UI/UX of Yahoo! JAPAN PPC Search Ads

You may have found our beginner’s guide to the Japanese PPC market and are now ready to start advertising on Yahoo! JAPAN. It’s most likely a new platform for you so you may be worried about having to navigate through its UI, but we are here to support you through every step of the process. Since 2020, there are two different Yahoo! Japan ad management dashboards: one for search ads and another for display ads – the latter is new and you can find its new features here. In this guide we will show you how to navigate Yahoo! JAPAN’s UI/UX for PPC search ads.

Campaign Management Tool for Yahoo! JAPAN Search Ads (YSA)

Every Yahoo! JAPAN advertiser will have access to the campaign management tool used to manage search ads. Here you can create, modify, and stop campaigns as well as top up the account and access useful tools such as the Keyword Advice Tool.

How to create a Yahoo! JAPAN search ad campaign

1. Log into your Yahoo! JAPAN account from here.

2. There are three different types of search ads: Standard, Mobile App Download, and Dynamic.

Standard search campaigns

1. Select “Standard” under “Basic Information” of the Create Campaign page.
2. You can choose to “Use Existing Settings” from an existing campaign, or fill in all the appropriate fields:
   • Campaign name
   • Start and end date
   • Daily budget
   • Bidding type (manual or auto)
   • Targeting by device (PC/smartphone/tablet), location or time of day/week
   • Other (ad distribution, negative keywords and URL options for using third party tracking tools)

3. Create an Ad Group. You can further adjust the settings for this particular ad group for: 
   • daily bid budget
   • bid adjustment
   • ad rotation
   • negative keywords
   • URL options

4. Enter the keywords for this ad group. You can choose the match type between exact match, phrase match, and broad match. (There is also a list of suggested keywords if you enter a keyword related to the ad and you can add them to the keyword list directly.

Tip: Symbols for Google Ads match type, such as [] for exact match, do not work with Yahoo! JAPAN Ads. However, “+” for broad match modifiers can be used.

5. Create the ad text. Keep in mind that the Japanese language takes up two bytes per character and has different character limits compared to ads in English on other platforms. I.e., One character in Japanese, such as “あ”, counts as two bytes.
   • Titles 1, 2 and 3 = 30 bytes each
   • Description 1 and 2 = 90 bytes each

Note: Title 3 is optional, and both Title 2 and 3 may not display depending on various factors such as the size of the screen. Description 2 is also optional.

Tip #1: Use the Keyword Insertion feature to ensure you include keywords from the campaign in the titles and descriptions. 

Tip #2: You can copy the ad text from an existing ad by clicking on “Saved Ads (Ad Group)” on the right side of the screen. This can save time if you are creating similar ads within the same ad group.

Mobile App Download search campaign

1. Select “Mobile app download” under “Basic Information” of the Create Campaign page.
2. You can choose to “Use Existing Settings” from an existing campaign, or fill in all the appropriate fields, similar to a Standard campaign. This time, you will see an additional field for choosing the OS and App ID name.

3. Create an ad group, just like for a Standard campaign.
4. Enter keywords, just like for a Standard campaign.
5. Create the ad text. Unlike standard ads, the character count is different.
   • Title = 25 bytes
   • Description 1 and 2 = 35 bytes each

Note: Description 2 is optional and may not appear in the ad.

Tip: Use the Keyword Insertion feature to ensure you include keywords from the campaign in the title and descriptions. 

Dynamic search campaign

1. Select “Dynamic Ads for Search” under “Basic Information” of the Create Campaign page.
2. You can choose to “Use Existing Settings” from an existing campaign, or fill in all the appropriate fields, similar to a Standard campaign. This time, you will see an additional field for “How specified” where you will need to enter the domain of the product or service you are promoting.

3. Create an ad group. Unlike Standard and Mobile App Download campaigns, there is an additional field for target rules.

Tip: This field does not say mandatory, but if you do not set this, the ad will not be delivered.

4. Create the ad. This is simplified for dynamics ads and you will only need to fill in:
   • Ad Name
   • Description 1 = 80 bytes

Tip #1: You can copy the ad text from an existing ad by clicking on “Saved Ads (Ad Group)” on the right side of the screen. This can save time if you are creating similar ads within the same ad group. 

Tip #2: Following entries are automatically set for Dynamic Ads. You do not have to enter the following:

• Title
• Landing Page URL
• Destination URL
• Smartphone Landing Page URL

Our Japan market entry advice

Those are your detailed steps on how to create search ads on the Yahoo! JAPAN platform using the Campaign Management Tool. Should you require further assistance with how to navigate the dashboard or campaign creation, our team of bilingual Japanese PPC experts can help you for free. Our complimentary support is available to any new advertiser of Yahoo! JAPAN regardless of ad spend. If you have an in-house PPC manager who could use our free support, or an agency who could benefit from regular product updates in English, benchmark reports, and campaign optimisation suggestions, contact us today!