Kakao Mobility’s Quiet Disruption: Driving Digital Transformation in Outdoor Advertising in South Korea
“Why would a mobility tech company venture into the outdoor advertising business?”
It’s a fair question—especially coming from Korea’s traditional advertising sector. But for Gye Kyung-hyun, Director at Kakao Mobility, the answer lies in three words: data, technology, and mobility. In a world increasingly dominated by digital media, offline advertising—particularly out-of-home (OOH)—remains largely analog. Yet, Gye sees this contrast not as a challenge but as a window of opportunity. “Just as online advertising evolved from fragmentation to integration, OOH is now facing a similar inflection point,” he says.
Despite the market’s technical limitations and closed nature, Gye believes it’s precisely this discomfort that creates the space for innovation. From the vantage point of a platform company, Kakao Mobility is seeking to redefine OOH advertising. And as Korea’s OOH sector approaches a period of transition, the questions Kakao is asking—and the experiments it is conducting—may hold important implications for the industry’s future.
The Beginning: From In-App Ads to Taxi Screens
Kakao Mobility formally entered the advertising space in 2021, initially focusing on monetizing its app services like Kakao T and navigation. “OOH wasn’t even on our radar at the time,” Gye recalls.
Everything changed with Japan Taxi. While making a minor investment in the company, Kakao observed how Japan Taxi equipped its vehicles with tablets to display ads. This sparked an idea—not a full-scale market entry, but an experimental move to test the business model by installing similar screens in Korean taxis. Since exterior taxi ads were then prohibited by regulation, in-vehicle displays became a practical, compliant alternative that could also benefit drivers through revenue-sharing.
That experiment opened Kakao’s eyes to the broader dynamics of OOH. “Globally, OOH media tends to cluster where people move most—around transit, commercial hubs, and crowded streets,” Gye explains. That realization led the company to reassess the strategic value of its mobility platform and the user data it naturally collects.
Watching tech giants like Google expand into OOH using online data as a foundation further shaped Kakao’s thinking. “We have access to real-world mobility data across Korea’s working population,” Gye says. “This positions us uniquely to build a data-driven OOH platform.”
What began as a narrow RSE (Rear Seat Entertainment) project soon evolved into a broader ambition—one that included billboards, transit shelters, and other high-traffic spaces. The company’s first public step in this new direction came in 2023 when it participated in a public bid for outdoor media rights in Haeundae.
Cultural Friction: Navigating Internal Resistance
Convincing Kakao’s own organization of this direction, however, was no easy feat. “For people used to working in digital, the OOH world felt like a different language,” Gye admits. Even basic terminology caused confusion. “For instance, the term ‘subscription’ is commonplace in OOH but completely foreign in online advertising.”
A deeper challenge was the perception of cost. In tech companies, investment usually means hiring talent or developing software. OOH, by contrast, requires capital-intensive hardware setups and public bidding processes. “The idea of investing 2 to 3 billion won in physical ad placements was hard for some to grasp,” he says. “They asked, ‘Why spend money on ads when we already own the app?’”
In addition, the workflow and vocabulary of the two industries diverge significantly. Tech is powered by APIs and algorithms, while OOH still relies heavily on manual processes and fieldwork. “It took nearly two years just to explain why this industry matters and how we could succeed in it,” Gye notes.
That internal education became a key foundation for Kakao Mobility’s unique position. It doesn’t seek to mimic traditional media firms; rather, it aims to reinterpret OOH from a platform perspective—blending technical sophistication with industry empathy.
Standardization as a Starting Point
Asked to diagnose Korea’s OOH market, Gye chooses not to dwell on shortcomings but on the challenges he’s eager to solve. “Online advertising grew by integrating fragmented platforms. OOH is reaching a similar stage now,” he says. As programmatic advertising gains traction, Gye believes the next step is industry-wide standardization—something still lacking in OOH.
This is why Kakao is prioritizing investment in its own CMS (Content Management System). “We’re not trying to dominate the market,” he clarifies. “But we can help build the infrastructure to enable programmatic transactions.”
Unlike many global players that operate without media assets of their own, Kakao Mobility manages both its own screens and works with external partners. “We have data, media, and mobility traffic all in one place. That’s rare—even globally,” he says.
Initially, the company tried to build tech integrations with existing media companies, but ran into obstacles. “Some partners didn’t have CMS platforms, others used closed systems tied to hardware vendors. Interoperability was a major issue,” Gye explains. That led Kakao to directly acquire and operate a limited number of media assets in key locations like Seoul Station and central Busan, to showcase viable examples of integration.
A Platform Built for Partnership
Kakao’s vision isn’t about control—it’s about balance. “With AI and data, the line between online and offline advertising is disappearing. We want to help bridge that gap,” Gye says.
Rather than building a demand-side platform (DSP) like Google’s DV360, Kakao is aiming for something closer to Ad Manager—a system where media partners retain independence while benefiting from Kakao’s scale. “If we act like a DSP, media companies may see us as a threat. We want them to see us as an ally.”
For now, Kakao’s data coverage isn’t enough to support a full DSP. Instead, Gye sees the company’s role as helping match advertiser demand with available media supply—laying the groundwork for more seamless transactions over time.
Addressing the Fear of Platform Dependence
As digital transformation accelerates, many media companies fear becoming overly dependent on platforms. Gye acknowledges these concerns but stresses the need for perspective. “Platforms only work if they offer value. If they become greedy, competitors emerge—just look at Naver or Google,” he says.
He adds, “In online advertising, agencies didn’t disappear when platforms took over. The same coexistence is possible in OOH—if we design for it.”
Rethinking Measurement in OOH
Effectiveness is another key issue. “True measurement means knowing who saw an ad and whether it influenced their actions. But that’s hard to prove, and comes with ethical concerns,” Gye says. He’s especially wary of using facial recognition or vision-based AI to track exposure.
Instead, Kakao is using its mobile data to map interests and mobility flows at the neighborhood level. By cross-referencing these patterns with points of interest (POIs), the company can better predict where specific audiences gather—and what kinds of ads might work best there.
A Quiet Transformation Begins
For decades, outdoor advertising has been part of the urban landscape—visible but opaque. We’ve seen the ads, but never really understood who they reached, or how they worked. Now, thanks to Kakao Mobility’s platform-led approach, the industry is starting to speak the language of data and technology.
Gye is clear: Kakao doesn’t seek to become a dominant ad player. Instead, it wants to be a catalyst—supporting the OOH industry’s evolution through technology, without losing sight of partnership and coexistence.
The challenges—fragmented data, manual processes, and measurement gaps—won’t be solved overnight. But change has already begun. On the same streets where we’ve walked for years, new questions are being asked. The answers may reshape the future of OOH in Korea—and beyond.
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