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Why B2B companies venturing into the Japanese market should consider Yahoo! JAPAN over Google Ads
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When it comes to PPC advertising and SEO, we all know Google is the search engine king. While this may be true in the Western world, it’s not necessarily the case in Japan.
Yahoo! JAPAN has a 20% search engine market share and is Japan’s most popular web portal. It has over 100 services, such as Yahoo! News, Shopping, Finance and even credit card services which are used by millions of Japanese people. Not utilising Yahoo! JAPAN Ads as part of your marketing strategy may leave you with numerous lost opportunities for growth and success.
As we have already explained the difference between Google and Yahoo! JAPAN, this blog post is purely focused on the B2B market.
Let’s go through the top four reasons why Yahoo! JAPAN is important for B2B companies:
According to Statcounter, while Google is dominating as a search engine with 3/4 of the market share, Yahoo! JAPAN still accounts for almost 1/5. Most of the remaining share goes to Bing, which you can advertise on through Yahoo! JAPAN. This means you will lose almost 25% of your prospective customers without Yahoo! JAPAN Ads.
Therefore, it’s definitely worth giving Yahoo! JAPAN Ads a chance to enhance your digital presence in the Japanese market. Although it’s difficult to know if Yahoo! JAPAN Ads perform better than Google Ads, in our experience as Japanese Marketing Specialists, B2B companies tend to have better CPA and ROI (ROAS) on Yahoo! JAPAN thanks to its lower CPC.
Despite Yahoo! JAPAN’s market share, some advertisers still see Yahoo! JAPAN Ads as an afterthought and try it out only after Google Ads do well in Japan. However, this may not be the best strategy when entering the Japanese market, especially for B2B companies.
According to Yahoo! JAPAN’s media guide, it has about 20 million active PC users per month thanks to its hundreds of services. This means advertisers can reach more users through Yahoo! Display Ads.
Source: Yahoo! JAPAN Media Guide
Since most B2B clients use PCs when searching online, Yahoo! Display Ads may also help you boost your sales.
For use cases of Yahoo! Display Ads, read our post: Success stories of PPC in the Japanese market.
Business managers use Yahoo! Japan and its vast services the most compared to other digital services, thus advertisers using Yahoo! JAPAN can reach more business managers compared to any other platform.
Yahoo! Display Ads are generally similar to Google Display Ads. However, what makes Yahoo! Display Ads stand out is its targeting feature, also called Search Keyword Targeting. This feature in particular is loved by many advertisers since it enables them to display ads to users who have searched specific keywords within a certain timeframe. This means you can display ads to users who have searched your competitors’ names or generic keywords with lower CPC compared to using search ads. Due to the extremely accurate targeting function compared to audience category targeting, Conversion Rate and CTR are usually the second highest after Remarketing.
If the used keywords reach over a certain search volume, the Search Keyword Targeting feature may bring you more conversions as a result.
In summary, running PPC campaigns on both Google and Yahoo! JAPAN is a must for B2B companies. If you haven’t tried Yahoo! JAPAN Ads yet, now you know what you could be missing out on. We offer ad management for both platforms and complimentary support for Yahoo! JAPAN. Our experienced Japanese bilingual team will help you localise your campaigns. As explained in A beginner’s guide to the Japanese PPC market, well translated ad copies and landing pages are key to success in the Japanese market. Contact us for your free consultation call and further advice.
