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Dable: How a Korea-based Startup Helps Media Firms Increase Their Popularity


“Personal recommendations ” always matter, whether netizens are showing their appreciation of an e-commerce platform or social media site, such as Youtube or Spotify.

Dable, a Korea-based startup founded in 2015, helps media companies obtain and analyze personal recommendations from their readers.

The firm provides media companies with personal recommendation solutions, which are embedded in a media company’s website.

Dable’s solutions involving big data and software as a service also help media companies find out which readers are heaping them with the highest praise.

“We originally provided our SaaS (providing) personalized recommendations to e-commerce platforms in Korea,” said Sewon Yoon, Dable’s director of global business.

“However, we found out that there is a tech gap between big tech companies and non-tech companies,” he said.

Media companies were often a good example of companies that lacked the required technical know-how, Yoon said.

“Most of the media companies that we are working with are big but they don't have enough technical resources to develop personalized recommendation (solutions.) At the same time, they don't have enough data sources to make (data) valuable.

“To mend the tech gap, we've found that we can provide them with personalization solutions (using) software as a service.

“We’ve since changed our focus from e-commerce platforms to media content,” Yoon said.

Dable provides personalized recommendation solutions for free if they are accompanied by at least one native ad.

Native ads are a form of paid media where the ad experience is integrated directly into the normal functions of a website's desktop browser, mobile browser or the app environment in which it is placed.

Dable also offers solutions for publishers to increase their traffic and revenue through placing personalized recommendation solutions and native ads on their websites, which readers see when they are visiting their websites.

Yoon said the company’s core technology was its “ace” when it competed with other firms in the same field.

The core technology includes personalization services, automation and machine learning, he said.

Installing Dable’s services is easy: it merely needs one or two hours of effort from the publisher’s end, with a total of three to five days required to complete the process.

Dable can also help advertisers by showing off their ads in areas on the internet where personal recommendations are highly concentrated.

Dable can also explain to advertisers the kinds of ads that would be most appropriate for the readership involved, which maximizes the ad’s impact. Advertising companies can also acquire new customers or expand their audience through Dable’s media networks.

Dable already has partnerships with more than 1200 media outlets in Korea, where the business was founded. But its team still is not satisfied.

Feliciana Hsu
English journalist and PR for Global Affairs

Feliciana gained her MSc of Media Power and Public Affairs from Royal Holloway, University of London.

After graduating from London, she started her career of being journalist at Business Next Media and Meet Startup @TW Website, and specializes in interviewing about innovation and technology.

Within her career, she has interviewed various experts in their field, including Mr.Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Fleur Pellerin, former French Minister of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Sir Christopher Pissarides, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economic in 2010.