“We are a great untold story,” David J. Lee, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Webtoon Entertainment, declared as he explained the growth trajectory of the digital storytelling medium known as webtoons.
Indeed, the numbers tell the tale, as Lee illustrates on the latest episode of Variety podcast “Strictly Business.” The Los Angeles-based company is a driving force in the production and distribution of webtoons, which are a blend of manga and graphic novels presented in a blog-like virtual scroll. The medium erupted out of South Korea about a decade ago and has become popular with Gen Z audiences around the world. And now, Webtoon stories are steadily become source material for movies and TV shows.
“These consumers are spending, once they find their great story, 30 to 60 minutes a day reading either a web novel, or what we call a web comic or a web toon,” Lee said during a Q&A that was part of the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES this month in Las Vegas. “For me, having started in the advertising business, it reminds me of an incredible next generation of a digital storyboard, which is why we love the $1.3 billion in reported revenue we generate on our platform. But we love that consumers get to see these stories as rich film adaptations on Netflix or Amazon Prime. One came out recently on Tubi.”
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Lee reeled off impressive user and engagement stats.
“Webtoon as a company is global. We’ve got 170 million monthly active users, but we have 24 million creators who are creating over 120,000 stories every day — [content that is] new and there for the taking by our Gen Z consumers,” Lee said. “The experience is truly digital and mobile. And it spans way beyond one genre. It’s more than manga. It’s any genre you can imagine. Imagine a Gen Z consumer, in their palm of their hand on a mobile device with a flick of their fingers, can scroll and in a fraction of a moment, see just enough imagery, a few words to tell them where a story is going.”
Webtoon creator Brandon Chen
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In a separate interview, prolific webtoon creator Brandon Chen, known for such franchises as “Just a Goblin” and “Samurai no Tora,” explained that explains that the stories are perfectly suited for reading on smartphone. The experience is a big departure from what he dubs “still TV.”
“A webtoon is a medium that is very modern because it is optimized for the digital format, particularly your phone,” Chen said. “That’s because it has this kind of vertical scroll format where you’re very active — you’re scrolling through the story as you’re reading. I like to think of it watching still TV, and you’re riding a bike. The more you ride the bike, the more the TV moves. That’s kind of like using your finger to to make the web tune move. But yeah, it’s vertical scroll, pretty bite sized chapters, you know, 50 to 60 panels on average. And it’s colored, which is very different from Japanese manga, which has traditionally been black and white. And the stories on there are quite diverse in the types of content that you can tell for the different genres out there. So, it’s a pretty new medium.”
“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
(Pictured top: Webtoon Entertainment’s David J. Lee speaks with Variety’s Cynthia Littleton at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES.)