Naver and CJ, which formed a’blood alliance’ by exchanging shares worth 600 billion won in October last year, are starting a full-scale partnership. By adding Teabing, CJ’s video streaming service (OTT), to Naver’s membership service benefits. JTBC and CJ ENM are also working together in earnest through teabing.
Platform war against Netflix and Coupang
As an additional key to Naver Plus service
JTBC also joined Teabing and created content
“Investment of 400 billion won, 5 million subscribers within 2 years”
According to the industry on the 7th, Naver will add CJ’s Teabing to its’Naver Plus Membership’ service. Naver Membership is a membership service that allows you to accumulate up to 5% of the payment amount as Naver Pay points when you pay 4900 won per month and provides additional digital content usage rights. 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 lower among users. Rocket Wow membership is 2,900 won per month.
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 the contents of a total of 39 broadcasting stations (over 65,000 total). It has a superior competitiveness compared 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.”
What kind of company is Teabing
Meanwhile, CJ ENM announced on the 7th that “JTBC Studio has decided to join Teabing,” and “We plan to grow into an OTT service representing Korea by combining the content competitiveness of both companies.” It is a strategy to confront Netflix by combining the content production capabilities of both companies. Earlier, in September 2019, CJ ENM signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with JTBC Studio to establish a joint OTT corporation. Accordingly, Teabing was split from CJ ENM last October and launched as an independent corporation.
The two companies plan to concentrate their content production capabilities in the joint venture Teabing. Teabing will invest more than 400 billion won in production costs over the next three years, starting with’Girl’s Go Mystery Class’ by PD Jeong Jong-yeon, to produce original content such as dramas and entertainment. A short video (short form, mid form) content aimed at the MZ generation (young people born in the 1980s to early 2000s) is also being prepared. An official from Teabing said, “High quality using CJ ENM and JTBC star creators such as tvN, JTBC, JTBC Studio, Studio Dragon, including programs in the form of a spin-off and collaboration based on intellectual property (IP) owned by the two companies. We are planning the content.” Teabing CEO Yang Ji-eul said, “We will gather the capabilities of the two companies to grow Teabing into Korea’s leading OTT platform with more than 5 million paid subscribers by 2023. We produce and supply premium drama and entertainment content through bold investment, while providing personalized content. We will provide the service.” According to Nielsen Korea Click, the market share based on unique users was Netflix, Wave (21%), and Teabing (14%) as of August last year.
Reporters Park Min-je and Kim Kyung-jin [email protected]