Dentsu has struck another exclusivity deal, this time with Skype. The deal is intended to generate 1 billion of revenue (12.4 million USD) through exclusive display space on the Skype start up screen. Banner / video ads will cover roughly 1/3 of the screen as the program boots and will be cycled through daily . According to the Nikkei, this will be served to the roughly 1 million users in Japan who are using free services offered by Skype. This deal seems confined only to the PC/OS version of Skype – not mobile.

According to a recent research survey by Goo Research Portal, smartphones are the fastest growing device for Skype use, especially as smartphone sales continue to boom within Japan. Laptop and netbook usage has actually declined as a total share.

There is a possibility that this move by Skype is as a result of lower monetization of paid Skype services within Japan. The country has fewer needs to international calling, and group video calls are not necessarily a norm in day-to-day business in Japan.

Skype does however offer alternative payment options apart from credit cards (which have lower penetration when compared to other countries) or PayPal (not very successful in Japan) including credit-voucher sales at convenience stores like Lawson, Family Mart (similar to how people buy credit for services like Xbox Live), or electronic money services like Excite. There is little data as to how successful this has been in growing frequency or reach of payments.

Tags: Japan by Dominic K. Gallello
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Dentsu, Japanese advertising colossus, released a new Android client with D2 Communications and Bijutsu Shuppan Networks Co., Ltd.

The new client Decotter lets you tweet not only 140 characters text but also Deco Sozai(=decoration materials), colourful images and character letters.

FYI, those “deco moji” are not emoji, which is now part of Unicode.

With maximum 10 decorations, you may tweet up to 100 regular letters in a single tweet.

It’s only available for Docomo and KDDI au. Not for Softbank Mobile.

Same as their successful “deco” business on their mobile web (i-mode/ezWeb), it co-works with a paid decoration selling service, Deco Market, where people can purchase more decorations to make their tweets stand out.

Dentsu’s release [J, pdf]

See Also:

Povie – Purikura For Movie, Knows Your “Kawaii” Points To Decorate

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Dentsu and Facebook Japan have announced today a major deal to appoint Dentsu as the official sales and marketing support representative in Japan. As outlined in their press release, Dentsu will offer services to include effective fan page creation and maintenance, exclusive access to Facebook Premium Advertising, and offer strategies that will integrate Facebook ads into Dentu’s infamous mass media campaigns.

With recent coverage of Facebook in Japan in mass media and the expsoure from the Social Netowork, both the advertising agency world and marketing departments of major Japanese brands are in a state of anxiety and confusion on the best way to integrate Facebook as a part of their brand strategies. And while Facebook Japan lacks robust user numbers and growth (when compared to the explosive rise of Twitter in late 2009, early 2010), major agencies like Dentsu are no doubt scrambling to ride this next social media wave early. Smelling the social marketing opportunity, employees at Dentsu were regularly encouraged to use Facebook actively since late last year.

This deal will also offer Facebook Japan the unique opportunity to access Dentu’s long list of major Japanese clients and multi-million dollar campaign budgets. Facebook Premium Ads, which Dentsu will have a one year exlusive right to, will be pushed through media planning proposals to clients on par with print, OOH, and television.

While the past year of Facebook Japan’s operations has been focused on engineering and laying the foundation for future user growth, this deal will represent the first significant attempt for Facebook to capitalize on the massive domestic advertising expenditure of Japanese brands it has yet to capture.

Tags: Japan by Dominic K. Gallello
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Tokyo-based tech start-up Conit launched an in-app purchase platform for the Android apps as well as the iPhone/iPad apps on Friday, in association with Japan’s largest ad agency Dentsu.

The platform is named as Samurai Purchase[J], and allows smartphone app developer to manage all their in-app purchases that are made by users via the Android and the iPhone handsets.  Purchase requests from the apps are transferred to PayPal on both smartphone platforms, furthermore, the Android platform is expected to accept the credit card payment option by the end of next month.    Monthly subscription rates for smartphone app developers start at 126,000 yen for using the Android platform, 136,500 yen for using the iPhone/iPad platform.

Tags: Japan, New Service, News by Masaru IKEDA
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What are Japan’s top products in 2010? That’s a question Japan’s (and one of the world’s) biggest advertising agency Dentsu recently asked in a survey [PDF] it has been conducting since 1985 (n=1,000). For the first time, Dentsu has also compiled a “hit list” that’s supposed to shine a light on what’s going to be “hot” in Japan next year.

The subjects of the survey could name anything they wanted to: persons, products, services, TV shows, food etc. What’s interesting is that there is a high number of tech-related items in both lists, which are shown below:

2010 Hit Products (emphasis on tech-related items supplied)

No. 1: Smartphones
No. 2: Twitter
No. 3: Munchable chili oil (a hot topping)
No. 4: Digital broadcasting-equipped flat-panel TVs
No. 5: Ryoma Sakamoto (popular historical figure; a TV series about him was aired earlier this year)
No. 6: International flight services at Haneda Airport (Japan’s No. 2 airport boosted its number international flights this year)
No. 7: Tokyo Sky Tree (broadcasting tower to be completed in 2012)
No. 8: Energy-saving home appliances (the government supports individuals buying eco-friendly electronics)
No. 9: 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa
No. 10: LED light bulbs
No. 11: “B-grade” local gourmet food (relatively inexpensive food)
No. 12: Akira Ikegami (journalist)
No. 13: Domestic “fast fashion” brands
No. 14: GeGeGe’s Wife (hit TV drama)
No. 15: 3D movies, TV, cameras and other 3D products
No. 16: Hybrid vehicles
No. 17: Imported “fast fashion” brands
No. 18: AKB48 (48-member all-girl idol group)
No. 19: Tablets
No. 20: Yoichi Watanabe (war photographer and TV personality)

In the 2010 list, eight of the top 20 products are tech-related, but the number is much higher in the list of the upcoming hit products and services, which just sees six items that are not related to technology in one form or the other:

2011+ Hit Products (emphasis on tech-related items supplied)

No. 1: Tokyo Sky Tree
No. 2: LED light bulbs
No. 3: Electric vehicles
No. 4: International flight services at Haneda Airport
No. 5: Smartphones
No. 6: 3D movies, TV, cameras and other 3D products
No. 7: Hybrid cars
No. 7: E-book readers
No. 9: Discount airline tickets
No. 10: Tablets
No. 11: Home solar power systems
No. 12: Digital broadcasting-equipped widescreen flat-panel TVs
No. 13: Compact data communication devices
No. 14: Home fuel cell systems
No. 15: Group purchase coupons
No. 16: Bread and sweets made with rice powder
No. 17: Blade-less electric fans
No. 18: Cloud computing (including related books)
No. 18: B-grade local gourmet food
No. 20: Alcohol-free beer-like beverages

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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