Yahoo Japan Corp. reported an almost eight-fold hike in its April-June quarterly earnings from
a year earlier, aided by strong advertising revenues.
Operating profit at Yahoo Japan, owned by Softbank Corp. of Japan and Yahoo! Inc., jumped to a record 260 million
yen ($2.15 million) for the quarter from 33 million yen a year before,
according to a Reuters report.
Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue said advertising revenues had tripled to
724 million yen during the quarter. “This is a healthy gain, although the
Internet advertising market in Japan is still a fraction of what it should
be,” Inoue told a news conference.
Japan had 17 million Internet users at the end of March, the second-largest
number in the world after the United States, but Japan’s largest advertising
agency Dentsu Inc estimates that companies earmarked only 11.4 billion yen
for Internet advertising in 1998. Inoue said the Japanese market for Internet
advertising could grow to one trillion yen by 2005.