Archive for February, 2008

According to Dentsu’s 2007 Japanese advertising cost report, more money was spent on the Internet advertising (600 bil yen) than magazine ads (459 bil yen) for the first time in history.

The report shows that a total of 7019 bil yen was spent for advertising in 2007 in Japan, compared to 6940 bil yen in 2006. The ads spending for TV (1998 bil yen), magazine, newspapers (946 bil yen) and radio (167 bil yen) have been declined for the past 3 years. On the other hand, the ads spending for Internet has been growing rapidly for the past 4 years in Japan.

I think that the continue growth of Internet advertising market in Japan shows that the advertisers see more values in Internet advertising than other medias. Still, the total amount spent for Internet ads is less than 30% of what was spent for TV ads. I think that advertisers will shift more budget for Internet where they can measure the effectiveness of the ads. Also, I saw more TV ads that were made to point people to their website in 2007. In order to achieve the best results, it’s time to think about both off-line and on-line ads as one campaign, instead of treating them individually.

One of Japan’s giant corporations, Softbank’s president, Mr. Son said, “The one who conquers Asia and mobile markets would conquer the Internet market in the world.” Softbank owns Yahoo Japan, Softbank mobile (Vodaphone), and MySpace Japan (tie-up) among many other organizations in Japan. Recently, they’ve been aggressively going after other Asian markets.

He also said, “Mobile phone is now an Internet device. I believe that Google will become one of our major competitors within 5 to 10 years.” Google has won the tie-up contract with “au” and NTT’s “DoCoMo”, and has became one of the major players in Japan’s mobile industry in last year.

He added that Yahoo would work with China’s Baidu and S. Korea’s Naver to keep Google from becoming a market leader in Asia.

Netratings Japan’s survey against online shoppers in Japan shows that Website has the biggest impact on shoppers by far* throughout the purchasing process. It also shows that of those who visited websites during the purchasing process, the ones who took some type of actions on the site (registering for newsletters, signing up for prize, etc.) have more interests in products and/or services offered at the site, and more likely to purchase the products/services offered.

*Sample research results: Purchasing process for credit card service

1. The first exposure to the products/services

- Website (41%), TV (20%), Store (13%), Printed ads (7%), Friends/family (6%)

2. Comparing the services/products

- Website (69%), Store (6%), Friends/family (5%), Printed ads (3%)

3. Purchasing decision

- Website (59%), Store (14%), Friends/family (7%), Printed ads (5%)

I think this survey results show that even when people make the final purchasing action off-line, the information they gathered on websites has the biggest impact to the decision making process.