Increased competition on Japanese Adwords

[lukasz]

As I mentioned before i started my Adwords for particular keyword in march. 7 yen (minimum bid) gave me second position and there was maximum 3 ads.
two months ago 7 yen gave me 6th position among 6 or seven ads.
today 7 yen gives me 12th position (second page of results) among 13-14 ads.
What about your keywords?

[David_M]

I'm in a similar situation- when I first started at 7yen in February, there were maybe 1 or 2 competitors. Now there's a dozen, with much bigger ticket items, so their bids are 10x+ higher than mine. (looking at what they bid on overture) I've had to focus on SERPS and less competitive keywords. I'm also looking to new places to advertise in such as niche sites.

[bill]

I don't think this is a phenomenon limited to Japan. I think we're seeing this a lot in the AdWords Forum as well. Japan is catching up very quickly in terms of the take-up of PPC. It seems that to a large extent Japan skipped the SEO phase and went straight to PPC. A lot of traditional advertising houses and marketing agencies seem to have caught on to the value of PPC. This means large corporations are stepping into the ring and the days of <10 Yen bids may be waning.

[whats up skip]

At the moment there are still some keywords that are viable, but many others are just sky high now. I must admit though they still represent good value if you need to get an excellent position in Yahoo Japan.

Our paid listing in Yahoo Japan means we don't normally need to suppliment with Adwords in Yahoo Japan.

From what I could determine if you only wanted to target Yahoo & Google Japan, but not MSN then Adwords was a good option as it was cheaper than Overture.

The problem we have now is the lack of ability to target particular search engines without covering others.

I would like to place some ads in MSN, but not Yahoo. The problem in Overture does not let me do this. I am sure others must be finding this a problem too.