Ad program for webtoon artists takes off　

NHN Corp., which runs South Korea’s biggest Web portal, said its new ad service for online cartoons generated average monthly revenue that translated into more than $2,000 per artist in extra income.

NHN launched the ad scheme called “page profit share” in April in order to help provide more income to the webtoon artists it hires for a set fee. Webtoon artists, aside from a few top names, had struggled with subpar income even while their online comic strips help attract traffic for portals.

PPS generated a total of 590 million won ($527,000) in its first month. NHN’s portal Naver currently hires 108 webtoon artists, and the average extra income from PPS reached 2.5 million won ($2,300) per artist in April.

The ad system allows webtoon artists to choose any type of ad, either text or image, that fits their webtoon’s style, and new ad revenue is shared between NHN and artists as part of measures to diversify webtoon creators’ income channels.

NHN said the ad revenue from PPS is a positive sign for its potential. The portal operator said it will expand PPS to its e-book service.

By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)