Content Marketing has made huge strides since the innovation of the smartphone, and Marketing strategies in general has changed drastically with the invention of the internet. As Major corporations shift their marketing dollars over to the net versus the traditional forms of media, a lot of new services have been popping up everywhere to creating a cluster f$%% of marketing services that requires a online marketing specialist to really de-cypher the difference between each product. For this reason, The Casual Meta has created a list of all the effective online marketing techniques that are currently going on in Japan, to help measure what services are being used: Pre Registrations Service: Gives developers an opportunity to pre launch (Beta test) their game with a group of users for a selected period of time. The service will usually have the community to bring in X amount of users at a specific cost. ie Game Gift is a company that just recently got bought out by AU KDDI, and Game Gift was usually filtering their users through the AU KDDI Portal to build their in-site community. AU KDDI is 1 of the top 3 mobile service carriers in Japan. Game Gift url: gamegift.jp
Lobi url : lobi.co
Yoyaku Top 10 url: yoyakutop10
Editorial Marketing Editorial Marketing is a Content Marketing method that utilizes online editorial sites, professional bloggers and streamers etc, to help promote their game once released. It’s a marketing tool that is not commonly used by mobile developers but as traditional user acquisition techniques become more and more expensive, Japanese developers are looking to get a lot more creative with their marketing dollars or yen. It has been rumored that top youtubers in Japan are asking for about 5,000,000 Yen ( $42,000 USD) for one product review. The Top Japan Youtubers can be found here: CHECK THE TOP YOUTUBERS IN JAPAN Below is a list of other Editorial Marketing companies you can utilize to help promote your game or app Famitsu url: famitsu.com
App Bank url : appbank.net
Social Game Info url: http://gamebiz.jp/ Other notable Editorial Marketing companies that are relevant in the Japan Market as below
Reward Program Reward Programs are programs that established social networks run for third party advertisers to advertise on their space. The social network incentivize their users by giving away Platform Hard Currency with the condition to download the advertisers, advertised application. The most common found reward programs in Japan are:
Direct Deals Direct Deals are platform that allow Developers to Advertisers to directly deal with each other and removing the platform middle man. In other words, Application to Application Marketing. The most commonly used platform in Japan are:
Pure Advertisement Pure Advertisement is related to Content Market efforts directed towards the big social network channels available in the WWW. For example the Facebook Ads program of the Google adsense Platform. In Japan the most commonly used pure advertising platforms are below:
CPI Service
CPI services (Cost Per Installs) in Japan is relatively big and there are many companies providing this service. Below is a list of some of the prevalent CPI based companies in Japan
DSP (Demand Side Platform) A demand–side platform (DSP) is a piece of the technology puzzle that fits into the larger real-time bidding (RTB) ecosystem. Specifically, a DSP enables advertisers to purchase display ad inventory via RTB exchanges. The most notable DSP type marketing services in Japan are:
Video Advertising Video Advertising has been a common source of secondary income for a lot of mid tier games in the mobile market as developers stream video advertisements in their application to obtain in game rewards or a requirement to move to the next stage. Below are the popular Video based advertisement methods used to the market.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Content Marketing in Japan and for those companies looking to enter this market, i hope this list will help you create your marketing template. If you need consultation regarding each service, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we would love to help you strategize your Asia (Japan) Campaign.