Naver and Kakao are applying artificial intelligence (AI) to their shopping pages, accelerating the development of ultra-personalized services. AI-driven personalized shopping services directly translate into advertising revenue, making them a crucial cash cow for these companies, highlighting their growing importance.

According to industry sources on the 19th, following Naver's launch of the AI-based ultra-personalized shopping service, "Naver Plus Store," in October last year, Kakao is now set to release the beta version of its "AI Shopping Mate."

In the fourth quarter of last year, Naver launched Plus Store as a separate service, marking the official start of its personalized shopping service. It is scheduled for release as a standalone app in the first half of this year. Plus Store analyzes individual preferences and interests to recommend and display not only products but also benefits, promotions, and shopping-related content, offering an ultra-personalized AI shopping experience.

The shopping functionality focused on searching and comparing product specifications will be rebranded as the "Naver Price Comparison" service, which will feature an improved catalog function. Meanwhile, the AI-driven shopping experience, previously scattered across various services such as AiTEMS product recommendations and the FOR YOU service, will be fully expanded through "Naver Plus Store."

With the launch of Plus Store, users' shopping experiences have been improved, and sellers have found it easier to collect and analyze shopping data. Despite prolonged sluggish consumer sentiment, the industry estimates that Naver Shopping continues to grow.

Lee Jun-ho, an analyst at Hana Securities, stated regarding the commerce business, "The fourth-quarter domestic online shopping transaction volume is expected to show stagnant growth of around 2%, similar to the third quarter, but Naver is projected to outperform this with growth of +5.2%, driven by its Smart Store and Brand Store."

On the 18th, Kakao revealed the beta version of its second AI Mate, "AI Shopping Mate," on the AI Mate website. AI Shopping Mate is a service that can be used via web chat and KakaoTalk channels, with a focus on KakaoTalk Gift. Through conversations with users, it not only suggests shopping items they want to purchase but also provides information about their KakaoTalk friends' birthdays and recommended gifts.

Kakao developed AI technology specialized for shopping to build the service. Since there is no existing data that fits the gift recommendation scenario, supervised fine-tuning (SFT) data, which allows the AI to naturally perform dialogues and scenarios, is essential for learning the shopping-related scenarios.

Kakao developed fine-tuning data internally to make its general-purpose AI model work for the gift recommendation scenario. The company provides a newly designed chatbot tailored to both the familiar KakaoTalk channel chatbot and generative AI, offering users a fully customized experience.

Both Naver and Kakao are building and advancing AI shopping services not only to improve user experience but also to maximize advertising revenue. Advertising through shopping services generates revenue from sellers' broad-targeted ads as well as purchase conversion revenue driven by ads. Therefore, if ultra-personalized services lead to user purchases, the platform's advertising revenue will also increase.

In fact, consumer shopping experiences through AI technology have been proven overseas. According to a report from Capgemini Research Institute, 68% of consumers in a 2024 survey stated that they had actually purchased products recommended by AI. This is a significant increase from 52% in 2023.

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