TOKYO, Aug. 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Japanese media monitoring company, Naigai PressClipping Bureau, Ltd. (NPC), explains the quirks of the Japanese online news environment for PR professionals.

Naigai PressClipping Bureau, Ltd. (NPC) is a media monitoring company that analyzes the effects of publicity and public relations. Expert investigators research and report on articles on keywords specified by clients from some 6,832 media outlets, comprised of 2,052 newspapers and magazines published in Japan and 4,780 Japanese online news sites.

Since the company launched its online news monitoring service in 2009, Japanese online news sites have steadily increased. Although there are innumerable sites on the Internet, only those news brands that meet our criteria are surveyed. It is important that these online news sites be updated regularly, so unreliable brands are excluded from our surveys. The number of sites monitored swelled from 2,125 in 2011 to 4,099 in 2017, since when, the tally has gradually increased.

One of the most distinctive features of the online news media in Japan is the exceptional presence of "Yahoo! News". Compared to Nikkei, a leading economic media that acquired the Financial Times, and NHK Online, a public broadcaster, Yahoo! News boasts an outstanding number of users. According to our research, Yahoo! News has 23.76 million daily users as of 2023, whereas Nikkei has 2.47 million, and NHK Online has 2.29 million, marking a tenfold difference between them.

According to the Digital News Report 2023^[i] published by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 65% of online news in Japan is found using search and aggregators like Yahoo! News; 12% go directly to online news sites, and 10% is via social media.

NPC said that the following knowledge is necessary to gain publicity via Yahoo! News: Yahoo! News is a news aggregator that "reprints" articles posted by other news sites which with it is contracted. Accordingly, in order to appear in Yahoo! News, first an article must be published in a "distributor" site that has a contract with Yahoo! News. Furthermore, if it is shown as a top page topic under "Yahoo! Topics," even more users will take note of it, thus boosting its influence.

Consequently, an effective way for PR professionals to garner publicity across a wide audience in Japan is to approach online news brands which both match their target customers and are contracted with Yahoo! News. Even if an article isn't published in Yahoo! News, attracting the attention of media matched to the target customers is an achievement in itself.

Thanks to an extensive database of more than 6,800 media sites, NPC can always support PR professionals, regardless of location, who seek to acquire and analyze publicity in the Japanese market.

About Naigai PressClipping Bureau, Ltd.

Naigai PressClipping Bureau, Ltd. is a media monitoring and analysis company based in Japan with over 80 years of experience dating back to 1939. We provide and analyze the following services: Press, online news, TV, and social media monitoring.

Contact:Kawahara Yukiko, Public RelationsEmail: international@naigaipc.co.jpURL: https://www.naigaipc.co.jp/about/english/ Location: Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan

^[i] Digital News Report 2023 (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 21^stJune 2023) https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023