Trends and Predictions for Japanese Influencer Marketing 2023
Influencer marketing has a become increasingly popular across the globe, including Japan. It’s expected that Japanese influencer marketing will grow by around 20% between 2022 and 2023. During 2022, the concept of ‘Time Performance’ was especially popular among younger people, and short video formats have been very successful. It’s expected that this trend will still be popular in 2023. Let’s get started and take a deep dive into our predictions for 2023.
1. Short videos must be getting more popular
In our article about the Japanese influencer marketing trends in 2022, we mentioned short-form videos. This kind of short video format has been popular and will be more influential in 2023. According to App Annie, the number of Monthly Active Users (MAU) for TikTok exceeded 16.9 million in Japan. Compared to 2019, it increased by about 1.5 times in only two years.
Google also announced that the number of MAU on YouTube Shorts reached 15 billion worldwide in 2022. Google has plans to start monetising YouTube shorts, meaning that YouTubers can make money from short videos. The benefit of creating short content for creators is that they can acquire new fans for their regular YouTube videos via YouTuber shorts. This video was the most viewed Japanese YouTube Short, paving the way for other Japanese Influencers to create short content.
In 2022, the most interesting behaviour of Japanese users when accessing information was ‘Time performance’. ‘Time performance’ is a concept that means effectiveness, such as how satisfying or enjoyable it is in a certain time. In fact ‘Time Performance’ won a grand prize for the new word of the year in Japan last year. viewing content focusing on “time performance” is in trend, especially among young people. This trend must lead to short videos getting more popular this year.
2. TikTok will be used more as a ‘search tool’ in 2023
Recently on Japanese TikTok, there has been a growing interest around housework content for housewives and working people, in addition to unique content aimed at young people. This means that Japanese people have started to use TikTok not only for fun, but also for looking for helpful information. The video below explains how to do housework effectively and got 36k likes.
Furthermore, some things are getting popular and selling well because of exposure on TikTok. For example, a Science Fiction novel published 30 years ago was suddenly popular again and has had many reprints thanks to this TikTok video.
On the other hand, most people still use Google to search and young people tend to search things on YouTube and Instagram according to LINE Research.
3. Japanese people enjoy shopping online via Instagram
Japan has a large amount of users using the shopping function on Instagram. According to Instagram, Japanese people are three times more likely than other countries to view product details from posts with shopping tags. According to Allied Architects, 33% of Instagram users have purchased from posts with shopping tags. Another 12% of all users reported making purchases at least once a month.
Furthermore, according to Trenders, Japanese Instagram users are also 10% more likely than Twitter users to make purchases based on recommendations from people they trust, which aligns with influencer marketing. Instagram is the best place for influencers to guide purchasing decisions according to Glossom.
4. YouTube is used the most among all ages in Japan
Popular Japanese YouTuber Hajime
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan, over 90% of Japanese people of all ages use YouTube. According to Dentsu, YouTube has the highest search behaviour for products and services within social media, with 66.7% of respondents saying they have searched for and researched products and services on YouTube.
Furthermore, Instagram has the highest purchase ratio among social media users at 39.7%, followed by YouTube at 39.0%. Compared to the number of users by age group, YouTube has the highest purchase ratio among all age groups.
5. Influencer marketing market to expand and reach $560 million in Japan this year
Influencer marketing is very popular in Japan, and the market size is estimated to expand over the coming years. YouTube is the most popular influencer marketing channel, followed by Instagram and TikTok. TikTok is expected to more than double in size over the next five years, so we can expect to see a lot of growth there.
Furthermore, Google’s plans to completely end support for third-party cookies in the Chrome browser by late 2024 is expected to impact targeted advertising, and help influencer marketing become more popular.
2023 is already proving to be a very exciting year for influencer marketing in Japan. We look forward to seeing what new and exciting changes it brings.
JapanBuzz specialises in Japanese influencer marketing across a wide range of platforms, including the YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and more. Feel free to contact us if you’re looking for a Japanese Influencer Marketing agency.
Sources:
https://markezine.jp/article/detail/37145
https://marke.ddir.co.jp/ddirmagazine/mediaplan-senior-generation
https://www.cyberbuzz.co.jp/2022/11/post-1791.html
https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_content/000831290.pdf
https://glossom.co.jp/news/20221219.html
https://www.trenders.co.jp/news/1772/
