Fresh from launching the Orange Ad Market in Europe, OpenX has announced it is partnering CCI in Japan. The two companies are planning to launch an ad exchange for the Japanese market in Q4 of this year. Cyber Communications Inc is Japan’s leading media rep company, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dentsu Inc. It acts as a major buying point for many of Japan's largest media buyers. OpenX technology will underpin the new automated ad market, allowing Japanese publishers and buyers to trade ad impressions. The platform will have all the features already available on OpenX, including open API’s for DSPs and buying platforms, real-time bidding and granular controls for participating publishers.

While the exchange space is still nascent in Japan, there is a lot of interest from buyers and sellers in the automated channel. The Japanese display market is worth about 3.5 billion euro - just slightly behind Europe's total size. The significance of this deal is that Japanese inventory will soon be opened up to global ad traders. Media buyers across Europe and rest of the world (particularly the US and Australia) will soon be able to buy inventory on Japanese sites. There are potentially some big opportunities for agencies to grab more international marketing budget as barriers to markets come crashing down. A global exchange with access to local ad markets presents a huge opportunity for media buyers - and of course to ad sellers who will have more exposure to demand partners.

Here's the press release in full:

TOKYO and LOS ANGELES, August 31, 2010 cyber communications inc. (“cci”), Japan’s leading media representative company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Dentsu Inc., and OpenX Technologies, Inc. (OpenX), the world’s leading independent provider of digital advertising technology, today announced a multi-year partnership to launch OpenX Market Japan, a new online advertising exchange model designed to lead the evolution of online exchanges in Japan. Under the terms of the exclusive partnership, cci will bring the benefits of OpenX’s proven global ad marketplace to Japanese publishers, advertisers and agencies at a local level. The launch will take place in the fourth quarter of 2010.

OpenX Market Japan will increase the value of display advertising and maximize publishers’ revenue by helping advertisers much more easily reach their target audiences across large numbers of websites. Specifically, the new partnership will be a powerful combination of cci’s market expertise and supply and demand relationships in the Japanese market and OpenX’s global technology platform and innovative marketplace design. OpenX Market Japan is part of OpenX’s new global approach to online advertising marketplaces that allows major online media companies in key regions to participate directly in building exchange value chains.

The Japanese online advertising market was worth an estimated $7.4 billion in 2009 and is projected to grow to more than $10 billion by 2014*, a growth rate of more than 42%. It is the second largest online advertising market in the world.

OpenX will power OpenX Market Japan by providing the regionally specific toolset required for success in Japan alongside the core technology and market design of the global OpenX Market, which already reaches more than 400 million unique users monthly**. cci is the first Asian partner in a global, interconnected alliance of regional partners driving participation into OpenX Market.

“We’re extremely pleased to be partnering with cci, a subsidiary of Dentsu, to develop Japan’s first truly open online ad exchange,” said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX. “Furthermore, we’re delighted for the first time to have the digital arm of a major global advertising group participating in OpenX Market. We believe cci will help to rapidly accelerate the exchange’s growth in Japan.”

OpenX Market Japan will enable publishers to maximize their ad revenue by selling their inventory via a powerful exchange where all classes of buyers compete for each impression in a real-time auction. The auction will be run for every single impression in real-time with a minimum “floor price” set by the publishers.
OpenX Market Japan will feature a number of key and unique benefits:

Benefits for publishers

• Revenue maximization: In addition to their own direct (guaranteed) ad sales, publishers can increase revenue by selling their non-guaranteed inventory in a real-time auction market in which all classes of buyers compete on an impression by impression basis.
• Zero economic risk: OpenX Market Japan allows publishers to set the floor or reserve price for each impression, ensuring price protection.
• Control: The platform features enable publishers to keep control over their inventory, the ads actually displayed on their inventory and the floor price set for their inventory.
• Simple user experience: OpenX Market Japan allows publishers to participate with just one click of a button. Payments are consolidated into one monthly check.
• Excellent support: All tools are in Japanese, pricing and billing are in yen and all technical and customer support is provided by local teams.
• Global access: Publishers have access to a large range of advertisers at the international, national and local levels.

Benefits for advertisers and agencies

• Return on investment: Enables advertisers and agencies to increase their performance by reaching their target audience at scale.
• Simplicity: OpenX Market Japan provides advertisers and agencies with simple and powerful ways to buy across a potentially enormous pool of diverse, primary inventory. Advertisers and agencies can immediately access and buy ad inventory, while making just one consolidated payment even when buying across multiple currencies.
• Efficiency: Advertisers and agencies can define and buy ad inventory based on their unique targeting criteria across a combination of large and niche publishers.
• Transparency: Advertisers and agencies maintain complete control over where their ads are displayed.
• Global access: Advertisers and agencies can buy from anywhere and consolidate their purchases at a region level.
• Immediacy: Real-time bidding on both the client and server side and immediate access to auctions ensure an instant and fair bidding process.

* Source: Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.
** Source: Quantcast