SOPHOLA is approaching its 7th anniversary. The first exclusive partner we collaborated with was AdScale, based in Israel. Even today, their outstanding performance improvement results continue to be highly regarded, and we occasionally receive inquiries. (Had we continued developing AdScale Enterprise, I believe we could have made an even greater contribution to the digital marketing industry in Japan.) Personally, this has been an experience unlike any other, and I’ve truly felt the power of its results. In fact, at one point, the head of a major media agency, handling AdScale Enterprise, approached the advertising agency asking to use it for a major financial account.

However, when it comes to overseas tech partners, particularly in the area of advertising automation optimization tools, I’ve realized that the importance and positioning of “performance improvement” varies depending on the stage of market entry in Japan. In the early stages, when there are no domestic case studies, even if you push “performance improvement” as a strength, it doesn’t easily lead to lead generation. This is because, from the perspective of those considering adopting the tool, there’s always the lingering question: “Do you have any domestic case studies? Can you really improve performance?” Therefore, it becomes essential to highlight unique features that are not available in domestic tools, such as saying, “This tool has features that domestic solutions don’t have!”—clearly differentiating the product from competitors.

On the other hand, once domestic case studies begin to emerge and the degree of improvement is significant, “performance improvement” becomes the most important factor in selecting tools, such as “advertising automation.” Over the years, we’ve worked with many tools, and the ones that can dominate the market with unmatched performance improvements have gained incredible support from our clients and leads. Ultimately, what matters most to clients is not just “integration with advertising platforms that competitors don’t have,” “data utilization,” “data analysis,” or “audience targeting”—it all comes down to whether these features actually lead to performance improvement.

This is a critical point for our tech partners as well, and we will continue to focus on this area, striving to contribute even more to Japan’s digital marketers as expectations for our company continue to grow.

Masaki “Mark” Iino
Founder & CEO
SOPHOLA, Inc