Motoko’s weblog

People have been saying that “mobile is the next big thing” for a while in US, but mobile has been “happening” in Japan for years and continues to grow.

According to Seed Planning’s report, the mobile advertising will become 100 billion yen (US$1 billion) market in 2008 in Japan from 81.5 billion yen in 2007. The number includes all of the advertising activities on mobile platform such as banner ads, affiliate ads, search paid ads and mailing ads. If it continues to grow at the same pace, the mobile advertising market will reach 250 billion yen by 2011.

The similar advertising is available for both PC version of the web and mobile version of the web. However, what works on PC market doesn’t always work the best with mobile market. For example, the report shows that the e-mail ads work better with mobile market than PC market. To run a successful advertising against mobile market, the advertisers must be flexible in selecting what style of advertising works the best for them instead of just re-cycling the same information and the practices they used in PC market.

Having the search box in ads with suggested keyword phrase has become very popular in Japan in 2007. Many of them using their company name, brand name, or product name as the search phrase, but some come up with creative phrases such as this “DoCoMo” ad below. In this ad for their mobile home control system, you see a search box above company logo with a search phrase “Ano bucho (that director)”. Continue Reading »