News Center > Marketing performance

South Korea’s biggest advertising spenders for the first half of 2023 revealed in latest Nielsen Ad Intel report

3 minute read | August 2023

Seoul, South Korea – August 23, 2023 Data released by Nielsen Ad Intel, Asia’s most comprehensive ad spend monitoring service, today revealed how heavily South Korean businesses and industries invested in advertising for the first half of the year.

The analysis delivers an accurate view of advertising trends and spending between January and June this year.

Which industry spent the most on advertising in the first half of 2023?
When it came to ad spend, Nielsen Ad Intel rankings showed the Food sector to be the leader for the first half of 2023, investing ₩644,229,100 in ads to tempt the taste buds of South Koreans.

In second place, with an ad spend of ₩636,131,100 was the Finance, Insurance and Securities sector, followed by Computers and Telecommunications, with a category spend of ₩478,159,300.

Nielsen Asia Managing Director (Advertisers & Agencies), Aaron Rigby said: “As the advertising environment becomes more complex, brands, agencies and media owners need the latest quality competitive  intelligence to differentiate themselves from the competition and to carve out the best path forward for their brands and media. Helping you understand the advertising around you to improve your own is the core purpose of competitive Intelligence and nothing does that better than Ad Intel.”

YongHoon Cha, Associate Direcor of Nielsen Media Korea said: ”These Ad Intel numbers for the first half of the year clearly show that marketers are backing advertising as the best, most cost-effective way to connect brands with customers, while also keeping them engaged.

What they also demonstrate is that marketers need to be more savvy than ever about how they invest those ad dollars, utilising the very best data to get an edge on their competition and maximise their ROI.”

At an advertiser group level, the top three remained unchanged from H2, 2022, with Samsung cementing its place as South Korea’s biggest advertiser, followed by Hite Jinro and LG Electronics respectively.

About Nielsen Ad Intel

Ad Intel provides the most complete source of cross-platform advertising intelligence available today. With intuitive software, review-and-compare ad activity across media, company, category or brand, plus historical data.

Note: Nielsen monitors gross advertising expenditure in major media at published rate card values. While discounts are made available from some media owners, rates are not openly available. Please also note that the category and brand/product groupings figures are grouped at Nielsen’s discretion.

About Nielsen

Nielsen shapes the world’s media and content as a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviours across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their audiences – now and into the future. Nielsen operates around the world in more than 55 countries.

Learn more at www.nielsen.com and connect with us on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram). 

Media Contact

Dan Chapman
Assoc. Director, Communications, Nielsen APAC
dan.chapman@nielsen.com
+61 404 088 462