As Zuckerberg Visits Japan, Dentsu Extends Facebook Ad Sales Deal

Photo: PMO's Facebook page

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu (TYO:4324) announced (pdf) with Facebook today that their one year partnership, which saw Dentsu act as the social network’s official ad sales and marketing representative in Japan, is to be extended.

Facebook’s current monthly active user count in Japan is about 10 million, but is growing at a rate that must surely strike fear into domestic rival Mixi, whose growth has plateaued of late.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in Tokyo yesterday too (I’m not sure to what extent, if at all, the events are related). And while his trip to China didn’t prove to be particularly interesting [1], his stop in Japan appears to have been a little more productive. In addition to this news from Dentsu which coincides with Zuckerberg’s visit, Softbank’s Masayoshi Son also just happened to create a Facebook account yesterday.

And as you can see in the picture above, Zuckerberg also took time to visit the Japanese Prime Minister [2], with the official Facebook page of PM’s Office proudly displayed behind them. He also made a stop at last night’s Mobile Hack Tokyo event, and gave a short speech (mostly just pleasantries) which you can check out below.

Facebook’s growth in Japan has been interesting to watch. From my own point of view, perhaps a far more telling metric than monthly active users or page views is that the word Facebook is creeping into the conversations of regular people that I know here. It’s not just geeks and early adopters anymore. And while Facebook didn’t always look like a sure thing in Japan, it’s certainly winning over Japanese friends at a pretty solid pace right now.

1. I wish I could say that I didn’t have any interest in the Zuckerberg/China headlines like my colleague Charlie, but I confess that there was a part of me curiously wondering if he was doing more than just vacationing and buying iPad covers. But yes, the redundant headlines were a bit much. Such is the current nature of media, regrettably.  ↩
2. I absolutely love this tweet from @KyleMizokami about Zuckerberg’s visit to the PM