Webtoon
A new combatant is entering the streaming wars.
Webtoon Entertainment, the popular creator-driven comics platform, is making a big bet on video.
The platform is adapting comics into episodic videos meant for vertical scrolling, the company shared exclusively with Business Insider. It’s starting with 14 English-language comics, with more episodes and titles rolling out throughout the year.
Web comics have been on the rise and have attracted the attention of entertainment giants as a way to reach young people. Webtoon last week announced a deal with Disney to distribute its comics featuring Marvel, Star Wars, and other characters, and global streamers like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video have adapted Webtoon comics to their platforms. And Netflix’s biggest movie hit this year, “KPop Demon Hunters,” was inspired by anime.
Started in Korea in 2005, Webtoon is by far the biggest online comics platform. It reported revenue of $1.35 billion last year, up 5.1% year over year.
Webtoon earns money through ads and freemium payments, sharing revenue with independent creators who distribute their comics on the platform. It also makes money from adaptations of its IP. It counts about 150 million users across its comics and other platforms, including Wattpad for web novels, and says users average 30 minutes a day on the platform.
As video and audio gobble up an increasing share of Gen Z’s media diet, Webtoon thinks cartoons can capture more of its existing users’ time and appeal to video-centric Gen Zers. Its video shows are meant to resemble the short, vertical videos that, according to Deloitte’s 2025 Digital Media Trends survey, that generation prefers over traditional TV and movies.
“We believe that launching this kind of video episode can extend our user audience, especially the Gen Z users who prefer to listen or watch later than read,” Yongsoo Kim, chief strategy officer for Webtoon, said in an interview.
He declined to identify the tech platforms Webtoon is using to help make the adaptations or say how much he projects the video titles will grow Webtoon’s audience.
Other media companies are also leaning into the appeal of vertical video, whether by adapting their content to TikTok or exploring the mini-drama trend.
Webtoon isn’t using AI to make its videos
For the videos, Webtoon picked stories representing a variety of genres, like romance and action. Webtoon worked with the creator to produce the videos, adding sound effects, voices provided by real actors, and music. The result falls somewhere in between image-based and fully animated.
Creators maintain ownership over the show’s underlying IP while they share ownership of the videos with Webtoon. Initially, the video stories will be ad-free and free to watch, though the plan is to add advertising over time.
While it seems like every media company is rushing headfirst into AI, especially with animation, Kim stressed that Webtoon isn’t using AI to convert the comics into video, in keeping with its belief in respecting creators.
Jessica Ramsden is the creator of “Star Catcher,” an LGBTQ+-themed comic that is one of the first that Webtoon adapted to video. She said the Webtoon team took her input to make sure the characters and voices fit her vision for the comic, whose protagonist deals with mental health issues, his sister’s medical issues, and falling in love. She hopes the adaptation will expand its reach.
“I know there’s a much broader audience that might not know it exists because they don’t read comics,” Ramsden said. “I love manga, but there’s people who only watch the anime version of it, and this can meet them halfway.”
She said she was happy that human actors were used instead of AI.
“As an artist in general, I’m anti-AI,” she said. “The whole part of art is human innovation using your own hands.”
The post The world’s biggest comics platform is betting on video to lure Gen Z appeared first on Business Insider.
