Yahoo Japan’s 3Q15 (Oct-Dec, 2015) report shows that their Display Advertising Sales has reached to almost the same level as the Search Advertising Sales. Their Display Advertising has been growing steadily for the past 12 months while their Search Advertising continues to shrink. If this trend continues, their Display Advertising Sales will exceed Search Advertising Sales in 4Q15 (Jan-Mar, 2016).

This trend is not unique to Yahoo Japan. According to eMarketer’s report, “in 2016, digital display ad spending will eclipse search ad spending in the US for the first time. Combined, the categories of video, sponsorship, rich media and ‘banners and other’ will account for the largest share of digital ad spending: 47.9%, worth $32.17 billion.” They give credit to social media and video for the growth of Display Advertising in US.

They also mention that while desktop will remain the biggest beneficiary of US digital video ad dollars in 2016, garnering 57.5% of an expected $9.59 billion in spending, the same cannot be said for the remaining display ad formats. Of the $22.58 billion that will go to banners, rich media, sponsorships and other display-based formats in the US this year, 77.5%, or $17.5 billion, will be spent to reach individuals on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Back to Yahoo Japan. According to their report, they had 660 billion yen (about 6.6billion dollars) in 3Q15 (+6.3% YoY), and 334 billion yen was from Search Advertising and 326 billion yen (-10.4% from YoY) was from Display Advertising (+31.4% from YoY). They give credit to YDN (their display network products) which grew 52.2% YoY for the healthy growth of Display Advertising Sales. 41.4% of total digital advertising sales came from smartphone platform, which was 30.4% increase since 3Q14.

Looking at their Advertising Sales graph, 2Q and 3Q sales increase are likely the seasonal changes, but you can see that Search Advertising Sales has been decreasing over the past 2 years.