KakaoTalk Brand Messages Replace SMS Ads: "User Trust on the Rise"
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Economic Content Platform for Investors
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by Lee Myeonghwan
Published 26 May.2026 14:02(KST)
A recent study has found that as the corporate messaging market is shifting from traditional SMS advertising to messenger-based platforms like KakaoTalk, user trust is increasing.
A research team from Sungkyunkwan University presented a paper analyzing the corporate messaging market from the user perspective at the Korea Media Management Association on May 22. The study compared messenger-based advertising, specifically KakaoTalk Brand Messages, with conventional SMS. The experiment was conducted with a total of 501 users, segmenting advertisements by product involvement: from low-involvement items such as daily necessities and desserts, to high-involvement products where information search is critical, such as overseas travel and financial products.
A research team from Sungkyunkwan University is presenting a paper at the Korean Media Management Association. Kakao
The analysis showed that while brand messages and SMS target the same user base and compete in the market, brand messages fulfill a wider range of user needs than SMS in most areas. The difference was particularly significant for high-involvement products, where brand messages received higher evaluations for convenience in checking and managing information, as well as for service reliability.
The researchers identified the structural characteristics of messenger-based advertising as the main reason for these differences. Traditional SMS advertising is distributed in bulk based on phone numbers, whereas messenger-based advertising allows users to directly verify the sender through official channel verification and profiles. Users can also manage or block the receipt of advertisements themselves, which contributes to greater trust and a sense of security.
Lee Daeho, a professor at Sungkyunkwan University who participated in the research, stated, “Brand messages should be seen not as a completely separate new service from SMS, but as a service that is evolving and competing within the corporate messaging market.” He also noted, “Recently, user experience and trust have become more important competitive factors than simply sending messages.”
There were also calls for rational policy directions that maintain frameworks for consumer protection and information transparency, while also balancing the user benefits and healthy market competition brought by new messaging services. The research team suggested, “Rather than imposing the same regulatory standards on the new messenger marketing market as on conventional SMS advertising, policy should also consider the benefits brought by technological change and service innovation.”
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