"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 APTNER, 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.
That's why proprietary first-party app data is essentially the core competitive moat for a publisher.
These services use AdControl to enable advanced ad monetization where advertisers can target and book ads directly.
If you're an app developer sitting on a lot of data but not sure how to monetize it, I strongly recommend using AdControl to build revenue with targeted ads powered by in-app 1P data.
Q: Could you explain the benefits of adopting AdControl in more detail, especially around cost?
Setting up an ad system requires, at minimum: an ad server to serve ads, a platform where advertisers can book ads, and an admin console for the internal ad team to manage products and bookings.
Even just describing it makes it sound more complex than people expect.
In the industry, building an ad system in-house typically takes over a year and an initial investment of 500 million KRW or more.
And that's just for the basic system.
People often assume that building it in-house will save money long-term compared to paying a SaaS subscription. In most cases, that's not actually true.
Q: Why? Isn't doing it yourself cheaper in the long run?
Because ad monetization is a business that requires constantly reflecting advertiser needs — adding new ad and pricing formats, updating for compatibility with the app service, and so on. Ongoing maintenance costs keep adding up.
Zero Initial Setup Cost
Q: How much does AdControl actually cost? Startup founders are probably most curious about this.
AdControl can be built with zero initial setup cost, and you can use it free for up to 10,000 ad impressions per month.
Beyond 10,000 impressions, the cost is just 280 KRW per 1,000 ad impressions — a very reasonable rate.
Compared to the initial setup costs, maintenance fees, and ongoing server costs of building and running your own ad system, the pricing is incomparably reasonable.
Q: Could you tell us how easy the actual adoption process is?
Honestly, building an ad platform with AdControl probably takes less time than reading this interview.
You just enter your app name and logo, and you can have a custom ad platform up and running in one minute.
In the console, you pick the ad formats, pricing models, and rates you want — and you can start selling right away.
In the final step, your dev team helps with the SDK (Software Development Kit) integration.
Even that can usually be completed in a single day. With very simple work, you can build an ad platform fully integrated with your own app service.
Q: For developers who don't know much about ads, deciding how to structure ad products and where to place ad slots must be pretty daunting.
It can be daunting.
That's why we offer free ad monetization consulting to AdControl clients.
Before you start the AdControl integration, we suggest placement and sizes for ad slots that balance user experience with ad responsiveness. We also offer custom recommendations on how to package multiple ad slots into products that sell better.
Some clients actually love our consulting service even more than the AdControl product itself!
Q: But aren't Google's AdSense and AdMob, or Kakao's KakaoBizBoard, similar services to Adrop's AdControl?
Does AdControl have any competitive advantages over these?
First, AdControl is different from network ad monetization solutions like AdSense and AdMob.
Think of AdControl as a solution for app developers who want to sell and operate their own ads directly.
It's quite different from network ads like AdSense, where random advertisers' ads are placed randomly and monetized.
Q: Could you go into more detail?
There are two main reasons clients adopt AdControl.
The first is revenue maximization.
When you transact directly with advertisers, the intermediary fees are lower, and you can also propose custom pricing that reflects your media's premium.
Unlike network ads — where you can't set the price you want, and only apps with huge traffic can generate meaningful revenue — AdControl is different.
For example, one of our clients has an app service with MAU under 10,000. But because their target audience is so clearly defined, advertisers are willing to pay premium rates to run ads there.
If they had only been monetizing through network ads, they might have struggled to make even a few million KRW a year. With AdControl, they're now generating hundreds of millions of KRW in annual ad revenue.
Q: Is it possible to use AdControl together with network ads?
Yes, that's right.
There's actually a way to use AdControl alongside network ad solutions to push ad revenue even higher.
For example, AdControl supports a feature called custom adapter for AdMob.
This feature compares the per-impression price of ads sold through AdControl and AdMob in real time, and serves the higher-priced ad first — which ends up maximizing total ad revenue.
Only Run Ads That Don't Hurt Your Brand
Q: What's the other strength?
The second strength is that AdControl protects the user experience.
With network ads, it's structurally impossible for the publisher to fully control the ad creatives that appear inside their app.
So sometimes, you'll see ad creatives that hurt your app service's brand showing up inside the app.
But with AdControl, every creative is reviewed and approved directly by the publisher before being served — so this kind of problem doesn't happen.
Q: Could you walk us through how AdControl actually works in practice?
How does the process work for advertiser creative submission, publisher approval, ad serving, settlement, and payment?
AdControl consists of a console and an ad platform.
The console is where the app developer's ad business team manages ad products and booked campaigns.
Once you create ad products to sell in the console, those products appear on the ad platform for advertisers.
The advertiser then picks the ad product they want, and sets their campaign budget, dates, and targeting.
During that process, they can also see projected performance in advance.
When the advertiser submits a booking request, you can review the new campaign in the console.
Approving the campaign closes the ad deal.
After that, the advertiser uploads creative on the ad platform — and again, you review and approve the creative in the console.
Then ads run automatically based on the booking, and everything from reporting to invoice issuance is fully automated.
Also Available Through Data Voucher
Q: As you briefly mentioned at the start — companies can also pay for AdControl using vouchers through the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Data Voucher Program," is that right?
Yes, that's right.
Adrop was selected this year as a supplier company in the Ministry of Science and ICT's Data Voucher Program.
So if your client company is an SMB or a youth-led startup, you can apply as a data voucher recipient — and if selected, you can receive up to 45 million KRW in government support (the data voucher), which you can use to pay for AdControl.
To summarize: building your own ad platform costs at least 500 million KRW. With this data voucher from the government, you can build that ad platform with just 500,000 KRW out of pocket (or even for free, for youth-led startups) — and continue using it. It's a great opportunity!
● Build an ad system worth 500 million KRW for just 500,000 KRW out of pocket
○ 75% support for SMBs
(90% government support for youth-led startups)
○ The private cofunding portion can be covered with in-kind contributions (labor costs), making the actual out-of-pocket cost effectively zero for selected companies
○ Data Voucher application period: February 12 – March 14, 2025, 18:00
○ Eligibility: SMBs (including youth-led startups)
○ Contact: contact@adrop.io
(Reference – Adrop Data Voucher Application Page)
Q: Got it. Let's switch from the product to the company itself.
When was Adrop founded, and by whom?
Our CEO and CPO (Chief Product Officer) are serial entrepreneurs with prior exits.
When CEO Yushin Kim and CPO Hyungcheol Kim were in college, the era of mobile smartphones was just beginning, opening up a new open-platform era for software developers.
The two of them built TickTalk, one of Korea's first-generation mobile messaging apps, scaled it explosively, and exited together by selling it to SK Planet.
Seven years later in 2020, the two teamed up with Joon Hur — an early founding member of iWeLab (the predecessor of Kakao) — and CTO Jaewoong Song, formerly of Samsung Electronics, to build their second success story together: a blockchain service.
Meanwhile, I was building my career in Google's ad division. As a side project, I worked with CEO Kim and CPO Kim to launch a small app service and experience ad monetization firsthand.
Then in 2023, we all came together and founded a company called OpenRhapsody. Drawing on the technology and ad business expertise we'd built up together over the years, we launched A.drop.
Founded by Ad Experts Including Google Alumni
Q: The founding team's backgrounds are impressive. Was there a specific reason this group of people decided to launch a SaaS ad platform service?
The truth is, our team is made up of people who've worked at app service companies — so we've personally lived through all the headaches that app developers face.
We knew firsthand just how inefficient it is to handle ad inquiries by email when you don't have an ad platform of your own.
And we also knew that, from an app developer's perspective, the ROI of building an ad platform yourself — while neglecting your main service — just doesn't add up.
One day, the team was talking about how it's somehow accepted as completely normal for small and mid-sized app developers to set up and sell ads manually, without any ad platform at all.
Suddenly, CEO Kim said: "Then let's just build it for them."
That's how AdControl started.
We designed it with one goal: "Let any small or mid-sized app developer — even one that launched yesterday — have an ad platform as sophisticated as Google's."
We Support Ad Sales Too
Q: Got it. Back to the product side. For companies, building an ad platform well is important — but ad sales matter even more.
I understand Adrop also provides some support for that.
Yes, that's right.
As more app developers adopt AdControl, the combined MAU of our client services adds up to 48 million users (simple sum) who can be reached with ads.
That's why we also launched AdNote — a service for advertisers and ad agencies.
With AdNote, you can browse and book ad products from many fragmented app services all in one place.
For app developers, this means that simply by integrating AdControl, they can naturally gain new ad sales opportunities through AdNote.
Q: Who are AdNote's main clients, and why do they choose AdNote?
AdNote is currently used by dozens of major and SMB brand companies, plus around 90 ad agencies.
Researching vertical media to reach a sharply defined target persona used to take a lot of time, and even after picking the media, the booking process was a mess for the reasons we mentioned earlier.
With AdNote, you can not only get media recommendations from us, but also book targeted ads — based on in-app 1P (first-party) data that didn't exist before — easily and instantly. That's why so many people are interested!
Q: I understand Adrop also uses AdNote to help promote and sell the ad inventory of AdControl clients to some extent.
Yes. For example, the "Big Three of Parenting" — Babybilli, MOMSTalk, and Yeolnayo — have all adopted AdControl.
So we put together proposal materials that bundle their ad inventory under a name like "Parenting Package," and we use those to promote the inventory to partner agencies.
Recently, we also produced blog content jointly promoting Newneek — a knowledge platform for the curiosity-driven MZ generation — and the reading-log app Bukjeok Bukjeok, to support their online promotion.
Q: Finally, about your future plans. I understand you've raised initial funding through Deep Tech TIPS. What are your growth plans going forward?
Within just six months of raising initial funding and officially launching AdControl, 68 app developers have adopted it.
In the first half of this year, we're planning to improve quality-of-life features based on early client feedback, and roll out new ad formats that meet the rising expectations of advertisers.
For example, starting around mid-March, we'll be supporting a reward-based shopping ad product called Quest — designed to solve common beauty marketer pain points, focused around Olive Young.
In Q2, we're also planning features to support conversion-based affiliate ads.
This year, our goal is to double our client count compared to last year, and to close a Pre-A funding round within the first half of the year.
Got it. Thank you for taking the time for this interview.
Hope you'll keep building and operating innovative services that help small and mid-sized startups generate more revenue through ad monetization.
Thank you.
(Reference – Adrop Data Voucher Application Page)
(Reference – Learn more about AdControl)
Source: This article is an interview written by reporter Seonpyo Hong at Outstanding. (Read original)