Google Adwords and Yahoo Japan

Most of the click throughs coming from Yahoo

[whats up skip]

I had assumed that the bulk of the click throughs for our Google Adwords were coming from Google.co.jp.

We have a paid listing in Yahoo.co.jp that is well positioned so we don't really need much help in this area. Looking to reduce costs I turned off the option to run the ads on Google network and surprise, surprise the number of click throughs dropped massively!

This may make it viable to run the ads for some key terms that we don't do well in Google, but do well in Yahoo.

Hey, I know this may seem very obvious, but I was really surprised at the volume coming from Yahoo.

[bill]

Yahoo is by far the most popular portal in Japan. Here's the Nielsen stats for June 1, 2003:

Property - Unique Audience Reach - % - Time per Person
1. Yahoo! 13,844,000 73.42 0:55:20
2. Rakuten 8,403,000 44.56 0:19:24
3. MSN 7,468,000 39.60 0:14:34
4. Nifty 7,278,000 38.60 0:11:45
5. NEC 5,479,000 29.05 0:08:41
6. Sony 4,092,000 21.70 0:07:27
7. NTT Communications 3,978,000 21.10 0:07:18
8. Microsoft 3,592,000 19.05 0:03:55
9. KDDI 3,338,000 17.70 0:05:23
10. Google 2,906,000 15.41 0:11:10

Although I wouldn't say the Nielsen stats are 100% accurate, the trend is clear. People spend a lot more time on Yahoo (not necessarily searching) than they do elsewhere.

[David_M]

I couldn't agree more.
Not only is Yahoo "the" internet search engine in Japan (for the moment), the users are also more likely to click on ads as well as purchase your products or services. Yahoo broadband is huge (2.5million subscribers), and I think will keep new users going to the yahoo portal and therefore keep this trend up for a bit longer.

What Yahoo! Inc. Could Learn from Yahoo! Japan [businessweek.com]

[lukasz]

Yahoo Japan is not really a search engine. Only 11% of visitors do a search.
Yahoo Auctions are the one which are driving Yahoos traffic as well as revenue up. 35% of yahoo visitors go to auction site. Full stats [alexa.com]
Yahoo Auctions are generating more than 8M US$ and are probably Japan's most profitable Internet business [jir.net]

I dont see how yahooBB(broadband) can drive traffic to yahoo portal.
There is no forced change of the browser default home page so everything is up to the user.

[bill]

I dont see how yahooBB(broadband) can drive traffic to yahoo portal.

They offer broadband content like movies, music and other goodies that require a fast connection. One of the next big things here could be media delivery over the Internet. Movie rental, Pay-Per-View events, and all the rest. This could be a huge cash cow, and YahooBB is trying to be the conduit thru which it is all served. Just think what would happen to video rental chains like Tsutaya if YahooBB started renting the same content over the net?

[takagi]

Yahoo broadband is huge (2.5million subscribers), and I think will keep new users going to the yahoo portal and therefore keep this trend up for a bit longer.

According to a press release by Softbank today, Yahoo Broadband had last month 2.68 million ADSL subscribers (+133k). Earlier released info showed that the total number of ADSL subscribers in Japan increased by 429k to 7.91 million. NTT (East + West) had an increase of 172k to 2.93 million subscribers. For some time Yahoo grew quicker than NTT, but this is the second month in row that NTT had a bigger increase in subscribers.

[lukasz]

Very interesting numbers Thank you.
I was wondering if you have any numbers about users of broadband other than ADSL(ftth, cabel etc.).
I have seen a lot of ads recently for ftth (100Mbps) for 5500yen per month. That should drive the numbers up significantly.

[takagi]

I was wondering if you have any numbers about users of broadband other than ADSL(ftth, cabel etc.).

xDSL subscribers
01/2000 19
12/2000 9,723
12/2001 1,524,348
12/2002 5,645,728
04/2003 7,477,945
05/2003 7,907,437

FTTH subscribers
01/2002 12,337
12/2002 206,189
03/2003 305,387
04/2003 346,936

Internet subscribers using cable TV network
03/2000 216,000
12/2000 625,000
12/2001 1,303,000
12/2002 1,954,000
03/2003 2,069,000
04/2003 2,135,000