Hello, I'm Eleanor from Kakao IR. Let's begin with the Q3 2023 earnings conference call. Today, I'm joined by Simon Hong, the CEO. Please be reminded that the earnings results are consolidated estimates under the K-IFRS basis and are subject to change upon the auditor's review. Also, forward-looking estimates are based on assumption, so actual results may differ from figures included in today's presentation. So now I will begin with business highlights of Kakao, the parent, and major business results from the platform business.
Good morning and good evening, everyone. This is Simon Hong, CEO of Kakao Corp. First of all, I wish to extend my sincere apologies to the esteemed shareholders of Kakao for the recent unpleasant news surrounding the acquisition of SM Entertainment. While the particulars of the ongoing investigation preclude us from divulging any specific details at this juncture, I assure you that we shall vigorously defend our position in the legal proceedings concerning the allegations linked to the SM acquisition process. Kakao has undergone a remarkable transformation, evolving from a startup to the operator of the foremost widely used service within South Korea. This evolution brings with it an augmented recognition of our social responsibilities. In acknowledgment of this reality, we are currently contemplating a strategic reassessment of our management infrastructure to implement a comprehensive organizational restructure.
We also acknowledge that safeguarding against business risk stands paramount among our shareholders' concerns. With this in mind, we are steadfast in our commitment to move forward with our existing projects in accordance with the established plans, ensuring minimal disruption and upholding our fiduciary duties. With that, allow me to present our financial performance for the third quarter. During this period, Kakao has achieved a consolidated operating revenue increment of 6% quarter-over-quarter and 16% year-over-year to KRW 2.16 trillion. This growth is attributable to the collective efforts and resilience of the Kakao group, striving to bolster our business amidst challenging business environments, both internal and external.
Excluding SM Entertainment acquisition impact, our consolidated operating revenue stands at KRW 1.9 trillion, marking a 2% QoQ increase and a 5% YoY increase. Turning our focus to KakaoTalk, this year has been pivotal in our pursuit to enrich user communication. We have expanded the horizon of user interaction, facilitating connections that span not only acquaintances, but also semi acquaintances and individuals outside one's immediate social circle. Through the introduction of the interaction stickers and the Pong feature that vanishes after 24 hours, we have witnessed a more dynamic and casual user interaction commencing in the Q3. After launching, Pong has become a repository of treasured moments for users, from capturing the beauty of changing scenery to commemorating family reunions during Korean Thanksgiving.
The ease with which our users can now convey their current states of mind via emojis and reactions has fostered a vibrant atmosphere and engagement with the Friends tab. The introduction of these features has fostered a new dimension of connectivity, one that transcends the conventional compliance of chat rooms. Although we are in the very early stage of this feature's release, it is encouraging to report that the uptake has been particularly robust among the demographic of individuals aged 15-24, a cohort renowned for their active participation across different types of social media platforms. In Q3, KakaoTalk has launched two notable services, Local News on Friends Tab and Local Tab on OpenChat. These platforms are designed to forge stronger connections between consumers and local enterprises.
In the upcoming month, these new features will be strongly combined with another local service asset called Kakao Map. This integration is projected to amplify synergies across our offerings and catalyze new business opportunities. Once our local service offering is firmly established within the Kakao ecosystem, we anticipate that users will naturally refer to local news and Kakao Map to discover dining options and other venues of interest around them. They will be informed of recent store openings and available promotions via the Talk Channel. As more customers find out about the nearby stores and local news and Talk Channel, store owners will be encouraged to timely update their latest store information, events, and menu offerings on the store management platform on Kakao Map, and in turn, they will be more intrigued to find out more about advertising products within Kakao local service.
When this is seamlessly integrated with the broader Kakao business tools, which include reservation, ordering, and payment, we are confident that we will not only enhance our advertising prospects, but also create a meaningful business opportunity for our e-commerce. This year, our focus has been on laying the groundwork for the sustained long-term expansion of TalkBiz. We have been vigorously launching new services, and beginning next year, we will initiate comprehensive monetization strategies to establish a trajectory of sustainable growth for the foreseeable future. Next, TalkBiz revenue grew 3% QoQ and 11% YoY to KRW 518 billion. Regarding our TalkBiz advertising, we observed a marginal 1% decrease in revenue QoQ, while YoY revenue saw an 8% increase.
Biz Board reported a 4% annual increase in revenue on the back of the augmented inflow of new revenue streams from Friends Tab and OpenChat. Additionally, the Talk Channel achieved yet another record-breaking quarter in both the number of paying advertisers and the total number of Talk Channel friends, proving its superb efficiency. For Notification Talk, there was a noticeable surge in revenue, largely due to enhanced engagement by the financial sector, as we provided a custom skin feature designed specifically for financial institutions to mitigate the risk of spam and phishing. As a result, messaging ad revenue increased by 11% on-year. In our pursuit of expanding our advertisers pool with long-tail partners, we have recently initiated a partnership with Yogiyo, one of the top food delivery platforms in Korea.
Yogiyo will be integrated within one of Kakao's business solutions, Kakao Food Order, and we are going to launch Kakao Order by Yogiyo in November. We aim to progressively onboard 300,000 restaurant partners currently on Yogiyo into Kakao's advertising ecosystem. By expanding API functionalities that facilitate seamless integration of Talk Channel messaging for partners like Yogiyo, we anticipate that our partners will actively engage with the variety of message-driven business models, including CRM initiatives. We are vigorously advancing the integration of large numbers of Talk Channels this year in collaboration with B2B2C entities, just like Yogiyo, that boast extensive partner networks. By the year's end, we project the total number of Talk Channels to be close to 2.5 million, an increase of 700,000 from the previous year.
Noteworthy is the fact that approximately 800,000 of these long-term partners are not just quantitatively significant, but also qualitatively proven operatives with the infrastructure to actively scale their business pursuits within KakaoTalk. In essence, our affiliate model is crafted to ensure mutual growth, propelling the business of our affiliates and small business owners in tandem with Kakao's expansion. Transitioning to commerce business, we observe an 8% QoQ and a 15% YoY increase in revenue. Total Kakao Commerce GMV for Q3 registered a 5% annual growth, reaching KRW 2.4 trillion. Talk Gift GMV reported a 7% YoY increase, while Talk Store GMV saw a 2% YoY rise.
First, on Talk Gift, the introduction of Lux Tap has reinvigorated the dynamic of exchanging luxury gifts within closest relationship, contributing to increased activity across various categories, including fashion, leisure, and luxury beauty. Consequently, the GMV of luxury brands was boosted 18% YoY growth, which considerably surfaces overall market growth. Furthermore, the gift reservation feature was newly implemented for Korean Thanksgiving season in September, which effectively spread out crowded demand, in turn resulted in a near 10% YoY hike in GMV compared to previous year's Thanksgiving. Moreover, Kakao Commerce plans to further fortify the self-purchase context within the shopping tab by creating synergies across the board of our business platforms, which include Talk Channel, Talk Store, and Kakao Shopping Live. In Q3, the shopping tab witnessed a 30% increase in daily active users YoY, following the rollout of My Store feature.
This tailored shopping curation space allows users to aggregate their preferred stores connected via Talk Channel and receive updates and on new offers and promotions in real time. Kakao Commerce is committed to perpetuating growth by encouraging users to discover and connect with their favorite local brands on KakaoTalk, engage with them via Talk Channel, and finalize their purchases within the shopping tab, thereby fostering a virtual cycle of user engagement and commercial success. Pivoting to new initiatives. First, on the AI business strategy that is being collaboratively executed by Kakao Corp and Kakao Brain. In the immediate wake of ChatGPT's emergence, numerous global entities, including the major big techs, intensified their efforts toward the development of foundation models, igniting a robust technological competition.
Yet, recently, the spotlight has begun to transition toward the competition and service-driven approach, steering away from an exclusive emphasis on the size of the model or speed of model development. It is anticipated that new patterns of competition will materialize, contingent upon the unique services offered by each enterprise and the customer bases they have nurtured. In terms of foundation models, Kakao Brain has made significant strides in constructing various in-house foundation models across a spectrum of parameter sizes. Concurrently, we are fine-tuning open source models that are globally accessible. When it comes to the pragmatic integration of AI technology into our services, our strategy remains flexible.
We are open to an array of possibilities in comparison our proprietary models, fine-tuned open source alternatives, or those devised by leading global big techs, and our decisions will be in accordance with considerations of cost effectiveness and suitability for our intended AI services. Kakao's acute understanding of the connectivity context within Korea is unparalleled, given our extensive user base that spans in the entire nation. The AI services we plan to introduce will transcend traditional human-to-human interactions by forging new connections between people and AI. As an initial step, we are very near to launching AI content bots pilot test within KakaoTalk's OpenChat. Currently, similar types of content bots only cater to more general categories of interest, such as baseball or English Premier League.
Our ambition is to further segment the categories of interest into, for instance, a baseball team or a player, and provide targeted content tailored by AI bots, which will in turn foster very strong communities bound by shared interests. We define this concept as Microvertical AI, and we will further evaluate this service to ensure its utility to users and its potential for scalability. Kakao Healthcare is intensifying its initiatives to expand comprehensive services within both the B2B and B2C sectors. Within the B2C segment, Kakao Healthcare is on schedule to secure business authorization by EZN for an innovative service designed to facilitate more efficient and predictive blood sugar management through integration with the CGM device.
Given the rapid escalation of diabetes prevalence in recent years, and our objective is to enhance the well-being of individuals managing diabetes, mitigate the incidence of this condition in at-risk populations, and alleviate the associated socioeconomic burdens. For B2B, Kakao Healthcare is embarking on the standardization and consolidation of extensive clinical research data from medical institutions. Our aim is to establish a clinical data warehouse, augmented by advanced AI tech and statistical capabilities in major leading hospitals in Korea in an expedited fashion. Following our partnership with Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Q2, we anticipate finalizing the implementation at Ewha Womans University Medical Center and Keimyung University Dongsan Medical Center within this year.
Moreover, we are poised to inaugurate a research collaboration network in Q4, which will be instrumental in fostering a comprehensive healthcare ecosystem and ensuring the competitive edge of clinical data assets. Furthermore, within the digital front door initiative, Kakao Healthcare's extensive hospital appointment service aimed at patients' convenience, we have successfully launched the premier KakaoTalk chatbot appointment system at Ewha Womans University Medical Center in August, and efforts are underway to expand this service to additional major leading hospitals. Moving on to Kakao Enterprise. Kakao Cloud, an integral part of Kakao Enterprise, has been enhancing its technological edge through a strategic alliance with AMD, a leader in the global semiconductor industry. This collaboration is setting the stage for Kakao Cloud to make substantial inroads into the enterprise cloud market.
By rapidly accumulating references across diverse business domains within the Kakao Group, including gaming, mobility, and Fintech, we are preparing to scale up our presence significantly. During Q3, our capacity to deploy stable, high-performance computing environments was demonstrated by providing the necessary cloud infrastructure for generative AI training within the Kakao Group. Additionally, in Q3, Kakao Cloud was selected by one of the prominent AI service companies in Korea for their inference infrastructure, swiftly establishing a strong track record in the AI cloud industry. Kakao Enterprise is on track to restructuring into an organization primarily focused on cloud-based operations. This comprehensive transformation, which encompasses streamlining labor force and transferring non-core businesses, is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2024 at the latest.
Although Q3 reflected one-off restructuring related costs, the operating loss has been on a decline compared to the previous quarter. Through this ongoing process of business optimization, we anticipate a rapid enhancement in profitability. Moving on to Kakao's ESG endeavor in Q3. Kakao's upcycling project embodies Kakao's environmental responsibility by promoting the reuse and upcycling of resources. With over 900,000 items collected from approximately 70,000 users, this project created more than 70,000 new items. This project not only contributes to waste reduction, but also stimulates the circular economy. Moving forward, Kakao will continue to innovate within the circular economy and contribute more to environmental sustainability.
In social aspect, Linkous Lab, Kakao subsidiary, was selected as the best company for job creation 2023 by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, highlighting Kakao's dedication to social inclusivity and job creation, particularly for people with disabilities. This distinction, along with its previous award in 2022, 2020, showcases Kakao's efforts in expanding job roles and fostering an inclusive workforce for persons with disabilities. In addition, Kakao Impact Foundation was awarded meritorious contribution to the revitalization of traditional markets by the president this year. This accolade is a testament to Kakao's efforts in support and revitalization of traditional markets, ensuring that technological advancements benefit all sectors of the economy.
Lastly, on Kakao's shareholder return policy and our forward-looking plans, our executive team acknowledges the gravity of the recent performance of Kakao's stock price, and is actively exploring an array of strategies to augment enterprise value and refine governance with the focus on mid- to long-term outcomes. Kakao has communicated its mid- to long-term policy to allocate between 15%-30% of its annual free cash flow to our shareholders. This initiative commenced in the fiscal year 2021, and is projected to continue for three years. As pledged, we have consistently distributed 5% of our standalone basis free cash flow annually in cash dividends, resulting in a total aggregated distribution of KRW 49.2 billion over the preceding two years.
Furthermore, we have upheld our commitment to the retirement of treasury shares, targeting 10%-25% of our annual FCF. Over the last two years, we have executed an annual average treasury shares cancellation, representing 50% of our standalone FCF, which includes a special cancellation conducted in the fiscal year 2021. To date, this has culminated in a total of KRW 422.4 billion worth of treasury shares cancellation, which equates to 1.4% of Kakao's outstanding shares. For the current fiscal year, we intend to return approximately 30% of our standalone basis free cash flow, which represent the upper band of our previously stated range. Looking ahead to the next fiscal year, we are preparing to unveil a strengthened mid- to long-term shareholder return policy, aligned with our shareholders' growing expectations and interests.
Specific details regarding this updated policy will be disclosed following a board resolution.
Next, I will run through business and financial highlights. Q3 platform and other revenue was up by 8% YoY and 5% QoQ to KRW 428.5 billion. Kakao Page Q3 TPV was up by 18% YoY, reaching KRW 36.2 trillion, and the revenue TPV increased 15% YoY to KRW 10.5 trillion. Kakao Pay, for its digital payment system service, entered into a partnership with Eleventh Street and the kiosk of large fast food chains, securing places with a high level of user activity. And by strengthening benefit offerings customized to individual users' lifestyle through events at nearby stores and payment discounts, double-digit growth was achieved across online and offline.
TPV of tens of millions overseas merchants from Japan, Macau, and others, is rising fast, while TPV from inbound tourists generated from domestic Kakao Pay merchant is also rising. As a result, cross-border TPV was up almost two-fold YoY, with its share of total payment revenue expanding to above 10%. In digital finance, with the ramp-up of Kakao Pay Securities MTS, assets under deposit and TPV continued to trend up. Next, onto mobility. Supported by steady revenue uptrend, Q3 mobility revenue was up by 8% QoQ and 22% YoY. Even under suppressed overall taxi demand, our effort to scale up service operations helped maintain the growth trajectory, which we'll stick to in Q4. For parking business, we connect to more parking lots, and more people subscribe to the parking pass. We expect the growth trend to be solid.
We also have adopted technology from Split platform, a mobility brokerage platform we invested in early this year, to respond to mobility demand from inbound and outbound travelers, which sharply rose since the start of the pandemic. Since October, inbound tourists can hail Kakao Taxi using global super apps like Alipay and Ctrip, and we plan to gradually expand the linkage with local mobility apps of Southeast Asia, Japan and Europe. So moving on to content, I'll begin with the music business. Music business is moving away from a structure of high dependency on a handful of mega artists. As we see large fan base built up for all of our artists, and with the addition of SM artists, we have solidified the multi-label structure.
On this backdrop, the music revenue was up 7% QoQ and 105% YoY, reporting KRW 513.3 billion. During Q3, many artist groups, including The Boys, actively made appearances, and four groups, including Rise and NCT Dream, sold more than 1 million copies of albums, rewriting the quarterly record. In October, Ive's third full-length album recorded 1.6 million copies in first week of release, becoming a million seller for three consecutive terms. They will start a global tour, including Japan and the United States, which will continue into next year after the Seoul concert. At SM, starting off with full-length albums of NCT 127 , a new boy group, NCT New Team, is gearing up for a pre-debut targeting the Japanese market.
Kakao Entertainment and SM, together with our subsidiary in North America, will provide all-rounded support to our artists so that we may gain a solid footing as a K-pop major player.
... Next is story and media business. Story revenue was up 8%, both QoQ and YoY, coming in at KRW 249.1 billion. In Japan, Piccoma GMV was up 7% QoQ and 22% YoY, hitting quarterly record, becoming a number one grossing app out of the total app market in Japan. Following last quarter's effort to improve the user metrics through service operation and marketing, revenue continued to grow. And despite rising AMP from marketing activities, profitability maintained a robust uptrend. On top of great performance from major IPs, I Quit the Hero's Party, which was developed in-house based on the insight gained from the data and expertise from operating the Piccoma platform, became top grossing webtoon.
Another popular webtoon, The Returner's Magic Should Be Special, was made into animation, which started airing in October, creating a positive loop in terms of traffic into the original webtoon, once again attesting to competitiveness of Piccoma's content. In the domestic market, we started using Helix Push, which is AI-powered, highly sophisticated CRM solution. Helix Push analyzes user behavior data, including search and purchase, upon which personalized content is recommended at the most optimal timing. Since the adoption, user retention and content usage increased, which drove up the RPU. In Q3, four screen adaptations of original webtoon IPs were released, and Moving received the most interest, with its views on Kakao Page soaring more than 60 times.
This interest spread to other IPs sharing similar universe, driving up the page view 9 times for the webtoon title Bridge, which yet again showed a strong virtuous loop of traffic between webtoon and its adaptation projects. In North America, we revamped the platform, bettering convenience by making the main page look the same, both on the web and in the application, and added a new tab with only the major collection of stories, strengthening the nexus between discovery of consumption and users' community engagement. In Q4, we will roll out a voucher that can be used to purchase selected episode at one go and will diversify the advertisement BM and carry on with the additional investment. These efforts will help facilitate content consumption as we build out a basis for further growth.
Powered by full-fledged production of dramas, media revenue was up 46% QoQ and 14% YoY to KRW 107 billion. During Q3, The Worst of Evil was released on Disney+ and Song of the Bandits on Netflix, both of which ranked number one in domestic and landed on top 10 ranking in 6 major countries, which once proved our global IP production capabilities. The Gyeongseong Creature is gearing up for a concurrent global release in Q4, produced by Kakao Entertainment and Studios, starring artists of the company and supported by Kakao Entertainment's internal production capabilities. Netflix's original non-scripted content, The Comedy Royale, is also slated for release in Q4 as we continue to diversify into different content formats, including movies, dramas, and entertainment programs.
We will continue to solidify our standing as a global studio as we tap into multiple distribution channels, including the TV channels, Netflix and Disney+. For the game business, through content updates and traffic management, we drove top line expansion, and with efficiency gains from marketing, profitability improved comparing to last quarter. But on back of decline in revenue from non-game business, including Kakao VX, due to prolonged economic recession, Q3 game revenue was down 2% QoQ to KRW 262 billion. We expect non-game seasonality will continue in Q4, so we'll focus on gaining added momentum for top line, while we continue to manage traffic to ensure a longer term performance from the core game titles. Next, moving on to consolidated operating expense and profit for the third quarter.
Q3 consolidated operating expense was up 5% QoQ and 18% YoY, reaching KRW 2,020.6 billion, due to one-off expense arising from overall business structure improvements, despite the conservative execution on labor costs and marketing spend. Going into the expense breakdown, despite KRW 14.7 billion of one-off expense following structural changes in Q3, labor cost was down 1% QoQ on conservative hiring across the company, while due to the consolidation of SM, there was 8% increase YoY, with labor costs reporting KRW 467 billion in total. Number of headcount as of end of Q3 on consolidated basis is 17,208, which is lower by 692 QoQ due to conservative hiring and exclusion of consolidated subsidiaries following the improvements in business structure.
On a year-over-year basis, with the consolidation of SM, headcount increased by 1,284, but excluding SM, headcount fell 212. On the back of higher production costs following increase in the number of titles in the lineup and rise in the share of digital product for KakaoTalk gift, revenue-linked expenses up 9% quarter-over-quarter to KRW 872.1 billion. On a year-over-year basis, there was 23% increase due to SM consolidation, as they have bigger revenue share proportion with the artist. For your information, share of revenue-linked expense against total sales was 40.4%, up 1.1 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. Outsourcing and infrastructure expenses up 2% quarter-over-quarter and 21% year-over-year to KRW 289.2 billion, due to a rise in fees not linked to revenue.
Despite conservative spend, stance on spending, on the back of Kakao brand marketing and new businesses of Kakao Mobility, including the quick delivery and increase in the marketing activities following SM's comeback, the marketing expense is up 5% QoQ and 12% YoY, reporting KRW 125.4 billion. In Q3, marketing spend ratio against revenue was 5.8%, with KRW 25.5 billion of PPA amortization costs for this quarter in relation to SM Entertainment and growing AI-related CapEx investment, depreciation and amortization increased 3% QoQ and 30% YoY to KRW 198.4 billion. All in all, Q3 operating profit was KRW 140.3 billion, with OP margin of 6.5%, and operating profit excluding SM is KRW 115.1 billion.
On Kakao separate basis, Q3 revenue was KRW 655.6 billion, operating profit KRW 135.4 billion, and OP margin was 21%. Next is on non-operating revenue and expense. Other revenue was KRW 72.8 billion, comprising of disposition gains from equity method and subsidiary shares. There was an increase of KRW 56.3 billion, attributable to disposition of investment in Kakao Ventures fund. Other expense reported KRW 80 billion, which includes impairment loss from intangible assets, disposition loss, donation, and advisory fees. Equity method gain was KRW 32.8 billion, up KRW 44.4 billion QoQ from higher net profit of Kakao Bank. Equity method loss was down KRW 6.4 billion QoQ to KRW 22.6 billion.
Financial revenue was KRW 55.6 billion, mostly from interest dividend income and gains from sale of financial assets. It was KRW 6 billion last QoQ due to decrease in dividend income. Financial expense was KRW 70.5 billion, which is mostly interest expense, and there was increase of KRW 20 billion QoQ due to the recognition of financial costs on non-controlling interest from Kakao Ventures fund. Q3 corporate income tax was KRW 79 billion, given that when accounting for corporate tax expense on the basis of individual entities, the effect of deficit corporation was not reflected, which has resulted in higher effective corporate tax rate of 61.5%. As a result, the consolidated net profit came in at KRW 49.5 billion. Last but not least, on CapEx.
With continued investment into AI and data center, there was tangible asset investment of KRW 123.5 billion, including the machinery and construction in progress, and KRW 30.9 billion for intangible assets, including investment for content, amounting to a total of KRW 154.4 billion of CapEx investment. This ends the presentation for Q3 of 2023. We'll now begin the Q&A. Please limit your question to two per person as we are mindful of the time constraint.
Now, Q&A session will begin. Please press star one, that is star and one, if you have any questions. Questions will be taken according to the order you have pressed star and number one. For cancellation, please press star two, that is star and two, on your phone. The first question will be presented by Jingu Kim from Kim Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. 사실 정재 활동을 하시는 것이 좀 관측이 되고, 이에 대한 조정 작업을 잘 하시리라 생각하기 때문에, 저는 별도로 여쭤볼 필요를 가지진 않습니다. 제가 궁금한 포인트는 우리 헤드쿼터 중심으로 앞으로 AI 사업을 어떻게 영위를 하실지, 그리고 이것을 서비스하고 부가가치 측면에서 유저들한테 어떻게 돌려줄지에 대한 사안인데요. 가령 톡 기반의 유저의 개인화 데이터를 활용한 부가가치라든가, 이런 것들을 어떻게 현재 고민하고 계신지에 대한 부분입니다. 그래서 종국적으로는 이런 부분들을 통해서 다시 내년에 국내 대표 인터넷 소프트웨어 업체로서, 우리가 위상을 어떻게 높여 나가실지도 부연 설명해 주시면 감사하겠습니다. 감사합니다.
Thank you for taking my question. I just have one question that I wanted to ask. With regards to the recent social issue that's been created around the company, I do not feel the need to ask related questions because I know that the company is making appropriate countermeasures and carrying out with the overall revamping of your business approach. So I need not ask questions regarding that. My question relates to the AI business initiative that the headquarters of Kakao is currently taking. Would like to get some insight as to what potential services and added value you will be able to share back with your user base. For instance, making use of the personalized and tailored data which you would have access to, based upon your KakaoTalk platform.
Would like to understand as to how you are planning on generating an added value from all of these bases of data, so that Kakao once again could establish itself and set itself up as Korea's flagship software company come next year.
Jingu Kim님, 질문 감사합니다. Kakao 대표이사 Euntaek Hong입니다. 제가 답변드리도록 하겠습니다. 그저께 OpenAI의 발표를 보면, 여러 가지 내용이 있었습니다만, 이제 multimodal로 가고, 텍스트뿐만 아니라 이미지, 음성을 학습을 해서 그 호출을 하면 이제 결과를 돌려주는 그런 시대로 가고 있고, 이미 Tesla에서는 운전자들의 운전하는 그 행태를 동영상으로 촬영해서 자율주행 그 AI를 만드는 데 지금 학습을 하고 있지 않습니까? 그래서 생성형 AI가 이제 텍스트, 언어 기반의 텍스트 학습을 해서 하는 모델에서 multimodal로 진화하고 있습니다. 그래서 생성, 그런, 그에 따른 이제 소요되는 비용도 이제 많이 그 전보다 커지고 있는 상황이고요. 그래서 굉장히 그 전략을 잘 짜야겠다는 생각을 했고, 그중에 이제 OpenAI 발표를 보면, GPTs라고 GPTs 빌더를 제공을 해서 이용자들이 그냥 자연어만으로도 자신만의 GPTs를 구축하게 하겠다, 이런 발표가 있습니다. 그리고 본인들이 이제 스토어를 제공하겠다.
그래서 여러 개, 그 수많은 ChatGPT 같은 것들이 생겨나고, 그거를 지금 앱스토어처럼 이용자들한테 제공해서 판매 수입을 거두겠다는 그런 계획을 발표했습니다.
Thank you, Mr. Kim Jingu, for your question. This is Simon Hong, responding to your question. Two days ago, OpenAI made an announcement that they will not just base their training of the AI models upon text, but we will gradually transition to a multimodal, basically, training the model based on images and voice. So if a prompt is inputted in terms of images and voice and then the model, the AI model will provide you with a result to that prompt. Tesla is already making use of the videos that's been shot for and that recorded the driver's behavior, and using that data to train its AI model.
So basically, when it comes to generative AI, we are now transitioning into a multimodal context, moving away just simply from the tech space, which means that the relevant cost base is going to increase, and I feel therefore, it is very important for us to come up with the most appropriate AI strategy. There is also a talk of GPTs, which is providing the builder to the user base so that they could, based upon natural language, create their own GPT models and services. And the company is saying that there will be a marketplace, like an app store, that will be provided, through which various different types of ChatGPT models could actually be sold, and then the relevant proceeds from that sales could also be generated.
그래서 이제 앞으로의 경쟁은 그런 다양한 그 ChatGPT, GPTs라고 이제 그쪽에서 표현했는데요, 와 고객을 누가 연결하느냐의 경쟁도 이제 굉장히 중요한 AI의 한 축이 될 거라고 생각을 합니다.
So I believe that one of the key pillars of future competition will be who is going to connect that ChatGPT, or they call it the GPTs, with the actual users and the developers of the AI. I think that will also become an important area of competition for us.
이제 Kakao도 자체적으로 그런 다양한 GPTs라고 그래야 되나요? 그럼 이제 그 용어로 보면 만들겠지만, 그런 GPTs와 고객들을 연결하는 데 저희가 좀 강점이 있다고 생각하고요. 그 이유는 다 아시겠지만, 모바일에서 모바일 메신저는 가장 실행 빈도가 높은 서비스고요. 미국과 중국을 제외하면, 국내에서 자국산 모바일 메신저를 쓰고 있는 나라는 한국이 유일합니다. 그래서 저희가 이용자들의 행동 데이터라든지, 이런 것들을 좀 갖고 있고, 50,000,000명을 대상으로 하는 게 아니라 100,000명, 500,000명 단위로 이용자들한테 그 맞는 그런 콘텐츠를 제공할 수 있는 접점을 갖고 있습니다.
Kakao hence is also developing its own, if I may call it, the GPTs. And I believe that we really have a strong positioning as a nexus and that connecting point between GPTs and the user base. Because mobile messenger is a service that is most frequented by its user base, and aside from U.S. and the Chinese market, Korea is the only country that has its own, own developed mobile messenger that is most prevalently used within a country. And also, we have access to users' behavior data, and we are therefore able to provide more tailored and granular content for 100,000 or 20,000 units of user base, not to, and not just one single type of content to 50 million users.
그래서 이제 카카오가 강점을 갖고 있는 서비스에서 출발하는 그 어프로치, 제가 말씀드렸는데, 이제 모델 드리븐 AI 서비스가 아니라 서비스 드리븐 AI 전략을 저희는 취하고 있다고 하는데요. 최근에 어쨌든 그 추세를 보면 이런 서비스 드리븐 전략이 유효하다는 것을 다시 한번 확인할 수 있고요.
In light of the strength that Kakao has regarding the service offering that we provide to the market, we are, I say, a service-driven AI approach rather than model-driven AI. In light of the recent trends that we are seeing in the market, I think we can see that there is an effective validity when it comes to the service-driven AI model.
현재 내부적으로 진행되고 있는 pro- project 중에는, 그 AI 콘텐츠 bot 서비스가 있습니다. 이 서비스는 연내에 POC를 할, 그 bot들이 10개 정도 주제로 해서, 그 확장성과 유효성을 검증해 보려고 합니다.
So, there are some internal projects that are ongoing, and one good case is the AI content bot. Before the end of the year, we will have about 10 different bots undergo the POC, proof of concept process, so that we will be able to validate scalability and the effectiveness.
AI 콘텐츠 bot은 이용자들의 관심사를 micro segment로 촘촘히 구분하고, 작은 단위로 나누어진 관심사에 부합하는 맞춤형 콘텐츠를 국내, 국외 가리지 않고 소싱을 해서 대화 맥락에 맞게 제공할 예정입니다.
So the AI content bot is basically going to source the tailored content from both domestic and global, and provide a most aligned information to the so-called micro segment. So basically, a very granular segment and customer group with sharing a common interest, and we will be able to provide those inputs to different contexts of conversation.
AI 콘텐츠 bot은 더욱 세분화된 공통의 관심사를 향유해 높은 응집력을 가지고 있는 잠재 소비자군을 형성하는 만큼, 이러한 타겟 이용자들에게 도달하고자 하는 비즈니스 파트너들과의 제휴 기회가, 그 생길 것으로 생각하고 있습니다. 아울러, AI 콘텐츠 bot이 전달한 콘텐츠와 관련성이 높은 비즈니스 파트너들이 콘텐츠 제공을 위한 스폰서로 활동하면서 광고 비즈니스로의 확장을 일으킬 수 있을 것으로 기대하고 있습니다.
So AI content bot basically is based off of people that share a common interest, and we will be able to see that that will help us really create a specific category of consumers. That will open up an opportunity for us to partner up with many different types of business partners. Also, this will open up an opportunity for us to expand our advertising business, because these business partners that are highly relevant in terms of the content that the AI content bot actually delivers would provide them with an opportunity to be a sponsor; hence an opportunity for ad business will further open up.
나아가서는, 그 쇼핑이나 패션 뷰티와 같이 실질적인 이용자들의 구매 행동으로 이어질 수 있는 관심사의 경우, 콘텐츠 소비부터 실제 구매 행위까지 유기적으로 이어지는 call to action이 구현될 것으로 기대합니다.
We also believe that we can expect call to action, meaning in the context of shopping, in beauty, there are actual and real interest and actual behavior of purchase that's going to be involved in this whole process, from first appealing people on certain interests and leading them to content, content consumption and up to purchase.
마지막으로, 이거 관련해서 말씀드리자면, 이제 호출 비용 이전에 제가 뭐 한 번 호출할 때, 비용이 1 KRW 이하가 돼야지만 그게 실질적으로 서비스할 수 있는 수준이라고 말씀드렸는데, 그, 저희가 이제 뭐 AI 콘텐츠뿐만 아니라 여러 AI 서비스를 준비하는 과정에서, 자체 개발 중인 모델뿐만 아니라 오픈 소스를 파인튜닝한 것, 또 글로벌 빅테크의 생성형 모델까지 다양하게, 그, 활용할 계획을 갖고 있는데요. 특히 이제 오픈 소스를 활용한, 오픈 소스를 활용해서 만든 그 파운데이션 모델을 이용할 경우, 저희가 이제 파인튜닝을 할 경우에 호출당 비용이, 1 KRW보다 훨씬 더 적은 비용으로, 그, 서빙을 할 수 있는 것으로 확인됐습니다. 그래서, 비용 합리적이고, 그, 실용적으로 접근을 하겠다는 저희 어프로치가, 적중하지 않을까 기대를 하고 있습니다.
And last but not least, I previously, in other conference calls, mentioned that, basically this service is going to become feasible if we are able to reduce the unit cost per call below KRW 1. And as you know, we are in-house developing different AI content products as well as other services. And in this process, we will be using our own in-house developed foundation models as well as the fine-tuned open source models and the generative models of other global techs. In terms of this open source-based foundation model, which we have fine-tuned, we were able to validate that we can serve these prompts at less than, significantly less than KRW 1 per call.
I think that really goes to show our approach in terms of cost efficiencies and more practical approach of using the AI model is proven, proving to be quite effective.
Next question, please. The next question will be presented by Dong-Hwan Oh from Samsung Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
네. 질문 기회 감사드립니다. 두 가지 질문인데요. 첫 번째는 이제 카카오T에서 나온 트러커가 아직 초기 단계이긴 한데 좀 성과는 어떤지, 그리고 앞으로 전망이나, 그리고 저희 수수료 정책은 어떻게 될지가 좀 궁금하고요. 두 번째는 헬스케어 서비스의 파스타 서비스가 출시가 조금 지연되고 있는데 지연 이유가 무엇인지 궁금하고요. 그리고 지금 저희 국내에서는 CGM이 보험 적용되는 A형 당뇨 인구가 그렇게 많지 않은 것으로 알고 있습니다. 30,000명 수준으로 알려져 있는데, 규모가 크진 않은 것 같은데 내년에 혹시 예상하는 매출이 있으신지 말씀해 주시면 감사하겠습니다.
Thank you. I would like to ask two questions. First one is the Kakao T Trucker that you have recently launched. Would like to get some color as to what the performance is looking like at this point and what the future outlook is. And also, can you share with us the take rate of this service? Second question: It seems your Kakao Healthcare service, Pasta, is being delayed. If you could give some update on that, that would be helpful. And I understand that the number of population in Korea who will get insurance reimbursement for the use of the CGM is only limited to 30,000 people. So would like to know what your projection is in terms of next year's top line revenue from this service.
먼저, 오동완 위원님, 반갑습니다. 파스타에 대해서 먼저 말씀드리도록 하겠습니다. 아까 A형 당뇨병 환자가 30,000명이라고 하셨는데, 저희가 A형 당뇨병 환자만을 타겟으로 하는 건 아니고요. B형까지 포함할 경우에 당뇨병 환자가 570,000명이고, 특히 저희는 그 전당뇨에 있는 15,000,000명의, 뭐랄까요, 유저들을 타겟으로 하기 때문에, 그걸 시장 규모라고 얘기해야 될지 모르겠는데, 시장 규모는 굉장히 큰 상태고, 거기서 출발을 해서 여러 가지 고지혈병이라든지, 이런 만성질환들이 있거든요. 그걸 관리하는 플랫폼으로 진화할 계획을 갖고 있고요. 지금 서비스는 내부적으로 테스트를 하고 있고, 출시할 준비가 거의 다 된 것 같고, 근데 그 의료 기구 인증인가요? 인증을 받는 게 아마 연내에 이루어질 것 같고요, 그래서 내년 초에는 언제든지 출시할 수 있는 상태가 될 것 같습니다. 그리고...
But very good to hear from you, Mr. Oh, Dongwan. Responding to first your question on healthcare Pasta project. We're not just going to target type A diabetics. We will be expanding to target type B diabetics, and if you are including that number to the total addressable market, that would lead to about 5.7 million population. And also, the target user, especially if you also include pre-diabetic stage patients, that number will increase to 15 million. So I don't know if I could say it's a market size, but in terms of that potential in the market, it is quite significant. And so we will start with diabetics, but then we will expand to include other chronic diseases for, you know, including the high lipid, people who suffer from high lipid levels.
We are, at this point, undergoing internal tests, and I understand we're almost ready to launch this service, but we have to also get market authorization from the relevant authorities as it is considered a medical device, and we will be able to receive that before the end of the year, and we will be prepared to release this service any time next year.
Foreign language.
Responding to your second question about Kakao T Trucker, the trucking market basically is much larger compared to the taxi market, as it is a middle mile freight market, and we are seeking to connect the users of such freight delivery as well as the shippers of these cargoes. With that in mind, we've made acquisition of 49% of a freight intermediary or brokering platform called Freight Yard. And we will be able to bring the big data and AI technology related capabilities that Kakao Mobility has and use that for efficient fleet management and also for effectively matching the demand and the supply between the shippers and the delivery providers. We believe that we will be able to add value across the platform. At this point, Kakao T Trucker has not yet been officially released.
It's in the pilot stage, hence it's a bit too early for us to share with you the relevant performances. But once we gain that information, we will come back to you and share that information with you.
[Foreign language] Moving on to the next question, please. [Foreign language] Currently, there are no participants with questions. Please press star one, star and one to give your question. [Foreign language] The next question will be presented by Seyon Park from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.
[Foreign language]
Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions would like to ask. Recently, we've seen a bit of a pickup on your year-over-year growth for ad business. Are you seeing some signs of improvement in terms of Kakao's advertisement revenue if we look out into Q4 and next year? And second question is that I heard that there is some negotiation going on regarding the fees and the take rates for Kakao Mobility, and do you think that that will have an impact on lowering your take rate on a net basis? I know that this will be a bit of a sensitive issue for you to talk about, but would appreciate your explanation.
거기 이제 톡 업데이트 친구도 있지만, 펑도 있고, 뭐 다양한 동네 소식, 아직은 이제 동네 소식은 분당, 송파, 성남 이 세 군데에서 시범 테스트를 하고 있어서 대부분이 그 접근하시기 어려운 상태이긴 한데, 그런 영역들이 늘어나면서 친구 탭의 체류 시간이 늘어나고 있습니다. 그러면 CPT 상품도 효력, 효과가 올라갈 것 같고요. 그리고 이제 다음 쪽에 그 포털 광고가 계속 감소하고 있는데, 하락폭도 지금 둔화되고 있습니다. 그래서 이 둔화될 뿐만 아니라 이제 상승세로 반전할 것으로 기대하는 요인이 있는데요. 이제 인벤토리는 많이 늘어났는데, 광고 주 수가 부족해서 그 인벤트를 못 채우고 있는 상황이었는데, 저희가 굉장히 롱테일 광고주를 이제 계속 확보해 나가면서 자연스럽게 광고 주스도 늘어날 걸로 생각해서 이미 광고 매출이 늘어날 수 있는 기반은 지금 확보했다고 생각하고 있습니다.
또 하나는 인벤토리 늘어나는 것뿐만 아니라, 저희가 이제 톡 채널을 개설한 이제 사업자들이 이제 굉장히 많이 늘어나고 있는데, 이분들이 꼭 광고 말고도 그 마케팅, 광고, 마케팅이 같은 말로 생각할 수 있지만 좀 더 강의에 여러 가지 CRM까지 하는 도구로 쓰면서 여기에 이제 연관된 매출이 올라올 걸로 기대해서 광고 영역을 넘어서 이제 마케팅 예산까지 그 쓸 수 있는 곳으로 저희가 진화를 하고 있습니다.
Thank you, Mr. Park Sehyun. This is Simon again. Thank you for the question. Advertisement market had slowed over the recent years because of the headwind from the macroeconomic backdrop. But starting last quarter, we are seeing a slight pickup, and we expect that come next year, things will start to be more positive. And I say that because there are two reasons. First, we transitioned the view tab into open tab, and as a result, we were able to increase the amount of advertisement inventory. And also there is the friends tab, and here we sell CPT ad product. And basically friends tab usually was just a bridge tab where people would not stay for too long of a period.
What they would do is that they would select the friend that they will, for instance, communicate with and would leave that tab. But we've added features such as, you know, talk, the update of friends and also added local news. Right now, this is in a test phase, so it's not accessible in all of the locations. We're currently running the test at Bundang, Songpa, and Seongnam. But with the adoption of these different features, we have seen time spent actually go up, and hence I think that the CPT products going forward are going to be much more effective.
And then in terms of, in terms of the advertisement revenue that we see, volume that we see from the Daum platform, the decline has been slowed, and we are expecting towards a bit of a rebound in the future. So the issue that we faced previously was that although we increased the advertisement inventory slots, number of advertisers that ran advertisements were insufficient. But with our strong focus on long-tail advertisers, we've been able to also grow the advertiser count and really establishing a basis for us to further improve on the revenue.
But not just on the increase in the inventory side, we have seen increases in the number of businesses who opened up their Talk Channels, which mean that we will be able to move away from just the confines of the advertisement and to a broader marketing related, features, which include the CRM as well. And with the use of such broader marketing tools, we expect the revenue to further increase. And, once again, we are evolving from just advertisement specific, needs to a more broader marketing requirement.
그래서 이제 내년, 그 카카오톡으로 한정시켜서 말씀, 카카오라는 회사 본사를 기준으로 말씀드리면, 핵심적인 키워드가 로컬, 그다음 비즈인, 관심사를 기반으로 한 비즈인, 그리고 세 번째가 마이크로 버티컬입니다. 이 세 가지 키워드는 다 광고하고 굉장히 연관성이 높은 키워드들인데요. 이 세 가지가 잘 작동을 한다면, 광고 비즈니스에도 굉장히 큰 도움이 될 거라고 생각하고 있습니다.
In a nutshell, if I was to draw out three very important keyword for Kakao Corp. for next year, it would be local and non-acquaintances sharing common interest and microvertical. All of these three keywords are very closely related to our advertisement business. If all of these three factors really work well, that will have a positive impact on our ad business.
네, 그러면 두 번째 질문에 답하겠습니다. 모빌리티의 택시 수수료에 대해서 그 질문을 주셨는데요. 그동안 어쨌든 수수료가 좀 복잡한 체계로 돼 있어서, 그 이제 사회적으로 비판을 많이 받았고요. 그래서 13일날 택시 사단체, 그리고 가맹택시연합회, 그리고 오개 단체죠, 하고 모빌리티하고 이제 간담회를 시작합니다. 거기서 이제 수수료 체계와 또 지금 이제 가맹사업을 그 영위하고 있는 가맹 구조, 뭐, 여러 가지를 그 원점에서 놓고, 이제 토론을 하고 이제 협상을 하게 될 텐데요. 그래서 그 결과를 지금 예측하기는 어려운데, 현재 어쨌든 저희가, 일반 택시로부터는 이제 수수료를 받지는 않고 있고요. 그게 60% 됩니다. 그리고 가맹 택시에서 받는 그 수수료가 있는데, 그 수수료가 그렇게 뭐 이제 표현적으로는 이제 20%로 알려져 있지만, 실제로 기사님이 부담하는 수수료 규모는 그렇게 크지는 않습니다. 그래서 그 단체 대표님들하고 이제 잘 그 협상을 할 것으로 생각하고, 그 결과에 대해서는 지금 예단하긴 어렵습니다.
Responding to your question on mobility, you asked about the take rate and the fee structure for the taxi business. I admit that the take rate structure for the taxi business is quite complex and complicated, and that actually, you know, led to quite a bit of social criticism. On the 18th, we will have a roundtable discussion with four taxi groups, four different taxi association, as well as Taxi Franchise Association and Kakao Mobility, during which we will talk about the overall take rate structure as well as revisit the franchise model. So we will start the discussion from fresh. It's difficult to predict what the outcome of this discussion will be, but, as you would appreciate, if you look at just the regular taxis, which account for 60% of the entire portfolio, there is no fee that is applied.
It is applied to the franchise taxis, and on the surface, the take rate seems 20%. But as you know, the actual expense that the taxi drivers bear is not that significant. Anyhow, there will be discussion that will take place, and it is too early for us to predict what the outcome of that discussion will be at this point.
네, 이상으로 2023년 3분기 Kakao의 실적 발표를 마치겠습니다. 오늘 참석해 주신 투자자, 애널리스트, 기자분들께 감사드립니다.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of earnings presentation of Kakao Corp. for Q3 of 2023. I would like to extend my deep gratitude to investors, analysts, and members of the press for joining us this morning. Thank you.