Prologue | Where ads meet buyers with real intent
Kmong is Korea's leading freelance and outsourcing marketplace — the place customers come when they have a marketing, design, or business problem they need solved today. Hundreds of thousands of experts are working there at any given time.
More than 600,000 outsourcing services are listed on Kmong, organized into 20 top categories and 700+ sub-categories. It's not just a long list — it's a carefully built taxonomy mapped to actual customer needs, which gives Kmong a uniquely deep data asset for reading user behavior and intent.
Thanks to that, advertisers using Kmong's category targeting can connect directly with customers who are actively considering a purchase — which translates into high conversion rates.
So how does Kmong deliver that kind of touchpoint to advertisers? To find out, we sat down with Director Jeong Eun-ki from the Product team and Lee Joon-seong, Marketing Team Lead.
From seller-only ads to a platform open to all advertisers
Q. How did Kmong's ad business get started?
In the beginning, ad products only existed for the expert sellers listed on Kmong — designed to help them get more exposure for their services and meet more customers.
But opening it up to outside advertisers required a careful review system so external campaigns wouldn't conflict with the interests of Kmong sellers. Back then we didn't have the manpower or the structure for that, so expansion wasn't an easy call.
Things changed when we ran a pilot affiliate campaign for a government policy promotion. That low-risk run convinced us internally: "We could actually open this up to brands that aren't even on Kmong."
Q. Was it a smooth process to fully open the platform to external advertisers?
Before we knew about AdControl, we tried to launch the ad business on a simple internal admin tool. The problem: even at just 4–5 campaigns a month, our team couldn't properly manage and monitor advertiser campaigns. Operational efficiency dropped, and it was hard to keep advertisers happy.
That taught us something important: you can't run a serious advertising business without a stable, scalable foundation. So we got serious about building a real ad platform — and adopting AdControl was the decisive moment.
With a system that lifted operational efficiency and minimized engineering load, we were finally able to open the doors to external advertisers. The bigger shift was that we stopped doing repetitive manual work and could focus on strategic ad product design.
The Kmong ad platform, built with AdControl
Q. What changed once the Kmong ad platform officially launched?
Launching the platform fixed both our operational efficiency problem and our engineering bottleneck at the same time. We used to need engineering support every time we wanted to spin up a new ad product. Now ad ops can configure new products directly in the console. Product launch speed went up, and our ad team can run experiments much faster.
The advertiser experience changed too. We used to swap creatives manually whenever an advertiser asked, and reports went out by hand. Because of resource limits, we could only swap creatives about once a week.
Now advertisers see real-time reports themselves, and they can swap creatives as often as they want. They can tune their campaigns and watch performance live — which has lifted satisfaction significantly.
Three core audiences with clear purchase intent
Kmong advertising can target three distinct high-intent audiences.
First, the hundreds of thousands of expert freelancers active on Kmong. Designers, developers, video pros — they care about workflow efficiency and are highly receptive to tools and solutions.
Second, startup founders and small business owners. They've got real business problems to solve right now, so they're interested in government support programs, financial products, and B2B services.
Third, individual customers. They're hunting for side hustles or investment opportunities, or looking at upskilling programs like bootcamps for personal development.
Purchase intent validated by category
Q. Can advertisers target even more precisely?
Right now Kmong has more than 600,000 services trading across 20 top categories and 700+ sub-categories. Advertisers can target precisely along those category lines.
For example, the kinds of ad products that pair well with each category:
- Design & Marketing → SaaS, productivity tools
- IT & Programming → cloud services, hiring and training programs
- Video & Photography → cameras and gear, editing software
- Startup & Business → financial products, policy and program promotions
And we're not stopping there — we plan to layer on more granular targeting using Kmong's 1st-party data so advertisers can reach the exact customers they want with even more precision.
Advertiser success is Kmong's growth
Q. What are your goals from here?
In the short term, we're aiming for 7x growth in ad revenue. We already have a high-intent customer base, and now that the platform's operating structure is solid, we believe the goal is realistic.
More important than that, though, is the advertiser's success. Campaigns have to actually perform — that's what drives re-booking and brings in new advertisers organically.
We want to give advertisers effective, precision-targeted ad placements, and give Kmong users accurate information matched to their actual needs. When those two add up to repeated campaign successes, that's how Kmong becomes one of the category-defining ad platforms in the industry.