How to Run PPC Ads in Japan for B2B: Google, Yahoo! and Bing (2026)
Are you planning search ads in Japan for a B2B product, or did HQ ask you to "just translate the US campaigns"?
Let me give you the conclusion first. Start with Google Ads, add Microsoft Advertising (Bing) early, and give Yahoo! JAPAN search ads a small part of the budget. Build the keywords and ads in Japanese from scratch, because Japanese IT buyers search with a mix of English letters and Japanese words that translation does not catch. And send every click to a Japanese page with a form.
I wrote the first version of this guide in 2020. This 2026 version adds what changed since then and our own account data.
Summary
- Google is still the first platform for B2B search ads in Japan. On mobile it has 85% of search referrals (StatCounter, September 2026).
- Bing is worth adding for B2B. In one B2B security account in 2026, Bing cost about half of Google per conversion and about a fifth per sales-qualified lead. The problem is that there is not much search volume.
- Yahoo! JAPAN search ads were renamed LY Ads Search Ads (LINEヤフー広告 検索広告) on April 1, 2026. In our data, Yahoo! clicks are cheaper, volume is low and the leads are more senior.
- To show at the top of Google for Japanese B2B keywords, advertisers paid about JPY 100 to 2,000 per click, and up to about JPY 9,000 in crowded SaaS categories (Google Keyword Planner, October 2025 to September 2026).
- Translated keywords miss most of the searches. "CRM" gets 33,100 searches a month in Japan, and 顧客管理システム, the Japanese translation, gets 1,600.
Which search engines to advertise on in Japan
Japan has three search ad platforms that matter: Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising (Bing) and LY Ads Search Ads (Yahoo! JAPAN).
| StatCounter, Japan, September 2026 | Bing | Yahoo! | |
|---|---|---|---|
| All devices | 59.1% | 31.6% | 7.6% |
| Desktop | 41.9% | 52.1% | 4.7% |
| Mobile | 85.1% | 0.9% | 11.8% |
StatCounter shows Bing ahead of Google on desktop. On the two Japanese B2B sites we checked, Bing brought 10% and 18% of organic search visits in Q3 2026. My impression is that Bing's real share for B2B is much smaller than the desktop number. I explain the data in more detail in our post on search engine market share in Japan.
Yahoo! JAPAN's organic results come from Google, so you don't need separate SEO for it. Its ads are different. To show ads on Yahoo! JAPAN search, you need an LY Ads account, with its own keywords and bids.
This is the budget split we usually start with, then change after two or three months of data:
| Your situation | Google : Bing : Yahoo! |
|---|---|
| Enterprise B2B (IT, security, SaaS for large companies) | about 5 : 2 : 1 |
| Mid-market or domestic B2B (manufacturing, services) | about 70% : 20% : 10%, Bing starting with brand and main keywords |
| B2C or mobile-first | Google plus Yahoo!, Bing only if your buyers use desktop |
What changed since 2020
- April 1, 2026: Yahoo! search ads were renamed LY Ads Search Ads, and Yahoo! display ads merged with LINE Ads into LY Ads Display Ads (LY Corporation). Existing search ad accounts did not need to migrate. Most people still call it Yahoo! Ads.
- July 2024: LY renamed broad match from 部分一致 to インテントマッチ (intent match) (LY Ads help). Google's Japanese interface also calls broad match インテントマッチ, so older Japanese guides that say 部分一致 mean broad match.
- October 2025 onward: Bing's desktop share in Japan jumped after Windows 10 support ended. New Windows PCs come with Edge, Bing and Copilot as defaults, and my impression is that many IT buyers at large companies keep them on their work PCs.
- Google launched AI Overviews in Japan in August 2024 and AI Mode in Japanese in September 2025.
- In 2020 I wrote that Google Ads measures headlines by pixel length. That was not quite right. Google counts characters, and a Japanese (full-width) character counts as two, so a 30-character headline fits 15 Japanese characters (Google Ads Help).
What clicks cost in Japan
These are top-of-page bid ranges from Google Keyword Planner for Japan, in Japanese, for October 2025 to September 2026. Keyword Planner shows a low and a high range of what advertisers paid to show at the top of the page. Your own cost per click will be different. The ranges still show which categories are crowded.
| Keyword (what it is) | Monthly searches | Top-of-page bid, JPY |
|---|---|---|
| EDR (endpoint detection and response) | 18,100 | 76 to 494 |
| ゼロトラスト (zero trust) | 12,100 | 205 to 459 |
| WAF | 12,100 | 292 to 870 |
| SIEM | 8,100 | 203 to 478 |
| 脆弱性診断 (vulnerability assessment) | 2,900 | 820 to 4,164 |
| CRM | 33,100 | 362 to 1,293 |
| SFA (sales force automation) | 14,800 | 445 to 1,923 |
| MAツール (marketing automation tools) | 3,600 | 408 to 1,809 |
| 勤怠管理システム (time and attendance) | 8,100 | 253 to 2,426 |
| 電子契約 (e-signature) | 5,400 | 359 to 3,436 |
| 経費精算システム (expense management) | 1,900 | 1,009 to 8,958 |
- Security categories (EDR, zero trust, SIEM, WAF) mostly stay under JPY 900 at the high end.
- The expensive ones are SaaS categories with many Japanese vendors, such as expense management, e-signature and time and attendance.
- 脆弱性診断 (vulnerability assessment) is expensive for its volume. My guess is that each deal is a large project, so vendors can pay more per click.
Bing and Yahoo! are cheaper per click. In one B2B security account where we ran all three from January to July 2026, Bing's cost per click was 0.53 times Google's and Yahoo!'s was 0.61 times. This is only one account, so please don't use these numbers as a benchmark.
Keyword research in Japanese
Please don't translate your English keyword list. Japanese IT buyers often search the English acronym, and they search longer English terms in katakana.
| Translated or English | Monthly searches | What buyers type | Monthly searches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 顧客管理システム | 1,600 | CRM | 33,100 |
| 営業支援システム | 390 | SFA | 14,800 |
| ウェブアプリケーションファイアウォール | 20 | WAF | 12,100 |
| zero trust | 880 | ゼロトラスト | 12,100 |
| marketing automation | 140 | MAツール | 3,600 |
Google Keyword Planner, Japan, Japanese, October 2025 to September 2026.
We build the list in four steps.
- Use your English keywords as seeds only. Check each one in Keyword Planner with the location set to Japan and the language to Japanese.
- Look at the words Japanese competitors and comparison sites use on their pages and in their ads.
- Add the buying words Japanese buyers attach to a category: 比較 (comparison), 料金 (price), 導入事例 (case study), 資料請求 (request materials).
- Group the keywords by what the searcher wants, so each group gets its own ads and landing page.
Writing ads in Japanese
Translated ads usually don't fit the character limits. On Google, LY Ads and Microsoft, a headline has 30 characters and a description 90, and a Japanese character counts as two. So you have 15 Japanese characters for a headline and 45 for a description (Google, LY Ads, Microsoft). Japanese copy uses kanji to say the same thing in fewer characters, and it usually drops "we" and "you".
Microsoft also checks that the ads are written in the ad group's language, so English ads in a Japanese ad group can be disapproved (Microsoft Advertising).
In our B2B accounts, we keep three rules for Japanese ads.
- Put the category word and one concrete point in the headline (for example 導入実績, 無料トライアル, 資料ダウンロード).
- Write the ads from the Japanese landing page.
- Have a Japanese copywriter write them. Machine translation often misses the words Japanese buyers search.
Match types and negative keywords
Japanese broad match picks up a lot of irrelevant searches. One reason is that one kanji or one katakana word can have several meanings. On LY Ads, even exact match covers kanji, hiragana and katakana variants, abbreviations and typos (for example ネコ and 猫) (LY Ads help). So check the search terms on every platform, not only on broad match.
On Bing, in another B2B security account (July to September 2026), 98.6% of impressions came from close-variant matches. Our keyword "AIボット" (AI bot) showed ads for "チャットgpt" (ChatGPT), and those searches used 11% of search spend.
We now set up every account this way.
- Exact match for the main keywords.
- Phrase match only with buying words (product, comparison, price).
- A shared negative keyword list from day one, and the search terms report every week.
- On Microsoft Advertising, keep search campaigns on search. By default they also show on MSN, Edge and Outlook (the audience network), and the ad distribution setting does not turn this off. Microsoft recommends website exclusions for it (Microsoft Advertising). In that account, the audience network took 27% of spend at a 0.3 to 0.7% click-through rate.
- Manual CPC until the account gets about 10 conversions a month. "Maximize clicks" tends to spend the budget on the cheapest placements.
Landing pages
Send every click to a Japanese page with a form. In the Bing account above, 36% of spend went to product pages without a form, and those clicks could not convert.
Japanese B2B buyers read a lot before they contact a vendor. In my experience, pages that convert in Japan are longer than US pages, with the buyer's problem, case studies from Japanese companies, a price or plan, and a document to download. If you only have an English page, make a Japanese page first, before you raise the budget. We wrote about this in localized materials for Japan.
Running Yahoo! and Bing ads from outside Japan
Google Ads is the easy one. You can use your existing account and set the location to Japan and the language to Japanese.
Microsoft Advertising is also run from your own account. The currency and payment follow your business address, and you target Japan with the location setting (Microsoft Advertising). You can import campaigns directly from Google Ads and keep them in sync on a schedule (import guide). Most ad reviews finish within 48 hours (Microsoft Advertising).
LY Ads Search Ads takes more work from outside Japan:
- You sign up with a LINE Official Account and a Business Manager organization, choose 海外 (overseas) as your location, and need a phone number that can take calls from Japan (LY Ads help).
- Payment is prepaid only. You can pay by card, but some cards issued outside Japan cannot be registered. Or you send an international wire in any currency, tell customer support after you pay, and wait, because the money can take more than a week to show in the account (overseas payment, wire transfers).
- The management screens can be switched to English (LY Ads help). Many help articles are only in Japanese.
- There is no direct import from Google Ads. The official route is the Campaign Editor, which reads Google Ads Editor files and runs only on Windows (LY Ads help).
- Ad review takes about three business days, and daily budgets start at JPY 100 (review, budget).
When the prepaid balance runs out, the ads stop, and a wire top-up can take more than a week. This is one reason overseas companies run Yahoo! through a Japanese agency.
How we judge the results
- Measure cost per sales-qualified lead from your CRM, not only cost per form. In the security account, Yahoo!'s cost per conversion was 1.36 times Google's, but its cost per sales-qualified lead was 0.48 times, and 39% of Yahoo! leads were decision-makers.
- Judge Yahoo! over a quarter. Its results go up and down month to month.
- Give Bing about two weeks before you worry about spend. In our accounts, Bing often spends little in the first two weeks and then catches up.
- Don't use display campaigns on Yahoo! for lead generation. In one quarter, a B2B security vendor's Yahoo! display campaigns had more than 40 million impressions, a 0.047% click-through rate and zero conversions.
FAQ
Which search engine should I advertise on in Japan?
Start with Google Ads. For B2B, add Microsoft Advertising (Bing) early with about a fifth of the budget, and Yahoo! JAPAN search ads with a smaller share. For B2C and mobile, Google and Yahoo! matter more than Bing.
How much does a click cost in Japan?
For Japanese B2B keywords, top-of-page bids in Google Keyword Planner run from about JPY 100 to 2,000, and up to about JPY 9,000 for crowded SaaS categories such as expense management (October 2025 to September 2026). In one B2B security account in 2026, Bing's cost per click was 0.53 times Google's and Yahoo!'s 0.61 times.
Is Yahoo! Ads still available in Japan?
Yes, under a new name. Since April 1, 2026, Yahoo! JAPAN search ads are LY Ads Search Ads (LINEヤフー広告 検索広告). They still show on Yahoo! JAPAN search results.
Can I translate my English keywords into Japanese?
Use them as seeds only. Japanese buyers search English acronyms such as CRM and SFA far more than the Japanese translations, and longer English terms in katakana.
How many Japanese characters fit in a Google Ads headline?
- Google counts a Japanese character as two, and a headline allows 30. LY Ads and Microsoft Advertising count the same way.
Next step
If you want us to look at your Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising account for Japan, or set up the Japanese campaigns for you, please contact us for a Japan search review. You can also read more about our search engine marketing in Japan and our guide to B2B lead generation methods in Japan.
