Japanese Affiliate Networks: Who are the Players?

It’s no secret that Japan is one of the fastest growing markets for the affiliate marketing industry. What is remarkable is the number of players that have thrown their hats into the affiliate arena over the years. We try to keep track of these things here at MetaFlo, no easy task considering that new affiliate service providers seem to pop up every week. At last count we found over 45 networks covering both mobile and PC media. These networks have a combined reach of over one million partners (I suspect a lot of overlap between the networks). Nonetheless, the Japanese affiliate space continues to grow. The Japanese online affiliate industry can trace its beginning to 1999 when Timothy Williams established ValueCommerce which was then the only affiliate service platform in Japan. Over the next few years ValueCommerce was joined by ValueClick, FAN Communications and others. In terms of media reach, ValueCommerce is the 800 pound gorilla. With over 100,000 partners Valuecommerce boasts over 800 million ad impressions a day! That means they reach about 41% of all online users or about 17 million Japanese eyeballs per day. FAN Communications, through their A8 and Moba8 mobile affiliate network, serve up another 230 million impressions a day to over 11 million people. These two affiliate networks combined reach almost 70% of the Japanese Internet market. As formidable as they are, ValueCommerce and FAN Communications are not the only players in town. One other provider we’ve kept our eyes on is AdWays, which was launched in 2001 and is fast becoming a force in affiliate marketing through its multi-channel media approach. AdWays distributes its merchant offers via JANet web affiliate network, their fast growing Smart-c mobile network as well as their contextual ad matching service AdConMatch and the newly released phone number banner serving product AdCall . Adways also plays on the other side of the fence by operating seven mobile media sites. Content for their sites range from games to mobile blogs. Since Adways owns the media sites this allows them unfettered access to the membership base as well as unlimited use as a channel for their merchant affiliate offers. All three companies mentioned in this article had their IPOs over the last 12 months and we expect more next year. The Japanese affiliate market is hot and shows little sign of slowing down especially in the mobile media sector. If you’re planning to market your online business in Japan, now is the time to look into these networks as well as the dozens of smaller affiliate service providers offering access to the Japanese online market.