Digiday Research: How Japanese publishers are approaching programmatic

Publishers don’t depend on programmatic
Despite its growth, most publishers aren’t reliant on programmatic advertising for the majority of their ad revenue. Only 15 percent of companies relied on programmatic advertising for half or more of their ad revenues.

However, 85 percent of publishers now count programmatic as a revenue source. This implies growing adoption of programmatic advertising in Japan, given that just three years ago 74 percent of marketers, in a Digiday and AdRoll poll, weren’t even aware of it.

Despite the increased spending on programmatic, it still only accounts for 10 percent of the roughly $10 billion spent in Japan on digital advertising every year and 1.6 percent of the total $60 billion advertising spend. Marketers in Japan are still more likely to favor traditional print and TV advertising, meaning it will be a long time before most publishers call programmatic their dominant revenue source.

Blocking ad blockers
While early figures on ad blocking in Japan varied from 1 to 10 percent of internet users, that number has grown significantly. Last year, 26 percent of Japanese users employed an ad blocker. Japanese publishers might not have initially felt threatened by ad blocking, but they are now starting to fight back against ad blockers. Twenty-one percent of publishers in the Digiday survey acknowledged they block content from audience members using an ad blocker. Their strategy is similar to that of English-language publishers that force users to whitelist them or lose access to their content.