In Korea's roughly ₩6 trillion live commerce market, Woo Seung-min, team lead at performance marketing agency Progress Media, has run hundreds of campaigns and reached a clear conclusion: what separates a broadcast that sells from one that doesn't isn't content or the host — it's early traffic. Here are the three parts of his live commerce initial traffic strategy, built from that experience.
Live commerce follows a simple structure: acquisition leads to exposure, which leads to purchase. When traffic builds fast early in a broadcast, real-time ranking and recommendation slots open up additional exposure. But when early acquisition is weak, the broadcast's reach is capped from the start. On Naver Shopping Live, a broadcast needs hundreds of thousands of visits just to break into the top rankings. As Woo puts it: "You need a lot of people watching for purchases to happen — so early traffic acquisition determines overall performance."
A common trap when scaling traffic is duplicate exposure. Some ad networks show the same users repeatedly, so click counts look strong even though the actual number of people reached stays low. Since real-time rankings are determined by concurrent viewer counts, what matters is reaching new, non-duplicated users. Campaigns should be evaluated up front for reach potential measured in unique users, not raw impressions.
Live commerce schedules are often confirmed at short notice, and competitive conditions or platform placement can shift right up to broadcast day. That demands the ability to adjust early-traffic strategy instantly — executing campaigns quickly, handling setup and edits directly inside the ad platform, and minimizing back-and-forth with media partners. As Woo emphasizes: "Speed matters in live commerce — you need to secure traffic within a short window."
These three factors have proven out in practice. Across more than eight live commerce campaigns run through the Buzzvil ad platform, Woo's team set unique-user targets of 50,000, 100,000, and 150,000 — and every campaign exceeded its target. Fine-grained budget adjustments (down to units as small as ₩10,000) and simultaneous multi-advertiser operation via a master account underpinned this consistency.
The message here is unambiguous: in live commerce, performance is largely decided before the broadcast even starts, at the traffic-design stage. Practitioners should stop settling for surface metrics like "clicks" or "impressions" from media reports and instead use actual unique-user reach as the basis for settlement and evaluation — since deduplicated reach translates directly into concurrent viewers and real-time ranking.
In a channel like live commerce, where placement and competitive conditions shift in real time, operational agility becomes a competitive advantage in itself. Agencies and brands should evaluate media partners not just on reach, but on whether their platform supports precise budget control, self-serve setup, and fast execution — the operational foundation needed to respond instantly to variables on broadcast day.
If you need help designing a traffic strategy for a live commerce launch, Best Partner's services can help, or get in touch to discuss your campaign.
Live commerce follows an acquisition-to-exposure-to-purchase funnel. Strong early traffic unlocks real-time ranking and recommendation exposure, while weak early acquisition permanently caps a broadcast's reach — directly determining overall performance.
Some ad networks generate high click counts by repeatedly showing the same users, without actually reaching many unique people. Since real-time rankings depend on concurrent viewers, unique-user reach — not raw clicks — is the metric that matters.
Speed and flexibility — the ability to execute campaigns quickly, adjust setup directly within the ad platform, and minimize communication delays with media partners, since schedules and competitive conditions can change right up to broadcast day.
Across more than eight live commerce campaigns run via the Buzzvil ad platform, unique-user targets of 50,000, 100,000, and 150,000 were set, and every single campaign exceeded its target.
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