Twitter and Yahoo join forces to target the Japanese market

In a surprising move Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) has announced it is going to partner with Yahoo on the Japanese market in order to make its suite of self-serve advertising products available there. The plan is for Yahoo to become a reseller for Twitter to small and medium sized businesses by integrating Twitter ads on its ad platform that is already in place.

This marks a significant milestone for Twitter as it is the first time they have partnered with Yahoo in order to boost their advertising revenue and could open the door for further cooperation in other markets at a later date.

Some pundits had been wondering why Twitter has been taking so long to tap into Asia for more advertising revenue as it is a very popular app in Japan. The total number of Japanese users makes it one of the top ten Tweeting countries. This deal will allow smaller businesses access to Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, Accounts and Trends within Yahoo itself. This marks the first move by Twitter to market its advertising products to this size of company anywhere in Asia.

Twitter has not been having an easy ride getting advertisers to commit in Asia whereas in other regions Twitter has been enjoying great success especially with the self serve advertising platform that launched in the US in 2013. Since then Twitter has been rolling it out across other regions with Canada, the UK and Ireland being introduced to it in November.

No date has yet been set for when the new Twitter Yahoo ad product will actually be in place, but Twitter said in its blog post that it will be available soon.