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When I was working at a cultural planning company and was in charge of promoting a local festival, advertising through blogs and SNS channels via the internet was already becoming common practice. However, the promotional effect of such methods only occurs under the premise that customers use specific platforms. In local areas, the situation was different. Not only in my case, but from the perspective of small business owners, public institutions, and local activists who continuously need promotion in their regions, it was difficult to know whether their advertisements or promotional content actually reached their target customers since they don't regularly use specific SNS platforms or channels. If the reader of this article has ever done promotion in what is called 'local' areas outside Seoul or the capital region, they will empathize with this. In local areas, there was a need for something that could tell whether 'my advertisements or promotional content were actually exposed to customers who truly fit my needs' and whether 'advertising through SNS platforms is the most rational method.' This led to the establishment of ㈜Today's Story, a local-targeted media advertising business. Today's Story is a service that allows anyone in local areas to easily conduct advertising. By uploading advertisements through a web platform, users can broadcast advertisements through displays installed in local hub spaces. The current situation doesn't seem much different from back then. 'Paper promotional materials' are disappearing in Seoul and the capital region. Their form has changed to electronic postings and they are being published on various advertising platforms, but in local areas, dependence on flyers and banners remains high. This requires direct distribution by people, installation, and even sales activities. Moreover, every time materials need to be replaced, installation and collection costs are incurred, and the process takes several weeks or more. Additionally, if there is no separate sales staff, this becomes difficult, ultimately leading to waste of costs. Paper promotional materials and banners still have the limitation of making it difficult to measure effectiveness. Like most advertisements, local advertising also aims to accurately deliver content to target customers to increase sales or encourage participation. In reality, traditional advertising methods focus on securing areas with high foot traffic rather than careful consideration. This is why sometimes we see advertisements that don't match a particular location and seem out of place to passersby. This also becomes a waste of various costs for advertisers. 'Today's Story,' which I operate, was launched to solve these problems. The goal is the digitalization of local advertising. We take as our mission providing advertisers with advertising methods that reduce waste of time, costs, and labor while increasing advertising effectiveness, thereby sharing meaningful advertising results. To achieve this, we are simplifying the intermediate distribution structure and lowering the barriers to advertising platforms that felt too high for consumers like our advertisers. While this may seem obvious in the capital region, it is an ecosystem that is truly necessary for local areas. Whenever I encounter perspectives on entrepreneurship or the startup ecosystem that remain focused on Seoul or the capital region, I believe our startup story has implications. I want to leave a message that things which have become natural due to already well-established infrastructure or ways of life in urban settings can remain as tasks that truly need to be solved in local areas. Written by Kim Nam-jun, CEO of ㈜Today's Story Hello. I am Kim Nam-jun, CEO of ㈜Today's Story, opening the way for anyone in local areas to deliver desired advertisements to desired customers without difficulty. We first connected with Underdogs through startup education conducted by the Daejeon Creative Economy Innovation Center, and achieved investment through coaching during internal system building and business model validation processes. Since founding Today's Story in April 2018, through projects such as the 'Digital Village Bulletin Board' for the Siheung City-Ministry of the Interior and Safety's Empathy Plenty Project, and the NIA-Gangdong-gu Office Resident-Perception Digital Social Innovation Activation Project, we have opened various advertising channels needed by local areas. Following certification as a preliminary social enterprise by the Ministry of Employment and Labor in 2020, in 2021 we are actively developing advertising businesses pioneering local regions, including establishing tourism media on mobility in Sokcho, Gangwon Province. ※ Local Game Changer is a local journalist group jointly conducted by Startup Recipe and Underdogs. It introduces various voices from local startup ecosystems. Local Game Changer Started startup education in 2015 with the aim of 'discovering good entrepreneurial colleagues,' and transformed the one-way lecture-focused startup education landscape into practice-oriented coaching education. As a result, as of 2022, we have produced over 10,000 startup education graduates as 'Underdogs Alumni' across the nation. We believe that developing the world into a better place is 'innovation,' and that innovation is born through 'entrepreneurs.'