Representatives for CyberAgent Inc. tell MMW that the company has agreed to partner with Japan’s most popular shopping-rewards card — the “T Card” — to deliver what they call “targeted online advertising” based on past consumer purchases.
The “T” Card is the creation of Culture Convenience Club Co., and the rewards program has a participation rate of 40 percent among Japanese shoppers. We’re told the company will begin sharing shopping data with CyberAgent’s ad unit MicroAd Inc. in the new year.
“CyberAgent, owner of Japan’s most popular blogging service, joins Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. in seeking to deliver more targeted ads based on user behavior,” notes Bloomberg. “Its shares have risen 21 percent in the past year as the company expands into new areas including native advertising, a strategy that involves marketing messages designed to look like news articles.”
“The key is to get data from outside the Internet,” said MicroAd Chief Executive Officer Kentaro Watanabe in a recent interview. “We need to capture customers’ real behavior. Such data would be a gold mine.”
The MicroAd platform allows advertisers to place real-time bids for ad spots based on user profiles.
Internet advertising continues to grow in Japan, where spending on it has more than doubled since 2013. The growth has largely been driven by an increase in prevalence of smartphones.
