SK Broadband is pushing a digital advertising service built on IPTV set-top boxes, “B tv On-Ad” (On-Ad), as it moves to capture more of the offline advertising market. The company is pitching a subscription model priced in the 10,000-won range per month to draw demand for what it calls space-based marketing in a signage market long dominated by expensive equipment.
“Digital out-of-home advertising has become part of everyday life, but the key now is not simple exposure — it’s how much value you can create from the time customers spend there,” Ryu said in the April 29 interview at the company’s headquarters in Seoul. “On-Ad is a service that turns that dwell time into data.”
According to the Korea Local Finance Association’s “2025 Outdoor Advertising Statistics,” South Korea’s outdoor advertising market totaled 4.6241 trillion won in 2024, with digital advertising accounting for 1.6634 trillion won. The market, once centered on paper ads and basic video playback, is rapidly shifting toward data-driven models.
On-Ad runs on IPTV infrastructure and a B2B-enabled set-top box, allowing businesses to operate the service without building separate servers or encoders, the company said.
“In the past, each store had to maintain its own computer infrastructure, but now a single set-top box can manage displays in an integrated way,” Ryu said. He said the biggest difference is that customers can start at about 13,000 won a month without an upfront equipment investment of 100,000 to 150,000 won.
A key feature is AI-based data analysis. Using a webcam, the system analyzes viewing angles and gaze time and includes functions that estimate gender and age group, the company said.
“We extract statistical values such as the age group of customers looking at the camera — for example, ‘women in their 20s’ — and use them for data analysis,” Ryu said. He added that tailored advertising based on gender and age could become possible.
The company also plans content-optimization features, including upscaling low-resolution video and automatically adjusting content for special aspect ratios such as 32:9 used in subways and buses, as well as vertical mobile formats. Ryu said development has been completed and the company is reviewing applying the technology to On-Ad.
On-Ad has been adopted by a domestic health-and-beauty store chain for in-store operations, SK Broadband said. At Chung-Ang University’s Da Vinci Campus in Anseong, the service was used for a project to digitize department bulletin boards. More recently, the service was installed at Hyundai Motor’s Bluehands repair shops. Ryu said the service has more than doubled each year since launch and that the company is targeting 100% growth this year.
Ryu said the company is prioritizing expansion into hospitals and universities, including shifting paper leaflet-style in-hospital advertising to displays for more efficient operations.
Looking ahead, the company is also reviewing generative AI-based content creation tools. Ryu said the goal is an environment where small business owners can enter prompts into AI to produce ad images or videos and air them immediately, adding that the market structure could change significantly within two to three years.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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