Naver is taking its shopping search ads off the search results page and putting them onto sellers’ own product pages. A Naver Ads notice dated 16 October says that from Wednesday 28 October 2026, Shopping Search Ads (the shopping-mall product type) and ADVoost Shopping will appear on Smartstore and Brandstore product detail pages. They will sit directly below the seller information block, on both mobile and PC.
The placement is a recommendation module called “함께 찾는 다양한 스토어 상품”, which roughly means “products from other stores people look at together”. Naver describes it as recommending “products that are good to buy together with the product you are viewing”. In practice, that means a shopper on your product page could see paid listings from other Smartstore sellers.
The details
- Date: 28 October 2026. Naver adds the usual caveat that the date may change “due to internal circumstances”.
- Ad types: Shopping Search Ads (쇼핑몰상품형) and ADVoost Shopping.
- Media names: “Naver Shopping Smartstore recommendation – mobile” and “– PC”. If an advertiser has these media switched ON, their ads can appear in the new slot.
- Seller control: Ads only appear in a store’s recommendation slot if that store has set Smartstore Center › Store management › Store display › Product detail › AiTEMS recommendation to “show” (노출함).
- Exclusions: Some categories don’t show the recommendation slot at all, so ads won’t appear there.
- Unchanged: Naver says ad registration, ranking and billing all work exactly as they do now. Only the inventory is growing.
A second notice is also worth knowing about. Notice 34721 says that from Tuesday 20 October, the same two ad types replace the CAR&LIFE guaranteed display block on the Naver main mobile Car·Tech topic board, and only logged-in users will see them. That makes two new non-SERP placements in eight days. It follows the Trend Pick block on the mobile Shopping tab and the 15 October shopping-ad tests.
Why this matters
This is retail media, built on search-ad plumbing. Amazon has run sponsored products on product detail pages for years. Naver is now doing the same inside Smartstore, using the ranking and bidding system it built for shopping search. That has three practical consequences.
For sellers: check your AiTEMS setting before 28 October. Naver ties the ad slot to the store’s own recommendation setting. If AiTEMS recommendations are switched on for your product pages, competitors’ paid listings can appear under your seller box. Naver’s notice doesn’t say what the seller gets in return. Decide whether the organic cross-selling from AiTEMS is worth more to you than keeping rivals off your page. Some brands will want it off. Smaller stores that rely on recommendations to move other stock may leave it on.
For advertisers: check your media settings now. If the two Smartstore recommendation media are switched on in your campaigns, you will start buying product-page traffic on 28 October without changing anything. Someone who is already on a competitor’s product page converts very differently from someone typing a query, and Naver says billing doesn’t change. Segment your reporting by media from day one, or your shopping-ad CPA will shift and you won’t know why.
For SEOs: this is another sign of where Naver commerce traffic is going. Naver has rebuilt its integrated search layout. Earlier this month it announced Super Points products jumping shopping ads. Now ad inventory is moving deeper into the purchase path. More of the shopping journey happens inside Naver’s own pages, and each of those pages now has a paid slot. If you sell through Smartstore, your product page is no longer a destination. It is now ad space as well.