Mobile advertising in Japan
Overwhelmed by news about how Artificial Intelligence has moved beyond a buzzword, or how it is not about BigData anymore, we are moving past the excitement. It became as native as the ads itself, or at least some of them.
Although the advertising follows our every step, hyper-personalisation and real location based ads are yet to land on our screens. Research says, that over half of us find them to negatively affect our perception of the advertised services or products.

Meanwhile in Japan, mobile advertising is something to watch out for. Quite literally. Bumping into it may be fatal. The roads are full of of it. In particular around one of the biggest station on the planet, Shinjuku Station. They feature massive screens and loud music. As well as congestion. It is not uncommon to get a feeling, that they are walking hand in hand with you, following your every step.

Most of them focus on entertainment, very often a local one. For example “girls bars” (a place when one can buy a time with a girl to… drink and chat) or “hosto clubs”(similar one but for women). Then “idolu” which means pop stars, that follow the same style, therefore they are indistinguishable. What makes them stand out is usage of English language, or rather, the alphabet, since it rarely resembles any known language.

While it is not measurable nor cheap local businesses seem to prefer this form to digital or TV. The former, is still considered in Japan as the main form of communication. Which stands for “yelling at viewers with annoying jingles”.
This form of advertisement is called 宣伝カー (ad car) or アドトラック(ad-truck) and it is not unknown to bigger brands. This year American Express run an online campaign using an ad-truck to promote their partnership with Download festival.
Except of usual salary-men, which are great target for the local girls bars, Shibuya and Shijuku attract pretty dense crowds of millenials too. Those contemporary flaneurs, that wander into the commercial whirl of targeted advertising with their parents’ credit cards. Those ads are quite different and very offten apply scarcity and loss aversion techniques to strengthen the message. Lack of CTA and URLs is quite common and it makes sense in Japan, but that’s a different story.



