Advertising in Japan: A Media Buyer's Guide for Global Brands

Dentsu's annual Advertising Expenditures in Japan report is the standard reference for the market. The 2025 edition shows a market that grew 5.1% in a year, with the growth almost entirely online:

Two things stand out. First, TV in Japan is shrinking slowly rather than collapsing, which makes Japan one of the markets we describe in our analysis of media fragmentation as anchored: broadcast still delivers mass reach in a way it no longer does in the US or UK. Second, a growing share of the internet money flows through domestic platforms that a global buying setup does not reach by default. That is the practical problem this guide addresses, and it is one of the six decisions in our international marketing strategy framework: the media structure of a market is part of the market structure.

Search is the largest single slice of Japanese internet advertising, at 38.7% of internet media spend according to Dentsu Digital's breakdown of the 2025 figures. On mobile, where most Japanese searches happen, the split is clear. StatCounter's September 2026 data gives Google 85.1% of mobile search in Japan, Yahoo! 11.8% and Bing 0.9%.

The all-device figures look different, with Bing at 31.4%, but that share comes from desktop and should not change a media plan. On the devices where consumers search, the market is Google plus Yahoo! JAPAN.

The complication is that Yahoo! JAPAN is two things at once. Since 2010 it has used Google's search technology, so organic results look much the same. Its advertising, however, is sold through its own platform, now called LY Ads Search Ads. For a buyer, that means:

A brand that runs Google Ads alone in Japan misses roughly one mobile search in eight, much of it from older users who have kept Yahoo! JAPAN as their home page for years.

LINE is the default messaging app in Japan. LY Corporation, which owns both LINE and Yahoo! JAPAN, reports 100 million monthly LINE users in Japan as of March 2026, or 81.3% of the population. Brands use it for paid reach and also as a customer channel: a LINE Official Account plays the role that email lists and app push notifications play in the West.

In spring 2026, LY Corporation merged its display advertising. LINE Ads, including the Talk Head View placement at the top of the chat list, and Yahoo! JAPAN display ads, both auction and guaranteed, became a single product: LY Ads Display Ads. Their ad networks were combined into the LY Corporation Ads Network, and existing LINE Ads advertisers had to migrate.

For international advertisers this is a simplification. One buy now reaches messaging, portal, news and partner inventory, with one set of audience data. It also means LY Ads deserves a core line in a Japan plan, not a test budget left over after Google and Meta.

The contrast with China is useful. On WeChat, the domestic super-app is effectively the only door, because the global platforms are blocked. In Japan the global platforms work, but the domestic ecosystem is bigger in daily use. Both are walled gardens, with their own data, measurement and buying rules, and each needs its own plan.

Social advertising in Japan reached ¥1.3067 trillion in 2025, up 18.7%, and video advertising crossed ¥1 trillion for the first time at ¥1.0275 trillion, up 21.8%. The two overlap (a video ad on a social platform counts in both), so they should not be added together.

The platform mix is where Japan departs most from Western assumptions. DataReportal's Digital 2026 Japan report gives these advertising audiences in late 2025:

Japan has one of X's largest audiences anywhere, and there it works as a mass-reach channel for entertainment, news and live events. Facebook, the default social buy in many markets, reaches about 13% of the population. A plan that copies the US platform split will overspend on Facebook and underspend on X and YouTube.

Japanese advertising leans heavily on celebrity talent, known locally as tarento. A frequently cited cross-country study (Praet, 2001) found celebrities in 47.6% of Japanese TV ads, compared with 20.7% in the US. The exact share has moved since, but the pattern has not: famous faces, mascots and humor carry a large share of Japanese brand building. Creative made for the US often needs rebuilding for Japan, not translating, and that cost belongs in the entry budget.

Television remains Japan's biggest single medium, and the way it is bought differs from most Western markets. There are two models:

Prices vary widely. One Tokyo agency's 2025 guide puts a 30-second prime-time airing at roughly ¥1.6 million to ¥5.3 million, with non-prime and regional slots 30% to 50% cheaper. Treat those as indicative: real costs depend on the network, the daypart and the deal. The commercial networks are Nippon TV, TV Asahi, TBS, TV Tokyo and Fuji TV; the public broadcaster NHK carries no advertising.

The fastest-growing part of Japanese TV is online. TVer, the free streaming service run by the commercial broadcasters, reached 44.6 million monthly users in late 2025, and Dentsu counts ¥80.5 billion of video advertising sold by the TV broadcasters through their own digital services. For international advertisers, TVer is the closest thing Japan has to premium CTV: broadcast-quality programs and broadcaster-sold inventory. It is a form of broadcaster video on demand (BVOD), and it can be planned alongside linear TV for incremental reach. Our TV media buying team plans both together.

Advertising on Japan's e-commerce platforms reached ¥244.4 billion in 2025, up 12.5%, faster than the market as a whole. Rakuten is the domestic leader. Its Japanese e-commerce gross merchandise sales were ¥6.35 trillion in 2025, and its advertising business grew 13.5% year on year to ¥60.4 billion in the third quarter alone, according to the company's investor results.

Rakuten's advantage is the single ID: its members use the same account across shopping, credit cards, banking, travel and mobile, which gives advertisers closed-loop data from ad exposure to purchase. Amazon is the other major marketplace, and both belong on any shortlist of retail media networks for Japan.

Retail media works for exporters as well as for brands with their own e-commerce. Criterion Global's work for the California Table Grape Commission ran across 11 export markets including Japan, combining TV, radio, out-of-home and digital with market-specific retail media. Markets that received the support recorded an average year-on-year lift in price per pound (about 0.45 kg) of 16.79%, 3.07% more than export markets without it, worth an estimated +$43.2 million in incremental value for California growers. That result is across all supported markets, not Japan alone, but the method applies there directly: buy at the point of sale, and compare against markets that did not get the support. More on how we plan retail media.

Tokyo has some of the busiest rail stations in the world, and Japanese out-of-home advertising is built around them. According to JR East's ridership figures, its Shinjuku Station alone averaged 666,809 boarding passengers a day in the 2024 fiscal year, and that counts one rail operator at one station.

Transit media is sold as packages on screens and posters inside trains and stations. Published rate cards give a sense of scale. On JR East's Tokyo-area lines, a one-week buy across all lines costs ¥4.8 million on Train Channel and ¥6.8 million on TRAIN TV (both excluding tax). Taxis are a second format: tablet screens in the back seat, with the largest networks covering around 71,000 vehicles, reach business travelers and executives on rides that last long enough to watch a full spot.

Out-of-home in Japan is less about single landmark sites, though those exist in Shibuya and Shinjuku, and more about frequency across a daily commute. It works best planned alongside mobile, since the same commuters are on their phones during the ride. Our billboard marketing analysis covers costs and measurement, and our out-of-home advertising team plans transit and roadside together.

Two regulations matter most for foreign advertisers.

Stealth marketing. Since 1 October 2023, advertising that consumers cannot identify as advertising has been banned under Japan's Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations. The advertiser carries the liability, not the influencer or the agency. Fines can reach ¥300 million for a company that ignores a corrective order. The first enforcement order, in June 2024, went to a Tokyo medical group whose clinic offered a ¥550 discount on flu vaccinations to patients who posted 4- or 5-star Google Maps reviews, reported by the Mainichi. Even small incentives count. Every influencer post, review program and sponsored article needs a clear disclosure. Our roundup of native advertising examples compares disclosure rules across markets.

Cookies and tags. Since 16 June 2023, the amended Telecommunications Business Act's external transmission rule requires covered businesses to notify or disclose to users when their information is sent to third parties through cookies, pixels and tags. Websites and apps aimed at Japanese users need a disclosure that lists what is sent and to whom.

The agency structure. Japan's agency market is concentrated: Dentsu Group, Hakuhodo DY Holdings and CyberAgent are the largest agencies by revenue. Japan's largest agencies have also traditionally represented competing advertisers in the same category and sold broadcast airtime as well as bought it, a model that is unusual by Western standards. For a foreign brand, the choice is structural as much as creative: who sits on your side of the table when the media is bought. An independent international media planning and buying agency buys for the advertiser only, with no media-owner interest on its side.

Japan is too expensive to enter with a test budget spread thin across every channel above. The question to answer first is the smallest investment that can compete with domestic incumbents, which we call the Minimum Viable Market Investment℠ (MVMI℠). The Criterion Global Budget Blueprint℠ sizes that figure against a brand's three-to-five-year ambition for the market.

A typical sequence for a brand entering Japan:

Measure against a holdout, as the California Table Grapes program did with unsupported markets, so the Japan budget has to prove its own return. Japan often sits alongside Singapore, South Korea and Australia in one APAC marketing plan; for exporters and investment promotion agencies, our export marketing work covers the market-by-market sequencing. For the market context beyond media, read our Japan market guide.

Google, by a wide margin: about 85% of mobile search against about 12% for Yahoo! JAPAN in September 2026. But Yahoo! JAPAN sells its ads through its own platform, so reaching its users means running a second search account alongside Google Ads.

Indicative published figures put a 30-second prime-time airing at roughly ¥1.6 million to ¥5.3 million, with off-peak and regional slots 30% to 50% cheaper. Program sponsorship (time) is negotiated, often over six months; spot buys are priced on GRPs.

Yes, as long as the content is clearly identified as advertising. Since October 2023, undisclosed promotion is banned, and the advertiser, not the influencer, is legally responsible.

You need Japanese-language buying, accounts on the domestic platforms and people who know how Japanese media is sold. That does not have to mean one of the domestic agency groups. Many global brands plan Japan with an international agency that runs the market alongside the rest of their portfolio.