Retail Media
The marketer’s guide to retail data in Japan
Retail data is becoming one of the most valuable signals in modern marketing, especially in Japan, where consumers still make most purchases in physical stores.1 This guide explains how purchase-based data can help advertisers understand real buying behaviour, build more relevant audiences, and activate campaigns across the open internet.
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Why retail data matters in Japan
Japan is one of the world’s most sophisticated retail markets. Consumers shop frequently, often close to where they live, work, and commute. Convenience stores play a central role in daily life, and retail experiences are increasingly connected through loyalty programs, mobile apps, cashless payments, and ID-POS systems.
That combination creates a rich source of consumer insight.
While e‑commerce continues to grow, physical retail still represents the majority of shopping activity in Japan. As of 2023, online sales accounted for about 9.4% of total retail goods volume, meaning more than 90% of retail purchases still happened in physical stores.1
At the same time, Japan’s retail environment is becoming more digitally connected. Cashless payments accounted for approximately 43% of private consumption expenditure in 2024, surpassing the government’s target ahead of schedule.2 Loyalty programs are also becoming more app-based, giving retailers more ways to understand consumer behaviour across purchase, location, and engagement signals.
For marketers, this creates a major opportunity: Retail data can help connect digital advertising to the real-world purchase behaviours that still drive much of Japan’s economy.
What is retail data?
Retail data refers to first-party data collected by retailers through real consumer interactions.
These can include:
In-store purchases
Online purchases
Loyalty program activity
App usage
Product category behaviour
Purchase frequency
Store location or regional shopping patterns
Unlike inferred signals, retail data is grounded in actual behaviour. It shows what people buy, how often they shop, which categories they engage with, and where purchase activity happens.
That makes it especially useful for advertisers who want to move beyond broad demographic assumptions or interest-based proxies. Instead of trying to infer intent, marketers can build audiences around real-world shopping behaviour.
Retail Media
What retail data helps marketers do
Retail data can support a wide range of marketing objectives, from awareness to conversion. At its core, it helps advertisers make media decisions based on what consumers actually buy.
1. Build more relevant audiences
Purchase-based signals can help marketers reach consumers who have already demonstrated interest in a product, category, or adjacent behaviour.
For example
A beverage brand might reach frequent convenience store shoppers who buy energy drinks, while a beauty brand might reach consumers who purchase skin care or cosmetics. A consumer electronics brand might build audiences based on shoppers who frequently buy accessories, batteries, or lifestyle technology products.
These signals can help advertisers improve relevance without relying only on inferred interest or broad demographic targeting.
2. Reduce wasted media spend
When media decisions are grounded in transaction data, advertisers can focus investment on audiences more likely to respond.
That does not mean retail data should only be used for lower-funnel campaigns. It can also help brands improve upper-funnel relevance by reaching consumers with known category behaviour or high-value shopping patterns.
In a study commissioned by The Trade Desk with Attain, all measured campaigns leveraging retail data drove statistically significant incremental sales lift. The same analysis found that, on average, retail data drove a 23% higher average transaction value compared with the typical purchase for the same brand or merchant.3
3. Connect media exposure to business outcomes
Retail data can help advertisers close the gap between media activity and purchase behaviour.
Instead of optimising only towards proxy metrics such as impressions or clicks, marketers can use retail signals to better understand whether campaigns are reaching the consumers most likely to buy. Over time, those insights can help inform audience strategy, creative messaging, channel planning, and campaign optimisation.
4. Strengthen upper-funnel campaigns
Retail data is often associated with conversion, but it can also improve brand-building strategies.
The Trade Desk’s research found that retail-data-targeted campaigns outperformed benchmarks by 29% in brand lift, with users 27% more likely to consider the advertised product, a 6% improvement over standard benchmarks.4
For advertisers, this reinforces a key point: Purchase-based data can help improve relevance across the funnel, not just at the point of sale.
Retail Media
How to activate retail data across the funnel
Retail data is more valuable when it supports the full media strategy. Marketers can use purchase-based signals to inform awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention campaigns.
Awareness
Retail data can help advertisers reach consumers who are likely to be interested in a product or category, even before they are ready to buy. For example, a brand launching a new product in Japan could use purchase-based audiences to reach shoppers already active in related categories.
This can help awareness campaigns become more precise while maintaining scale.
Consideration
Retail data can also help brands engage consumers who have shown relevant shopping behaviour but may still be evaluating options.
A consumer packaged goods brand might reach shoppers who are buying from a relevant category. A personal-care brand might reach consumers who purchase adjacent products. A premium brand might focus on high-value shoppers or frequent category buyers.
Conversion
For lower-funnel campaigns, retail data can help advertisers reach consumers with strong purchase signals. These might include recent buyers, repeat shoppers, category loyalists, or consumers with purchase- frequency patterns that suggest near-term intent.
These audiences can help improve efficiency by focusing media investment on people with demonstrated behaviour.
Retention and loyalty
Retail data can also support repeat-purchase strategies. Brands can use purchase patterns to support retention efforts and reconnect with audiences who may be ready to buy again.
This helps turn retail data into a continuous planning input, instead of a one-time targeting tactic.
Retail Media
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Retail data provider spotlight: 7‑Eleven Japan
The Trade Desk has expanded its retail data marketplace in Japan through a partnership with 7‑Eleven Japan, bringing one of the country’s most scaled retail datasets to advertisers through the platform.
7‑Eleven Japan has a significant national presence, with more than 22,000 stores nationwide and approximately 20 million daily customers.5 These audience segments are built from first-party data signals that may include purchase behaviour, product categories, frequency, timing, demographics, and location, depending on segment availability.
For advertisers, this can create a new way to reach Japanese consumers based on real shopping behaviour from one of the country’s most important everyday retail environments.
Through 7‑Eleven Japan retail data, marketers can activate audiences such as:
Frequent shoppers
Category buyers
High-value customers
Regional shoppers across Japan’s 47 prefectures
Consumers with relevant purchase patterns
Audiences based on timing, product category, or shopping frequency
This can help advertisers tailor campaigns to real consumer behaviour and regional shopping patterns.
For example
A beverage brand could reach frequent convenience store shoppers in key prefectures. A snack brand could engage consumers with recent category purchases. A household goods brand could use purchase frequency to identify likely repeat buyers.
The broader value is access to purchase-based insight that can help marketers plan, activate, and optimise campaigns with greater relevance.
How you can activate retail data with The Trade Desk
With our Kokai platform experience, advertisers can discover and activate retail audiences through a unified platform experience. Instead of managing separate retail data integrations across multiple partners, marketers can access high-quality retail datasets through a centralised marketplace. AI-driven insights can then help translate purchase signals into smarter audience strategies and ongoing campaign optimisation.
This can help advertisers:
Discover relevant retail audience segments
Build purchase-based audience strategies
Activate audiences across omnichannel campaigns
Apply consistent audience strategy across campaigns
Optimise based on performance signals
Use retail data as an input for broader audience intelligence
Retail data can also help marketers improve campaign learning over time. Purchase signals can inform which audiences are responding, which products or categories are driving engagement, and where media investment is creating stronger outcomes.
When used effectively, retail data becomes a planning and optimisation signal that can help improve performance across the campaign lifecycle, enabling AI-driven decisioning that continuously adapts to changing consumer behaviour.
A checklist to help you get started
Use this checklist to help evaluate how retail data could support your next campaign in Japan.
1. Define the business objective
Are you trying to build awareness, increase consideration, drive purchase, or support repeat buying?
Which product, category, or audience behaviour matters most?
What outcome will determine success?
2. Identify the audience opportunity
Are you trying to reach existing buyers, category buyers, or new prospects?
Do you need national scale or regional precision?
Is shopping frequency, category behaviour, or purchase timing important?
3. Evaluate available retail segments
Which retail data partners offer the most relevant purchase signals?
Do the segments reflect real transaction behaviour?
Are the audiences large enough to support activation?
4. Match the audience to the media strategy
Which supported channels are best suited to the campaign objective?
How will you maintain consistent messaging across the consumer journey?
Where can retail data improve relevance or reduce waste?
5. Plan your measurement approach
Which metrics connect most directly to the business goal?
How will you evaluate audience performance?
What signals will help you optimise during the campaign?
6. Use campaign learnings to refine the next activation
Which audiences responded most strongly?
Which channels or environments drove the best outcomes?
How can purchase-based insights inform future planning?
Take the next step with retail data in Japan
Retail data is becoming a foundational input for smarter advertising in Japan. As more purchase-based signals become available, marketers have a stronger opportunity to connect media investment to real consumer behaviour.
The addition of 7‑Eleven Japan retail data can help you better align campaigns with everyday shopping activity, category behaviour, and regional patterns. For brands looking to improve relevance, reduce wasted spend, and drive measurable outcomes, retail data can help make campaigns more precise and more accountable.
To learn more about activating retail data in Japan, reach out to your representative.
Not yet working with The Trade Desk? Get in touch today.
This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance.
Sources:
3. The Trade Desk CPG & QSR campaigns measured by Attain, 2025.
4. Aggregated data based on 18 campaigns that ran on The Trade Desk platform from September 2024 – January 2025.
5. 7‑Eleven Japan Co., Ltd., “Corporate Profile,” accessed June 2026; 7‑Eleven Japan Co., Ltd., “Message from the President,” accessed June 2026
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