Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Kakao courts teenagers with Olive Young coupons as it opens a paid membership against NAVER and Coupang
Kakao is opening its paid membership with CJ Olive Young coupons for teenagers, only 70.8% of whom name KakaoTalk as their app for gifts. Lacking Coupang's delivery network, Kakao needs partners to trade benefits for access to KakaoTalk's audience.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Kakao Membership opens on a trial basis for some users from Oct. 1, with first-come sign-ups admitted in stages while Kakao checks service stability.
- NAVER said in April last year that average daily new sign-ups for NAVER Plus Membership rose about 1.5 times after its Netflix tie-up.
- Coupang's membership rests on its own network: free Rocket Delivery and Rocket Fresh shipping, free returns and overseas purchases, plus Coupang Eats and Coupang Play.
- Kakao, whose distribution is weaker, already has strategic partnerships with Coupang Eats and Walt Disney Company Korea that could extend to delivery and streaming.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Any delivery perk Kakao offers has to come from a partner, and the partner with groundwork laid is Coupang Eats, itself a perk of the rival Coupang membership.
- exposure Revenue from Kakao's four existing subscriptions is at risk if current subscribers fold them into one membership without spending more.
- decision Brands bundled with NAVER Plus now have a second membership channel, with KakaoTalk's audience, to weigh when they negotiate partner terms.
Kakao enters third, after NAVER and Coupang [1], and starts with a short partner list. Seoul Economic Daily's report names eleven NAVER Plus partners: Netflix, plus Spotify, Uber, Yogiyo, Microsoft, Kurly, Homeplus Mart, Lotte Mart, CU, Lotte Cinema and EBS [6][8][3]. Kakao has one, CJ Olive Young, and is expected to add more to cover demand its own services cannot meet [2]. Those services still give it more to bundle than one partner suggests: Gift, TalkDeal, emoticons, TalkDrawer, Kakao T taxis and designated drivers, Melon, KakaoPage and KakaoPay [11].
The case for partners signing up rests on NAVER's Netflix deal. Netflix's monthly active users in Korea rose from 11.59 million in November 2024 to 16.2 million in August this year, according to IGAWorks' Mobile Index, a gain of 4.61 million, or 39.8% [7][2]. That count does not separate users who came through NAVER from those who came any other way. An industry official, whom the report does not name, said: "There will be considerable demand from outside companies looking to broaden their user base by joining Kakao Membership." [12]
Kakao is answering Coupang's free shipping and returns with other companies' services. The report expects it to add outside partners to its content and lifestyle offer, with groundwork for delivery laid through Coupang Eats [10]. Coupang Eats is also one of the perks inside Coupang's own membership [9]. If that partnership becomes a Kakao Membership benefit, a Coupang service would be supplying the delivery perk for a rival bundle, the same perk Coupang uses to keep its own customers on its platform [9][10]. What Coupang Eats would get is orders from KakaoTalk users. The report does not include a price for Kakao Membership or the terms of any partner deal, Olive Young's included.
Olive Young is aimed at the weaker of the two age groups in OpenSurvey's gifting data. Among people in their 20s, 93.2% named KakaoTalk as the app they use to send and receive gifts, against 70.8% of teenagers, a gap of 22.4 points [4][1]. The coupon event's timing to the launch comes from IT industry sources cited by the report [3].
If partners hand over benefits in exchange for access to KakaoTalk's users, Kakao gets a NAVER-style bundle without having to fund the perks itself. If the membership mostly repackages Emoticon Plus, TalkDrawer Plus, Kakao T Members and Melon for people who already pay for them, it could shrink revenue Kakao already collects. The report says those benefits may overlap [5]. If the roster stays near one partner, the product is a loyalty scheme for KakaoTalk.
I think the reach argument works best on outside brands and worst on Kakao's own subscribers. They are the easiest sign-ups, and they are the people for whom one membership could cost less than several. The counter-case, which the report itself makes, is that partner perks will be large enough to get those subscribers spending more [5]. I would be wrong if early sign-ups in the staged, first-come trial from Oct. 1 mostly come from people holding none of the four existing subscriptions [13].
What to watch
- The monthly price of Kakao Membership against the combined cost of Emoticon Plus, TalkDrawer Plus, Kakao T Members and Melon.
- Whether Coupang Eats or Walt Disney Company Korea show up as named Kakao Membership benefits after the Oct. 1 trial.
- Any sign-up figures from the staged trial, and how many of those members already held a Kakao subscription.