Traffic Gate, an affiliate service provider and a joint venture of two of Japan's major dot-com companies CyberAgent and Rakuten, unveiled today a new ad network for developing ad-revenue services using iPhone app, named "TG Ad for iPhone[J]".

It is a very similar approach to AdMob's mobile ad solutions that the San Francisco-based tech company has developed and provide iPhone app developers and service providers with an SDK (software development kit) to put ads on their app. Traffic Gate will focus on matching advertising needs between service developers and potential advertisers in the Japanese iPhone community.

Tags: Japan by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

Drecom[J], a company developing blogs and web2.0 services, has released an AD service to seek design of web banners for mobile sites from public users, named as "Atsumete Banner-na[J]"(meaning collect Banner-na).

A banana-shaped character is used as a mascot for the service. Advertisers post themes for banners, then public users create banners and register them to the service. Posted banners will be published to measure the advertising effectiveness and the best effective banner will be chosen as  an official banner to be used widely. The creator of last winning banner will be awarded 50000 yen ( about $500).

This service is only limited for mobile, but there is also a similar service released by Recruit[E] former to this one. A service named C-team, is a crowd sourcing service for advertisement design for banners. Users who posted highly effective banners will be rewarded by cashable points. This service is not limited for mobile websites, differ to Atsumete Banner-na.

Drecom is gaining quite a good benefits from J-Ken[J], a ringtone download service selling ringtones made by public users.  There is also a prosperous service to crowd source ad movies, filmo, operated by Enigmo[E].

Japan is a country known by many talented creative amateurs so these kind of ad services for crowd souring might increase further.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, New Service by Hiroumi Mitani
No Comments »

McDonald's Japan[J] teamed up with Nintendo, and today it launches a new service allowing Nintendo DS users to download Pokemon avatars, evaluation copies of game software and discount coupon for the humburger meals for free via WiFi access points installed at 3,200 McDonalds shops in Japan, which is 85% of the entire fast food chain.

Both companies used to operate a free content distribution service for Nintendo DS users at limited number of Mcdonald's shops on experimental basis, and to investigate whether the service give them any benefit in teｒms of calling in more minor guests and raising the profile of the game device.   They judged it's ok to go and decided to switch the service into full-scale operation.

See Also:

• Nintendo Zone[J]

Tags: Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »