journalism may have passed its heyday but the site is still relevant for those who wish to tap into the power of online masses for participatory online news operation.

PUBLY:
A Kickstarter of journalism and online publishing founded by former Mackenzie consultant and aspiring journalist, Publy sells story ideas to over 6,000 paying customers based on the idea only. Once a project succeeded in crowd funding the target amount, assigned journalist or expert will go and cover the story for paying customers. Readers are even invited to offline talk shows for more in-depth and intimate discussions with the authors. Within just two years since its foundation, Publiy has succeeded in crowd funding 29 projects out of 30 proposed ideas totaling at KRW150M. The founder was convinced that there are sufficient number of willing customers ready to pay for stories provided that the story idea is compelling enough since she herself was one of such types. 

SBS:

The shifting landscape of the media leadership in the wake of Seoul's broadband revolution seemed to have signaled the demise of the television medium as we know it today. However, television has made a spectacular come back to the contemporary media scene and is suddenly relevant again by internalizing the hidden desire of the audience expressed on the Net. The resurgence of the television in Korea is largely indebted to the network's prescient decision to embrace the Web instead of fighting it. From the early days of the Internet, the top three television networks have been releasing almost all of their scheduled programs on the Web as video-on-demand. The networks opened up most of their regular programs for free on the Net, but even when they charged for some popular content, they almost always offered users an option to detour the paywall in return for the participation in some co-promotion campaigns with sponsors. SBS, the top network station that has been consistently more enthusiastic than its competitors about the online content business, earned over KRW 43 billion (about US$40 mil) in revenue on the Web last year, whereas it grossed KRW 607 billion (about $570 mil) from its television arm. The delegation will visit SBS Content Hub located in DMC which oversees the station's collaborative programming effort across old and new media platforms.

TOPTOON / BOMTOON:

Essentially a Bookpal in online comics a.k.a. Webtoon in South Korea, Top Comics is one of the brightest stars in South Korean Webtoon business with some ten million paying customers accumulated as of August 2015. The company runs two service brands depending on their target audience: TopToon tailored for males readers and BomToon for female readers. Their monetization tactics is based on the time-version model: if you want to know what happened to him/her NOW instead of waiting one more week, pay now. It is also full of adult-only content: adult content seems to be the most promising content for now in terms of monetizing mobile content in South Korea. The company's combined revenue has added up to KRW32billions as of March 2016. Find out for yourself if the same content sales model can also be applied to European smartphone users.

More on Webtoon: Asia's (World's) largest comic market is Japan. Japan leads the global comic market in every indicator known to us including number of printed comic books available anytime and anywhere. When it comes to Webtoon (Web cartoons), though, South Korea is leading the show. Top portal sites update hundreds of Webtoon everyday, and those stories proven popular among Korean online users are often turned into a big-budget movie. In fact, a Webtoon-turned-film was a box office champion early this year in the local multiplex theaters. The author of the Webtoon had published weekly installments of his work in the No. 2 portal--Daum.

Whereas Japan's Webtoon usually appear in the form of simple e-book converted directly from their paper counterpart, South Korean Webtoon are targeted solely at online audience from the very start with matching story telling techniques that fully capitalize on the unique opportunities online space can offer: skyscraper panes proposed by Scott McCloud, hyperlink jump, flash animation, sound effects and even musical scores written exclusively for Webtoon. In short, they are optimized for the full potential of the Web sphere and for the smartphone screen.

On top of the unique artistic frontier South Korean Webtoon artists have exploited so far, equally interesting experiments are being conducted on the business front as well: partial micro payment and Apple Appstore-style revenue sharing model, time versioning (dying to know next week's story in advance? Click this pay site), Google Ad sense-style click-through advertisement, sales of Webtoon print copies and even product (and brand) placement. Industry observers estimate that combined total revenue of South Korean web toons would grow to U$2billion by 2017.