要点In short
- Total ad spend reached a record ¥8.06 trillion in 2025, up 5.1% — a fourth consecutive record year.
- Internet advertising hit ¥4.05 trillion and crossed 50% of total spend for the first time.
- Video passed ¥1 trillion; social reached ¥1.31 trillion, growing 13.1% year on year.
- In a market this large the constraint is rarely budget. It's whether the page the budget points at earns trust.
Japan's ad market keeps setting records, and the mix has tipped decisively online. Internet advertising reached ¥4.0459 trillion — crossing 50% of total spend for the first time. Video ads passed ¥1 trillion; social ads reached ¥1.3067 trillion.
What the mix tells a new entrant
- B2C: social (Instagram, LINE, TikTok), video (YouTube), and search — aimed at direct purchase and awareness.
- B2B: search/listing ads, limited LinkedIn, industry-media placements, and webinar promotion — aimed at generating qualified conversations.
The headline number is a temptation: a huge, growing market you can simply buy into. But spend efficiency in Japan is gated by trust. Ads amplify whatever foundation they point at — so the same budget that evaporates against a weak presence compounds against a credible one.
In a ¥8 trillion market, the constraint is rarely budget. It's whether the page the budget points to earns trust.
Sources
Takato Minemura — Founder, JIN MARKETING
Takato Minemura is the founder of JIN MARKETING and runs WINDE, a development company in Japan. Educated at university in the United States, he spent years working alongside businesses abroad, where the same request kept arriving from the founders he worked with — we want to bring this to Japan, how does it actually work there? Answering that question repeatedly showed him something he had not expected: what he had treated as ordinary common sense about marketing was in fact specific to this market, and the companies committing the most money to an entry were the ones least aware of it. He works on both sides of an entry, the strategy and the code that implements it, which is why the research here comes out of projects rather than desk study. More about the author