"Last year's full-year ad revenue? We passed it within the first half of this year."
Postype's ad business has been on a remarkable run lately, so the Adrop team paid them a visit to learn how they did it.
Postype is one of Korea's leading creator-fandom platforms, home to 8 million Gen Z fans. Creators post writing, art, webtoons, and web novels and earn from them directly. Recently, features like Request (fans commissioning art from creators) and Character Talk (chatting with characters matched to your taste) have driven up both session time and new users — and with it, Postype's weight as an ad medium.
But traffic and fandom don't turn into an ad business on their own. So how did Postype build such steep growth in its ad business? We sat down with Kim Daewon, who leads the ad business, to find out.
The better the content-consumption fit, the stronger the response
Q. What kind of advertisers can make the most of Postype?
A. Postype's audience is 80% women and 60% Gen Z aged 18–24, with a 40% paid-conversion rate — young and willing to spend. Advertisers whose context fits how our users consume content see the best response. In terms of content context, webtoons, web novels, OTT, audio (Ridi, Millie's Library, etc.), and games are an especially good match and get strong response rates. On the demographic side, since we skew young and female, beauty and fashion fit well too.
On top of fandom, the same ad spreads further
Q. You're a fandom-heavy platform — does that change how ads perform?
A. Postype users are a community generation, used to sharing. So even the same ad gets a different reaction. We've actually seen a game ad spread naturally among users. When the creative is fun and matches their interests, it spreads fast. Fandom isn't something advertisers set out to target, but once they run a campaign, the difference shows up in the response.
Diversify the products; the guiding line is 'balance between user experience and revenue'
Q. What did you weigh most in the ad business?
A. The most important thing is the balance between user experience and ad revenue. The goal is to show the right ad to the right user. We also put real effort into diversifying products rather than leaning on just one, because taking on advertisers with different goals means you need a broad lineup. Our flagship is the native feed. Its strength is that it doesn't stick out like an ad — it fits naturally into the content flow — so it's become our signature product, and with 120,000 new posts each month, impression volume is plentiful. Beyond that, you can choose by objective: splash banners, open pop-up banners, strip banners, interstitials, and app push.
Expanding into video ads — right down to landing the first advertiser
Q. Any ad products you've newly expanded recently?
A. We recently launched a video ad product, and Adrop helped a lot in the process. Even a product like video ads, which usually needs separate development, we could add right away without big resources. At first the video ad business felt daunting, but from the launch onward Adrop helped with advertiser matching, so we could actually run a first campaign. The product diversification we'd worked on earlier picked up momentum here too.
Know-how is only complete when you have a system to 'receive and run' the demand
Q. But was this ad operation smooth from the start?
A. The road here wasn't all smooth. Even with traffic and fandom, we didn't really have a way to receive and run the direct-ad inquiries that came in.
"To run ads properly, you need a system that ties together delivery, scheduling, creative review, and reporting — and building that ourselves at startup scale wasn't easy. We tried Google Ad Manager, but the UI didn't click, so it only added to the operational load."
We needed a tool that supported both app and web and that an operator could use right away — and that's when we adopted AdControl.
Explaining takes half the effort, and revenue passed last year's total in half a year
Q. What changed most after adopting AdControl?
A. The first thing that shrank was communication with advertisers. As Daewon puts it, "If I used to explain 100, now explaining 50 is enough." With console-based reporting, advertisers see the previous day's data right away and change creatives or make the next call on the spot. Operations got much faster.
What matters is that this didn't just make life easier for the media side. Advertisers also got faster responses and transparent results, so their ad experience improved. And satisfied advertisers don't stop at one run — they come back. Ridi, for instance, ran repeatedly. As those repeat campaigns added up, they turned into revenue, and we passed last year's full-year ad revenue before the first half of this year was even over.
"The biggest change is that it's not one-and-done — a structure was built where advertisers come back and keep going."
Now we're growing it further with targeting and outbound
Q. How do you plan to grow the ad business going forward?
A. We want to use AdControl's targeting more actively, so the right ad reaches the right user. On top of that, we've recently started sourcing advertisers directly through outbound — proposing media by industry or season, and running monthly promotions. Results are gradually following, so we plan to keep growing the ad business more aggressively.
Wrapping up the interview
Pulling together the conversation with Kim Daewon, Postype's secret to passing last year's revenue in half a year comes down to three things.
First, they deeply understood their own audience and connected them with well-matched advertisers, building up success cases. Second, they diversified their ad products instead of leaning on just one. Third, they put in place an operating system so incoming ad inquiries flow into actual campaign bookings and repeat runs.
Fandom and traffic were only the starting line. It's when these three came together that traffic finally turned into revenue.
If you're a media company that wants to design ads for your own users, start with AdControl; if you're an advertiser who wants to reach media like this, start with AdNote.
Editor: Matthew
Published: 2026.06.30