"I've heard of people getting rich by catching shrimp, but I've never once heard of anyone getting rich by hunting whales."
These are the words of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group.
He said this around 2003, in the middle of a fierce battle with eBay over China's e-commerce market.
There was a reason he chose those words.
Backed by massive capital, eBay entered China and immediately signed long-term, high-value advertising deals with most of the country's major portal sites — on the condition that they would not run ads from competitors like Alibaba.
As a result, Alibaba's newly launched B2C online shopping mall, Taobao, found itself unable to advertise anywhere.
Ma's response was to strike back by joining hands with the "shrimp" instead of chasing the "whales."
He formed alliances with small and mid-sized websites across various industries and concentrated his advertising budget there.
Individually, the traffic of each site wasn't huge. But thousands of them combined rivaled the reach of the major portals.
In the end, this strategy is what let Alibaba win the fierce battle against eBay.
A Dedicated Service for Startups That Want Ad Revenue
Ma's story from two decades ago offers meaningful lessons for Korea's startup ecosystem today.
Even small web and mobile services can become powerful ad media — depending on how they're used.
"Ad revenue" is something every startup running a web or mobile service hopes to earn as a primary income stream.
But generating stable revenue through ads isn't as easy as it sounds.
Building up the traffic needed for ad impressions is hard enough — but for startups taking on ad monetization for the first time, designing ad products and selling them is even harder.
And building an ad platform that clients can use easily takes a long time and a lot of money.
In this article, we'd like to introduce a service that can be a real help to startup teams who want to convert the traffic from their app or web service into recurring revenue.
That service is AdControl by A.drop — a solution that lets you build a big-tech-grade ad platform with just a few clicks, and with zero setup cost.
Experts including former members of Google's ad division also provide partial support for ad product design and sales.
And if your company is selected for the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Data Voucher Program," currently accepting applications, you may be able to use AdControl with minimal out-of-pocket cost — or even for free.
(Reference – Adrop Data Voucher Application Page)
After interviewing Adrop for the article, I thought it might be a great fit for us at <Outstanding> too. I arranged a meeting between our CEO and the Adrop team myself, and we got valuable advice on ad monetization in that meeting.
I think AdControl is especially useful for vertical services like <Outstanding> that have a targeted user base in a specific group — companies where the "tone" of ad creative really matters.
Let's get started.
Q: Hello. Could you start with a brief introduction to Adrop?
Hello. We're the Adrop team — we're building innovative ad solutions that help web and app developers and advertisers use their data more efficiently and maximize their revenue.
I'm Eunji Jang, CBO (Chief Business Officer) at Adrop.
Adrop officially launched in August last year, and within six months we've recorded over 200 million ad requests per month. The combined MAU (Monthly Active Users) of our publisher partners has reached 48.5 million — making us one of the rising stars in the ad industry.
Q: What's your flagship service?
Our flagship product is AdControl — a solution that lets web and app developers spin up a targeted ad platform for their own ad business in just one minute.
We've also launched AdNote, a platform that lets advertisers and ad agencies easily book and purchase ad inventory across a wide range of app services — helping advertisers run successful marketing campaigns.
Q: Let's start with AdControl. Could you walk us through it in detail?
AdControl is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) ad monetization solution that gives any web or app developer access to ad systems at the level of big-tech companies.
Until now, it's been extremely hard for small and mid-sized app developers to build a sophisticated ad monetization system.
The ROI just doesn't justify the investment in people, time, and technology.
So most app developers end up taking ad inquiries by email and running ad monetization manually — with a person stepping in for every step.
Q: That's probably how it works at almost every small startup.
Anyone who has ever received even one ad inquiry as a web or app developer will relate to this — once you're managing booked campaigns manually, serving the ads to match campaign goals, providing regular reporting, and handling settlement,
you end up exchanging anywhere from 60 to 100 emails per campaign.
It's the same inefficient work, over and over.
On top of that, it's an environment where human error is easy to make — so losing the advertiser's trust happens more often than you'd think.
Tailored Features for Startups New to Advertising
Q: Operating it is hard enough — but keeping up with the latest ad trends must be especially tough for web and app developers who don't have deep expertise, right?
Yes — meeting the rising expectations of advertisers is another challenge.
Responding quickly and flexibly to various pricing models and new ad formats (splash ads, native ads, and so on), or building media competitiveness by offering one-of-a-kind targeting options based on first-party (1P) data — that's all hard to pull off.
The reason is simple.
To develop all of those capabilities yourself, you'd need to invest at least a year and 500 million KRW in product development — and then maintain a separate ad tech team for ongoing upkeep.
For an app developer, that means putting more resources into ad monetization than into their main service.
Q: Can AdControl solve all of these problems?
Some of our AdControl clients don't even have an in-house dev team — some are even solo developers. And teams like these are now generating ad revenue with a sophisticated ad system.
The first reason is that with AdControl, you can build a custom ad platform in just one minute.
It works almost like a website builder.
After that, you install the in-app ad SDK (Software Development Kit), and you can serve targeted ads based on in-app 1P (first-party) data, with real-time reporting and even automated settlement.
On top of that, you can flexibly adopt different ad formats and pricing models with just a few clicks in the console.
In fact, 80% of AdControl clients have created new ad products they hadn't offered before adoption.
They also offer advertisers a streamlined purchase experience, plus advanced targeting based on their first-party data — which leads to higher rebooking rates and noticeable revenue growth.
Q: What kinds of companies typically use AdControl or inquire about it?
Before learning about AdControl in detail, most people assume it must be a solution for companies with huge traffic.
But our clients range widely — from MAU under 10,000 to over 10 million.
In particular, small and mid-sized app developers who find it hard to earn enough revenue from network ad products like Google AdMob (mobile ads) or AdSense (web ads) seem to be especially satisfied with adopting AdControl.
Q: Is there a particular reason these services are so satisfied?
Two main reasons.
AdControl is built around selling ads directly to advertisers (including agencies), which means you can sell ads with creatives and targeting that take the user experience into account.
In short, you can sell premium ad products at premium rates.
Rather than positioning yourself as just another channel for mass marketing, you can position your service as a competitive medium that can sharply reach high-value user personas — and build ad revenue around that.
For instance, no matter how much traffic Google or Meta (Facebook) has, they can't target moms in early pregnancy as well as AdControl clients MOMSTalk or Babybilli.
And they can't reach avid readers as well as Bukjeok Bukjeok can.
These services often have far more high-value users — and far more relevant data accumulated internally — than they realize. But they struggle to turn that into revenue.
When these companies adopt AdControl, they can unlock premium ad monetization powered by their in-app data.
If You Have Target Users, You Can Charge Premium Rates
Q: What are some flagship services using AdControl for monetization?
A great example is Bukjeok Bukjeok, a reading-log app.
At the end of last year, its founder sent us this message — and it was a really rewarding moment:
"Thanks to AdControl, we hit our best annual ad revenue ever, and at the same time, we were able to allocate our time efficiently to grow the product itself.
Thank you again for building a service we genuinely needed."
(Seongeun Park, CEO of Bukjeok Bukjeok)
Bukjeok Bukjeok is actually a small team of just three people.
Even so, they're now able to offer advertisers things like real-time campaign booking, pay-per-click pricing, and real-time performance reporting — all of which boost advertiser satisfaction. As a result, their rebooking rate has been steadily increasing.
Q: Any other clients seeing strong results?
Two more flagship clients are MOMSTalk, a parenting app, and Apartner, Korea's #1 apartment app.
Both are strengthening their media competitiveness through targeted ads powered by in-app 1P (first-party) data.
Even Google — which has the world's largest ad team — can't do precise targeting like "is this user in early or late pregnancy?" or "what age is your child?"
The same is true for knowing which apartment complex a user lives in, or what brand it is.