Advertisements on mobile telephones in Japan are set to triple by 2011, outpacing growth of advertising on the Internet, a study, quoted by an AFP report, said.
The AFP report said spending on such advertisements is expected to hit 128.4 billion yen ($1.1 billion) in 2011, compared with 39 billion yen ($328 million) last year, Japan's leading advertising firm Dentsu said.
By comparison, Japan's market for non-mobile Internet advertisements is expected to grow from 231 billion yen ($1.9 billion) to 400 billion yen ($3.4 billion) in the same period, according to the study.
The AFP report said the growth comes after Japanese telecom operators last year equipped phones to search online by keyword, allowing advertisers to post related links in a revenue-generating model pioneered by Internet giant Google.
Japan has more than 100 million mobile subscribers out of a population of 127.7 million people, it said.
It is also one of the most advanced markets, with more than two-thirds of mobile subscribers using third-generation or even more sophisticated sets that allow surfing of the Internet and other advanced functions, the report further said.