Purchases of the latest paid episodes on Naver Webtoon rose after the shutdown of Newtoki, a major illegal webtoon site in South Korea. The company said blocking illegal distribution is pushing readers toward legitimate services and increasing earnings for creators.
According to the Toon Radar Report released on the 1st, based on an analysis of purchase data from January through August, new purchases for titles whose latest episodes had been leaked on the day of release rose to 7.9 times the average of the preceding three weeks immediately after Newtoki was shut down in April. Of the readers who came in, 96% had previously followed those titles.
The increase in purchases translated into higher revenue. Revenue for those titles rose 29.7% in the three weeks right after the shutdown and gained a further 11.9% over the following three weeks. "This means the share going to creators has grown by that much," a Naver Webtoon official said.
Copycat sites and new illegal sites appeared one after another following Newtoki's closure, but government blocking measures and Naver Webtoon's leak-prevention system, Toon Radar, are proving effective, according to the company.
Data from the Korea Copyright Protection Agency showed that after the government imposed emergency blocking measures on May 11, daily average traffic to the three most-visited illegal sites fell about 64%, to roughly 1.71 million visits from about 4.71 million. Naver Webtoon said it maintained a 99.8% defense rate against illegal distribution of its latest paid episodes. Even when the latest episodes did circulate on illegal sites, they lagged the official service by three to five episodes, the company said.
In the first quarter of this year, Toon Radar had already cut leaks within 24 hours of release by 90% and pushed the leak point back by two more episodes, or two weeks. Payments for the titles analyzed during that period rose 23%.
The company also reported results in tackling overseas piracy. In May, it worked with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to shut down three Vietnam-based global piracy sites. In August, in coordination with Interpol and law enforcement agencies in North Africa, it shut down three English-language piracy sites drawing 130 million visits a year and helped lead to the arrest of their operators.
"We have confirmed that preventing content leaks through tools such as Toon Radar, combined with the government's active efforts to shut down illegal sites, brings readers back to legitimate services and keeps them there," said Kim Kyu-nam, executive vice president at Naver Webtoon. "We will continue to advance Toon Radar and strengthen cooperation with investigative agencies at home and abroad to protect the rights of creators and the value of their work."
