[단독]2.5 million Naver Membership customers watch’teabing’ for free from the end of February

Naver plans to include Teabing in Naver membership in the first quarter. [사진 CJ]

Naver is adding CJ’s video streaming service (OTT) TVING to its membership service. As both Naver and Coupang, which are aiming for No. 1 in domestic e-commerce (e-commerce), install OTT on their subscription service, the 150 trillion won e-commerce hegemony is expected to intensify.

According to Naver on the 7th, teabing will be added to the digital content benefits of’Naver Plus Membership’ (hereinafter, Naver Membership) at the end of next month. If you pay 4900 won per month, Naver Membership accumulates up to 5% of the payment amount as Naver Pay points and provides additional digital content usage rights. Right now, you can choose one of three: 49 webtoon cookies, a series on movie, and a digital content experience pack. Teabing vouchers will be added here.

Naver Membership is a membership service launched in June last year. When signing up for membership, Naver Pay earned great popularity among e-commerce users. Thanks to this, it has collected 2.5 million members within 6 months of its launch. However, there was an evaluation that digital content benefits were somewhat insufficient.

In particular, when Coupang, an e-commerce rival, launched OTT’Coupang Play’ on the 24th of last month and included it in’Rocket Wow Membership’, it was evaluated that the’cost performance’ of Naver Membership was lowered. Rocket Wow membership is 2,900 won per month. An official from Coupang said, “Coupang Play is just in its infancy, so there is not much content yet, but it will increase gradually,” he said. “It will be a great help in enhancing membership competitiveness.”

Naver and Coupang subscription membership. Graphic = Kim Hyun-seo [email protected]

But when Naver adds Teabing to membership, the story changes. Teabing is an OTT that allows you to view content (over 65,000 total) of 39 broadcasting stations, including CJ ENM channels such as tvN, and JTBC, a famous drama and entertainment show. Content competitiveness is superior to Coupang Play, which has just launched and lacks exclusive content. In addition, if you subscribe to the teabing coupon separately, you must pay at least 7900 won. A Naver official said, “It will be a strong competitive edge to attract Naver Shopping users who did not use the digital content provided by Naver to membership.”

Teabing’s joining of Naver Membership is the first cooperation project between Naver and CJ. In October of last year, Naver exchanged stocks worth 600 billion won with CJ Group affiliates CJ Logistics, CJ ENM, and Studio Dragon. Naver has become the third largest shareholder of CJ ENM and the second largest shareholder of Studio Dragon. The two companies discussed various collaboration methods in the logistics and content sectors, and this time led to Teabing’s membership joining. If Naver Shopping transactions increase in the future, CJ Logistics’ demand for logistics and delivery will also increase. Naver CEO Han Sung-sook said at the end of October last year’s 3Q results announcement, “We signed a treasury stock exchange and strategic partnership with CJ to add completeness to the flow from shopping and payment to logistics and to strengthen global content competitiveness.”

Big Tech Mobile Graphics = Reporter Juwon Kim [email protected]

The origin of the strategy of incorporating OTT into e-commerce is the US Amazon. Amazon’s paid membership’Amazon Prime’ offers fast delivery, unlimited music listening, and Amazon Prime Video (OTT) for about $12.99 per month (about 14,122 won). Through this, it has secured more than 150 million loyal users around the world. It is believed that Naver and Coupang, the top two domestic e-commerce companies, reinforced OTT for similar effects. The amount of online shopping transactions in Korea was accumulated to 145 trillion won until November of last year, a significant increase from 2019 (135 trillion 264 billion). Heungkuk Securities researcher Cho Tae-na said, “The Amazon strategy has proven to be a lock-in effect that locks users in their services. Because of this, OTT competitiveness will become more important.”

Reporter Park Min-je [email protected]

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