Naver posted two ad tests this morning. Both run from Thursday 5 November, both affect the results page directly, and one of them takes organic space from local businesses.
Up to nine Place ads in mobile search
The first notice, a Place ads count and layout test, says Naver wants to find “the optimal point of user response and advertiser satisfaction” by changing how many Place ads show and where. It covers every vertical: restaurants, beauty (hair and nail salons), hospitals and clinics, lodging, attractions and general businesses. Here are the changes:
- Mobile integrated search: from up to 6 ads to up to 9. The current pattern is 3 ads, 5 organic, 1 ad, (expand), 2 ads, 5 organic. The test adds 3 more ads after the last block of organic results.
- Mobile Place and Map app: from up to 18 ads to up to 20. The pattern changes from (3 ads + 5 organic) twice and (2 ads + 10 organic) six times, to (3 ads + 5 organic) four times and (2 ads + 10 organic) four times.
- PC map search: also from 18 to 20 ads, moving to the same (3+5)×4 + (2+10)×4 pattern.
Naver says ad registration, ranking and billing stay the same, that ad counts depend on the query and competition, and that the layout may change again or revert after the test.
Do the maths on the map app. Under the current pattern, a full listing holds 18 ads and 70 organic results, so ads are roughly 20% of what you can scroll. Under the test pattern it is 20 ads and 60 organic, so ads are a quarter. More importantly, the dense “3 ads + 5 organic” block now repeats four times instead of twice. The top of the list, where people actually tap, carries more ads than before. On PC the organic count falls from 80 to 60.
For local SEO on Naver this is the real story. A restaurant or clinic that ranks organically in, say, position 12 in Place results will sit further down the screen. Paid competitors can now fill the slots around it. Naver is also testing a new restaurant listing from today, so local visibility on Naver has two moving parts at once.
Bigger favicons and a two-line site name on Powerlink
The second notice, a Powerlink UI test, runs on part of traffic from 5 to 12 November on PC and mobile integrated search:
- Favicons may display at a slightly larger size, for all industries.
- For hospital and clinic advertisers, the default icon on single-type creatives may change to the default icon used by the hospital-specific creative. Creative type and registration do not change.
- The site name and URL, which currently sit on one line to the right of the favicon, may split into two lines.
That is a small design change with a familiar purpose. A larger favicon and a separate brand line make text ads look more like organic results, which display much the same way. Google went down this road years ago. When ads and organic results look alike, ad click-through usually rises, and organic loses some of the attention it used to win by looking different.
The pattern
Put this next to the rest of Naver’s November. The ad platform is renamed N Ads on 4 November with new terms. Shopping ads move to a Click Expectation Index on 25 November. And now there is more Place ad inventory and Powerlink ads that look more like organic results. Every lever Naver is pulling this month increases paid inventory or paid click-through on its own SERP.
What I would do: before 5 November, benchmark your Place visibility by on-screen position, not rank, for your core local queries on mobile, and note your Smart Place traffic baseline. If clicks drop over the test period while rank holds, you will know the cause. You will also have evidence for the budget conversation, because Naver has just told you that organic Place exposure is negotiable.