世論 What Japan Thinks

One of the big new things for television in Japan these days is AcTVila, basically a portal site for internet-connected televisions. A recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by March Inc into usage of AcTVila investigated awareness of the technology.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 10th of March 2008 300 members of the Marsh online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 13.3% in their fifties, and 6.7% aged sixty or older.

I’ve not played with the service myself, and I’m still on an analogue television, so I’m a bit in the dark about the whole affair! I’ve not even seen advertisements for the service, or television manufacturers promoting support for it in their advertising, so I’m not sure where the awareness is coming from.
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Top of my list of electrical items to buy for the house is a HDR, or Hard Disk Recorder, the name commonly used for PVRs, Personal Video Recorders, or TiVo-like devices. This survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Cross Marketing or television program recording looks at how these HDRs are used in Japan.

Demographics

Over the 9th and 10th of January 2008 300 members of the Cross Marketing online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 50.0% male, with 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

I’ve heard people in Japan talk of how their lives have changed with the advent of the HDR; the biggest plus is for people who have children, as kids can’t wait, but now the television can. When their kid needs attention, the live broadcast can be paused, the child attended to, then the program resumed. Secondly, lots of children’s programs can be saved to disk, and their favourite programs called up at the touch of the button, and scenes they enjoy can be repeated over and over again.
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With the Sharp AQUOS keitai outselling all others, is it the television that is boosting the cell phone or the cell phone boosting the television? This is a question that intrigues me, but unfortunately that question has little to do with today’s translation of a survey by MyVoice into flat screen televisions.

Demographics

Over the first five days of November 2007 19,700 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 16% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 28% in their forties, and 17% in their fifties.

Carrying on that thought about brand symbiosis between mobile phones and televisions, Panasonic finally launched its Viera brand mobile phone, the P905i, which according to reports I’ve heard is the top-seller, and in fact is selling faster than they can build them, from the new DoCoMo range of phones, despite being a wallet-busting 52,000 yen, which when converted to dollars is more than an iPhone, and when you then add in that an unlimited packet contract is about 4,000 yen, and the base contract price plus essential extras like the answering phone and iMode access adds up to around 3,000 yen, putting you at around about 60 US dollars per month, which does not include any free minutes, although there are loyalty discounts that should be factored in; up to 50% off for 10 year customers.

But I digress. Back at flat screen televisions, the survey results were as follows.
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With the analogue switch-off coming ever closer, and with awareness campaigns being conducted on television, newsprint, and even in English on the internet, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by goo Research on the topic of television.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 10th of September 2007 1,079 members of goo Research’s online monitor panel completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52/6% were male, 16.9% were in their teens, 17.5% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.9% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

I’m still not ready for digital broadcasting. My television has the required digital input, but we have no digital tuner. My current thinking is to buy a hard disk-based recorder with built-in tuner, or even take up my cable operator’s deal of a low-rental recorder offered with their digital service.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on an interesting little poll conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into television at home.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 19th of April 2007 Cross Marketing interviewed 300 members of their online monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. All the respondents lived in Tokyo or the surrounding area and were mobile phone users. 50.0% were male, 20.0% in their teens, 20.0% in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, and 20.0% in their fifties.

With the soon-approaching analogue switch-off on the 24th of July 2011 (why that date? I must research that!) it would seem that there is quite a bit of scope for the market in both televisions and DVD and hard disk recorders to expand as people buy them as much for the digital tuners as for the other features. My home too is still strictly analogue, but our CRT does have the required digital input plug if we decide to update the VCR alone.
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Following a link I spotted entitled Nearly Half Believe “Expert” Health Advice Dispensed on Boob Tube on Rising Sun of Nihon, I tracked down the original survey on health information dispensed by television programs, conducted by the Institute of Future Technology in the middle of February. The only demographic information available is that 1,055 people completed a web-based survey.

This survey was conducted after the Aru Aru Daijiten natto scandal blew up, so that should be kept in mind when viewing the results.
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japan.internet.com today reported on the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research on the subject of search engines and advertising keywords. They interviewed 1,099 ordinary members of their monitor group by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample was male, 24.9% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 22.2% in their forties, 20.6% in their fifties, and 10.7% in their sixties. This article is only a excerpt from their full report, which seems to have lots more relevant statistics regarding this subject.

I’m very curious to know whether search keywords are used as heavily in other countries. The majority of television adverts seem to have keywords, often with no URL, greatly outnumbering those with only URLs. I also wonder if any of these Japanese advertising search terms have been usurped by googlebombing, as they do seem ripe for targeting.

Interestingly enough, the page on “Google bombing” in Wikipedia is translated into 17 other languages, but Japanese is conspicuous by its absence. Googlebombing (Google 爆撃, bakugeki) only appears once in Japanese Wikipedia in the middle of another page discussing SEO techniques. Surely there must be some well-known Japanese Googlebombs, or even Yahoobombs, since that engine is the winner in Q1?
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japan.internet.com recently published the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research into search keywords in television advertising. At the end of September 1,088 people from thier monitor group successfully completed a web-based private questionnaire. Demographically, 58.1% were female, 21.8% in their twenties, 43.7% in their thirties, 24.0% in their forties, and 10.6% in their fifties.

Recently, Japanese television advertisements (and some print advertisements too) have tended to use instead of URLs a search keyword. Sometimes there are unique, made-up keywords, such as ウサタク, usataku, which, if fed into Google, matches the expected page. Others, however, have much more generic terms, even just HIS, but which, at the time of writing anyway, also works in Google. This seems like they would be a great target for googlebombing, but this seems not to have happened, which does seem a bit odd to me.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into issues regarding television, including the upcoming switch-over to digital terrestrial broadcasting. They interviewed by means of a private internet-based questionnaire 330 members of their monitor panel; 59.7% were male, 20.3% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, 27.3% in their forties, 14.5% in their fifties, and 4.8% in their sixties.

For my readers who might not have heard the news, on July 24th, 2011, all analogue terrestrial television broadcasting will be switched off. Most of the main population centres are already covered by digital broadcasting, and most of the new televisions either come with decoders built-in, or have ports (isn’t it a D-4) that allow a separate decoder box to be attached and full high-vision enjoyed, I believe. However, I cannot find any English site that describes what box might be necessary, and the main Japanese site, sponsored, I believe, by most of the major electrical manufacturers, seems keener to persuade you that you need a whole new television rather than just a wee box of tricks. If anyone knows of a clear English explanation of the whole affair, please let me know and I’ll add a link.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, investigated how people use television stations’ web sites; both PC-centric and mobile phone-targetted sites were included. By means of an internet-based questionnaire, they obtained the opinions of 317 employed persons from all over the country; 71.3% were male, 22.1% in their twenties, 43.5% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, 7.6% in their fifties, and 1.6% sixty or over.

This survey, I feel, poses more questions than it answers. Which programs’ sub-sites within each channel’s offering are people choosing to view? Getting program details covers too broad a ground from just getting a synopsis for a movie to checking out some of the factual (or not quite so factual, as the case may be) information presented by a show after the broadcast. Why did Q1SQ2 not investigate if people gave feedback to shows or played web site games? What about different usage patterns for PC-based and mobile-based access? I suspect these answers may be obtained if one is willing to part with cash, though!
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