Users using auction service through smartphone is nearly 20M

According to Nielsen Netratings in Japan, users using online auction services exceeded 20M on smartphones. The number of smartphone users using auction exceeded PC users in Feb this year and still growing at a consistent pace.

The #1 auction service on both PC and smartphones is Yahoo!Auction by far and has 12M on PC and 15M on smartphones which is 4x on PC and 3x on smartphones comparing to the #2 service Rakuten Auction.

The growth of auction users on smartphone is also driven by new mobile specialized players such as Mercari and LINE Mall.

Details are in Nielsen's report.

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Yahoo!Japan claims search share even with Google on iOS - Q1 earnings announced

Yahoo!Japan announced their Q1(Apr.-Jun.) earnings last week and said they had the strongest earnings ever this year. Their revenue grew 2.8% YoY and resulted $999M with strong tailwind in mobile business due to the rapid shift to smartphones.

They claim that "search share on iOS should be even with Google now whereas on Android it is still 30% Yahoo!Japan and has a gap to fill". When asked how the search ads business is impacted by this trend, Miyasaka, CEO of Yahoo!Japan said that "the monetization rate on smartphone is still behind PC".

The details of the earnings can be found here - Yahoo!Japan Q1 earnings

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Online media influences TV viewing in Japan

According to the research of HDY Institute of Media Environment, nearly 56% of the user's watching TV is influenced by online news articles. The research was conducted to 1200 people living in the metropolis area of Japan ages 15-69.

Interestingly, the research result shows how online media including social media influences people watching TV. 30% of the users were influenced by social media when watching a specific TV program. It also shows the multi-screen behavior and 62% of the users are using smartphones or mobile phones when watching TV and 60% of the users are using computers while watching TV.

26% of the users are chatting with there friends through SNS or LINE while watching TV and 19% of the users have experience "Tweeting" while watching TV. Users who post something about the TV program while watching the program was nearly 18%.

They have clustered the users into 9 interesting clusters based on their behaviors such as;
Male geeks who loves video: representing 6% of the entire users, these people consume media very much and are very tech savvy and follow the trend but often uses recording technology of whatsoever to watch what they like whenever they want to. As a result, these people do not watch TV programs in real-time.

You can see more details in the actual report; TV viewing behavior study

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Mobile Content/mCommerce exceeding $30B in 2013

MCF(Mobile Content Forum), a mobile industry organization announced that the entire mobile content and mCommerce market exceeded $30B in 2013.

The definition of mobile content market is digital contents such as game, music and video and the mCommerce market is the total market of commerce, services and transactions on mobile.

Mobile content market grew 27% YoY from $8.5B in 2012 to $10.7B in 2013. The key driver was games including social games which grew 115% YoY at $5.6B is over 50% of this category. However the highest growth seen in the mobile content category is video growing at 266% YoY at $0.9B. The split between feature phone and smartphone is $2.4B from feature phones declining 50% YoY and $8.3B from smartphones growing at 124% YoY.

mCommerce market grew 29% YoY from $14.9B in 2012 to $19.3B in 2013. The fastest growing was commerce growing at 39% YoY representing nearly half of the mCommerce category. Services are tickets(concerts, air, train etc.) sold through mobile devices and is the second largest in this category at $7.4B and growing 19% YoY. Transactions are services or businesses taking commission on the transaction users make such as online trading, auctions and public gambling. This area grew 26% YoY at $2.3B. Regarding the mCommerce data, these are all feature phone and smartphone combined data.

Details in Japanese; 2013 Mobile content/mCommerce market size in Japan
Details in English; 2013 Mobile content/mCommerce market size in Japan

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Consumption index going up in July - Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living

Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living released a consumption trend index report. According to this report, the consumer confidence in July went up 2.5pt from June but decreased 1.6pt YoY and the indicator is at 49.7pt. Also, the deflation index stayed fairly flat at just 0.1pt growth from June and 3.4pt decrease from last year at 61.2pt.

The consumer confidence uplift in July is a seasonal trend in Japan where many companies pay out their bonus to employees in June to July. Also, it is the beginning of summer and the demand for air-conditioners and summer apparel increases. The number of people who showed concern for the consumption tax increase has dropped significantly to just 3% from 10%.

Detailed report in PDF

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

TV ad spend still growing in June - Dentsu monthly earnings

According to the monthly earnings announcement from Dentsu, TV ad spend was the only growing media within the 4 traditional media(newspaper, magazine, radio and TV) in 2 consecutive months. Also, digital media spend grew over 17% YoY in June dropping slightly from +30% YoY in May.

• Dentsu/May earnings
• Newspaper: $82M (-16% YoY)
• Magazine: $23.4M (-7% YoY)
• Radio: $11.3M (-8% YoY)
• TV: $654M (+7% YoY)
• Digital: $66.7M (+17% YoY)
• OOH: $40M (-5% YoY)
• marketing/promotion: $144M (+10.5% YoY)

 

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Smartphone penetration in Japan up to 53% in March 2014

According to Nikkei's article, the Japanese Ministry of Internal affairs and Communications announced on Jul. 15th that the smartphone penetration in Japan rose up to 53.5% in March 2014 however still behind the peer countries - Singapore 93%, Korea 88%, UK 80%, France 71%, US 69%.

On the other hand, Japan is top in terms of feature phone users and 28% still carry feature phones while the peer countries are rapidly shifting to smartphone - Singapore 8%, Korea 17%, UK 10%, France 9.4%, US 14%. More interestingly, people who do not carry any phone is quite high in Japan at 21% following France at 21.3%.

Find details in page 172 in the below link.

MIC 2014 White Paper Information and Communications in Japan

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Google winning smartphone users in Japan

Nielsen reports +11M (28M -> 39M) internet users on Smartphone while -3.5M (57.2M -> 53.7M) internet users on PC for the last one year. Smartphone users increased especially in Auto +98% (14M), Photo +79% (20M), Gift +79% (16M), Education +60% (21M) Finance +44% (32M) by top category and 35y-49y female +64% (6.7M), 20y-34y female +30% (10M) by demographic.

In terms of internet services on smartphones, Google is #1 with 38M monthly users growing at 37% YoY followed by Yahoo!Japan with 36M monthly users growing at 41% YoY. The fastest growing service within the top 10 services were LINE and Amazon both growing at 58% YoY.

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

TV ads spend in Japan sees YoY growth in May

According to the monthly earnings announcement from Dentsu and ADK, TV ad spend was the only growing media within the 4 traditional media(newspaper, magazine, radio and TV). Both agencies also announced that digital media spend grew over 30% YoY in May.

• Dentsu/May earnings
• Newspaper: $69M (-11% YoY)
• Magazine: $21M (-10% YoY)
• Radio: $11M (-8% YoY)
• TV: $614M (+7% YoY)
• Digital: $53M (+36% YoY)
• OOH: $38M (+0.8% YoY)
• marketing/promotion: $113M (-9% YoY)

• ADK/May earnings
• Newspaper: $13M (-22% YoY)
• Magazine: $9M (-15% YoY)
• Radio: $2.4M (-3% YoY)
• TV: $114M (+5% YoY)
• Digital: $12M (+38% YoY)
• OOH: $4M (-49% YoY)
• marketing/promotion: $41M (-13% YoY)

*Using FX rate at $1=100 jpy

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Smartphone ads market in Japan exceeding $2B USD in 2014

The smartphone ads market in Japan was $1.6B in 2013 growing at 93% year over year and will exceed $2B in 2014 and reaching $2.3B according to an estimation done by CyberZ - a subsidiary of CyberAgent - and the research firm SeedPlanning.

This number includes mobile search ads, display ads and affiliates. The breakdown in 2013 was;

• Search ads: $854M (68% YoY growth)
• Display ads: $652M (157% YoY growth)
• Affiliates: $146M (30% YoY growth)

*Using FX rate at $1=100 jpy

Details in CyberZ's press release in Japanese; Smartphone ads market in Japan exceeding $2B USD in 2014
Details in English

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Time spent on Smartphones exceed TV within the teen's in Japan

The smartphone shift is really happening in Japan.

A recent research conducted by JustSystems on time spent on media shows that internet browsing through smartphone was the longest time spent within Japanese ages 15-19yo. The result shows that there is a significant difference between gender and within Japanese male, not only ages 15-19yo but also 25-29yo spends the most time on internet browsing through smartphones.

Interestingly, all ages of Japanese male showed longer time spent on internet browsing on PC than time spent on TV. On the other hand, Japanese female spends more time on TV comparing to Japanese male throughout all ages however female at ages 15-24yo spends more time than male on internet browsing through smartphones. Female at ages 20-24yo also spends more time on internet browsing through smartphones than time spent on TV.

Details in this Japanese article; Time spent on Smartphones exceed TV within the teen's in Japan(article by Business Media/research by JustSystems)

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

 

Video ads market in Japan $130M in 2013 - Seedplanning

Seedplanning estimates to grow to $640M in 2017. 

According to their report, the market grew to $130M in 2013 from $40M in 2012 and representing 2% of the overall online marketing spend in 2013.

Detail article in Japanese is here.

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Seeing decrease in time spent on TV in 40s and 50s in Japan

Very interesting article about the time spend on media in Japan study done by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Although it is only the second year for this report by MIC but already seeing a decline in TV time spent within the 40s and 50s which traditionally were considered as the most TV heavy consuming generation.

Another interesting data was Line is still categorized as SNS though the % of users using across ages were 44% within people who uses SNS. They are clearly winning the game in Japan at this point and something we should be aware of.

Detail report is here(in Japanese only).

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Yahoo!Japan Q4'13 earnings announced - Reservation display declining

Yahoo!Japan announced their quarterly and their yearly earnings last week.

They kept their steady growth and seeing strong growth in their secondary business such as FX and credit card business at 56% YoY growth.

On the other hand, their core business - online ad related revenue - has slowed down a bit and seeing a significant shift in their portfolio. The reservation display revenue actually declined 4% which has been their best selling ad solution over the years they have been dominating the market. However their auction display business is doing very well growing at 129% which helped Yahoo!Japan keep their overall display business in the positive range of growth. Search ads still growing and saw 8% growth though it is gradually slowing down comparing to a few Q ago.

Details can be found here.

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

2013 Ad Spend in Japan increased 1.4% from 2012

Dentsu announced their annual "Ad Spend report"(Nihon no koukokuhi) in Feb. this year.

The market grew 1.4% from last year to 5,976.2 billion yen - approx. $59.5B USD. Supported by Shinzo Abe’s Abenomics policies, the economy looked positive and this also supported the growth of the ad spend says Dentsu.

Overall spending in the traditional media rose 0.1%, spending on promotional media grew 0.1%, strong momentum in Satellite Media related spend and this grew 9.6%, and last but not least the online marketing spend grew 8% which saw robust growth in demand for performance-based advertising.

You can see full report here.

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.