When you're ready to consider advertising online in Japan, check out the Four Golden Rules of Japanese banner ads, then talk to TKAI. We design, produce, buy and track banners on behalf of some of the world's most recognized online brands, including Amazon.com and Cyberian Outpost.

Here is a partial list of the banner hosting servers in Japan with which we work: Acara Asahi.com Benri.com BIGLOBE Computing Japan Magazine Cyberspace Japan Kojin Yunyu Center Global Online Japan> Hole-in-One Impress MacTree Nikkei Powerbook Army Time Magazine Japan Yahoo! Japan Yomiuri Shimbun

Use an appropriate concept
Humor and surprise work well. Cynicism and politics are out. Avoid grasping. A certain humble nonchalance, combined with some good-natured humor and surprise, is ideal. And if you want people to instantly read your banners, make sure the text is in Japanese. You'll see a lot of English language text in Japanese banners, but these words are used primarily as graphic elements rather than to convey messages.

Make the benefit clear
The viewer should know exactly how he or she will benefit by clicking on your ad. This assumes, of course, that there is a benefit - make sure you build one in. As David Siegel says, "telling people to order your products doesn't work."

Use a professional, native-reader typesetter
Rendering legible Japanese type requires at least twice the resolving power that English does. This means that compared to English, you have a lot less space for conveying your message when using Japanese. There are a lot of Japanese language banners on the Web right now that are extremely difficult to read - even illegible.

Design lightweight banners
Keep your banners as light as possible memory-wise. Japanese Web users are more time-online-conscious than just about any other group in the world. (Wouldn't you be if you were paying more than $1.75 per hour in local telephone charges in addition to ISP fees in order to be online?) If your banner loads too slowly, it will annoy the viewer and make him or her want to avoid clicking on it. Other viewers may scroll down to the rest of the page while your banner is still loading, meaning they'll never see it. Speed is critical everywhere on the Japanese Web, but especially when it comes to banners. Most leading sites now place memory and animation frame limits on advertiser banners: these can be restrictive enough to require substantial design changes.

Banners such as the ones below, which we designed, produced and track, consistently pull more than 1.5% clickthrough in Japan (the average is less than one percent). One of our banners pulled a record-breaking 33% average clickthrough (that's every day of the week) for a full month on a leading Japanese search engine. And that's without using prizes, sweepstake entries, or "adult" innuendo!