South Korea's ad market likely to grow 1.7% in Q1

South Korea's advertising market is estimated to have risen 1.7 percent in the first quarter of the year from a year earlier, a state-run ad agency said Thursday. The Korea Broadcasting Advertising Corp. (KOBACO) said the market is expected to reach 2.3 trillion won (US$2.1 billion) in the January-March period. The estimate is based on the combined commercial sales of six media -- TV stations, radio broadcasters, newspapers, magazines, cable TVs and Internet portals. The first-quarter ad revenue for the six media are forecast to come to 1.74 trillion won, with advertising sales for Internet portal expected to reach 476.9 billion won, followed by public TVs with 378.7 billion won, newspapers with 378 billion won and cable TVs 324.3 billion won. In the fourth quarter of last year, the local advertising industry grew 14.4 percent on-year to 2.63 trillion won, the agency said. The KOBACO predicted that the local commercial market will grow 2.4 percent this year from the previous year to 9.88 trillion won.