News Corp. wakes up, finally enters Japan’s online ad market


U.S. media power house News Corp. finally decided to enter the Japanese online advertising market (the world's second biggest) in September. The Nikkei says they are already on the prowl for possible candidates for acquisition but it's not yet clear which Japanese online ad agencies might get bought up.

News Corp. has apparently set up an online ad department solely focusing on the Japanese market. The company is not attacking Yahoo and Google directly (by selling search-based ads) but rather wants to become a force in this country's ad network segment.

According to the Nikkei, the company wants to earn close to one billion USD in the Internet advertising space by 2013. Japan is supposed to contribute 10%.

According to a report [ENG, PDF] from Japan's biggest advertising company Dentsu, the size of the Japanese online advertising business will balloon to 7 billion USD by 2011.


Author Information  Dr. Serkan Toto is a German based in Tokyo. Like us, he is passionate about introducing Japanese IT to the rest of the world. Full-time, Serkan works as an independent web industry consultant for hedge funds, venture capital companies and start-ups worldwide. He is also a writer for mega tech blog network TechCrunch, covering Japan-related technology and web trends. This is Serkan's website. Follow Serkan on Twitter here.