Your Choices, A Predetermined Destiny

The moment an ad pops up in a game, strangely, products I'm interested in appear. Is it a coincidence? No. A high-speed auction takes place in an invisible realm, where all your information is analyzed, and the optimal ad is 'selected' in an imperceptible amount of time. Moloco is the key player that made this 'invisible world' a reality. In 2013, when AI business was still unfamiliar, CEO Ahn Ik-jin was asked, "Does this even make sense?" However, their vision became a reality. Growing 200-fold in just four years, from $10 million in 2020 to $2 billion in 2024, they have built a massive ecosystem comprising 2,000 platforms, 180,000 brands, and a total transaction value of 60 trillion Korean won. This is an ecosystem that has quietly formed, comparable to Naver or Coupang. CEO Ahn emphasized, citing examples of YouTube and Instagram, that what's more important than products or technology is the AI growth engine that utilizes them. CTO Jeon Dong-hwan revealed Moloco AI's overwhelming capabilities. During peak hours, it reviews over 6 million ad opportunities per second, a scale equivalent to personalizing the entire population of Seoul in just two seconds. The AI makes optimal decisions in real-time, balancing immediate opportunities with better future ones. Moving from logistic regression to deep learning, transformers, and TPUs, Moloco has now declared its 'MOLOCO NEXT' vision, expanding beyond 'App-to-App' to 'Any-to-Any' (App-Web-CTV). Ahn Jae-kyun, Korea Country Manager, revealed a surprising truth about the domestic commerce market. Even in a mobile-centric era, domestic commerce platforms still see web usage at an overwhelming 70%, compared to apps at 30%. Furthermore, users spend 66% of their time on the 'open internet' rather than 'walled gardens' like Google and Facebook, achieving overwhelming results such as a shopping app ROAS of 1,603%. It was found that domestic users spend an average of over four hours a day on shopping apps. Lee Hyun-chae, Head of Commerce Media APAC, explained the power of 'Commerce Media' through a personal experience. Just as she purchased a recommended 'spicy Jjajang ramen' instead of her usual spicy ramen, commerce media is integrating product discovery to purchase, creating a new advertising landscape. In the US, it's projected to account for 21.8% of total online ad spending by 2027, and in Korea, a 500% growth is expected over the next five years. Moloco's clients have already experienced dramatic results, such as a 42% increase in daily sales and a ROAS of 4,525% after running ads. Ultimately, it's an era where algorithms predict human tastes, habits, and even desires more accurately. The free will exercised at the moment of choosing spicy Jjajang ramen might have already been a calculated outcome. CEO Ahn Ik-jin's vision of an 'expansion engine for the internet economy' is becoming a reality. Over 60% of the top 20 domestic commerce platforms are Moloco's clients, and the $56 billion CTV market is also rapidly growing. While we spend four hours daily looking at shopping apps, we become increasingly transparent in the invisible competition that unfolds every fleeting moment. Whether this is convenience or surveillance, innovation or control, no one knows, but one thing is certain: we have already crossed a river of no return.