Mobile advertising in Japan: $236m spent in 2005

There is an ongoing global trend of ad money shifting from old to new media – from print, radio and television and into the online arena. Japan is not an exception in this case, but, as always, it is a little bit ahead of the pack as mobile phones start attracting advertisers on a greater scale.

Dentsu, an industry research firm, reports that Japanese advertising market grew 1.8% in 2005 on a yearly basis, totaling 5,962 billion yen (around $50.4bn), with Internet advertising growing at 54.8% in 2005 year-over-year, being one of the fastest growing segment. Overall, the Internet advertising grabbed more than 280 billion yen ($2.4bn) or 4.7% share of total Japanese advertising market. Moreover, 28 billion yen ($236.8m) or 10% out of Internet’s 280 billion yen were spent on a cellphone-targeted advertising. Taking into consideration that there are almost 80 million users with handsets capable of web access in Japan, it is clear why marketers start allocating more of ad budgets for mobile phones.

Dentsu points out that in 2005 mobile marketing attracted big brands from food and automotive industries that conducted mass market campaigns. Thanks to the technological advancements such as high-speed connections, enhanced memory capacity, and multimedia playback capability, the recent handsets gained their recognition as devices capable to display rich commercials. Additional built-in features such as mega pixel cameras with QR-code scanning ability, contactless payment chips, and TV tuners will create even more opportunities for advertisements to reach customers instantly.