In recent years blogging has become a popular activity on the web the world over. Yet Japan can consider itself the world leader with recent published research suggesting that up to 74% of Internet users here read blogs at least once a week, compared to just 27%, 23% and 22% in the US, UK and France, respectively.
Indeed, research carried out by Carter Associates is routinely finding that an ever-increasing proportion of Japanese Internet users now use blogs to search for reviews and information across a range of products and services.
Other impressive statistics:
- Nikkei has estimated that nearly 15 million
people in Japan (more than 10% of the population) now maintain their own
blog.
- They are increasingly popular across all demographics, with a March
2008 survey finding that nearly 70% of Internet users aged between 60-79
use blogs.
- It has even been suggested that Japanese is the most common language
in the blogosphere. More common than English and Chinese.
- Japanese blogs are still gaining in popularity at a significant pace,
with the most popular Japanese blogging service, Ameba, reporting a
three-fold increase in the number of visits to its site in the year to
November 2007,
including 2.2 billion visitors in that month alone.
- The new American micro-blogging service Twitter receives 25% of its traffic
from Japan, despite not offering a Japanese language service.
- Some of the most popular celebrity blogs in Japan are visited tens of
millions of times per month.
- This blog ‘written’ by a cat even receives upwards of 50,000 hits every
day!
Clearly blogs satisfy important communal needs of the Japanese and much could be theorized about the reasons for their huge popularity. However, what is most clear is that blogs simply are hugely popular, and that they now rival traditional mass media in terms of their reach and influence over a large portion of the entire Japanese market.
A 2007 report by Japanese advertising agency, Dentsu, indicates that Internet advertising expenditure now exceeds that of magazine advertising in Japan and current forecasts for Internet ad spending show an average annual growth of approximately 15% over the next four years.
Evidently, Japanese businesses are keen to exploit the obvious benefits of Internet advertising. Yet this advertising alone does not address the characteristics of the Japanese consumer, the Japanese blogging culture and the relationship between the two. Blogs can really be used in Japan to create more meaningful engagement and relationships with brands or products that goes beyond simple advertising.
Session times for blogs are typically longer than those of most websites, offering the obvious benefit of extended exposure. Whilst it may be difficult to measure the relative value of this extra viewing time it is a value that is surely worth further exploration. The Japanese Internet advertising agency, MicroAd, reports that approximately half of its ‘click-throughs’ occur via blogs.
The huge popularity of celebrity blogs in Japan is being used as an additional means of communicating endorsement to the market. One prominent example being Kaori Manabe, the face of Proactiv skincare in Japan, and the banner ads that feature on her popular blog. Similarly, in a country where trust is a key defining need of the Japanese consumer, the value of word-of-mouth recommendations is easy to acknowledge and some unique marketing strategies offered on the blogosphere are only just beginning to emerge.
New services have recently become available that pay a commission to the blogger for each mention of a product or service. Other services can then review the context and frequency of product mentions to measure market penetration and brand awareness. In this way each individual blog can be regarded as an independent media outlet for advertising, with the added value of personal recommendation.
Of course it can work the other way as well but, perhaps today, if you want to be big in Japan, you want to be blogged in Japan.
