Criteo has announced that it is entering into an advertising partnership with Yahoo Japan. In a deal that reflects other international agreements, Criteo Japan appears to be buying ad space from Yahoo Japan. A piece in the Nikkei today states that Criteo will be running third party tags across the Yahoo Japan domain, allowing Criteo to retarget for its advertising clients.

This is significant move as Yahoo Japan remains a first party ad serving publisher. Is this a sign of a change of strategy at Yahoo Japan? Will agencies soon be able to 3rd party ad serve across the Yahoo Japan domain? Could we see Yahoo Japan building out an exchange proposition for unsold inventory, with a third party vendor?

Yahoo Japan is the biggest player in the Japanese display market, accounting for about a third of the local display spend. But is coming under increasing pressure from the growth of the data-driven ad market and the growing influence of Google in Japan. Despite its size Yahoo Japan still isn’t able to serve ads across its email property due to strict Japanese laws. Google is exempt from this law, as it is a foreign entity. These reasons might be forcing Yahoo Japan to look at other growth areas, particularly retargeting.

Criteo already has similar deals with big publishers in Europe and the US, as it seeks to tie-up first look access among premium publishers. The primary reason why publishers give Criteo “first look” access is because it is directing new advertising budget to the publisher. Ecommerce advertising demand is not budget that traditional publishers have had access to. Criteo is effectively opening up new revenue channels for the sell-side.

Will Criteo try to do similar deals with other big premium publishers in Japan? It is likely to happen, as it is a strategy that has worked well for them globally. It will be interesting to see how this develops, given that Yahoo Japan has a new CEO. There is no doubt that the big Japanese agencies will be demanding that they also get the opportunity to third party ad serve across the Yahoo Japan domain. Yahoo Japan is now entering an interesting phase in its development as the market embraces third party ad serving.