SMN Releases April 2026 TV Commercial Airing Rankings for Japan’s Five Major Metropolitan Areas

SMN Corporation, headquartered in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo and led by President and Representative Director Naoki Harayama, provides marketing support through the generation and sale of TV commercial metadata. The company has announced the results of its April 2026 survey of TV commercial airing counts using its TV commercial metadata system. The survey covered terrestrial broadcasts from 25 stations and BS broadcasts from six stations in Japan’s five major metropolitan areas: Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Fukuoka, and Hokkaido. The April results strongly reflected seasonal trends, including growing demand for leisure and travel, as well as new product launches. The survey period was April 1 to April 30, 2026. The survey covered TV commercials aired on 25 terrestrial stations and six BS stations in the five major metropolitan areas, excluding program promotions. The results were based on broadcast history data collected by SMN’s automated TV commercial recognition system, which uses the company’s video recognition engine. In the April 2026 product-based ranking of TV commercial airing counts, the top positions changed significantly. Universal Studios Japan by USJ ranked first, Agoda by Agoda Company ranked second, and Amazon Audiobook: Audible by Amazon Japan ranked third. Ahead of Japan’s Golden Week holidays, leisure facilities and travel sites rose sharply in the ranking, including Universal Studios Japan in first place, Agoda in second, and trivago by trivago Japan in sixth. Seasonal products also appeared in the ranking as temperatures rose, with strong exposure for beverages and beer-related products such as Asahi Style Free Triple Zero by Asahi Breweries in tenth place and The Premium Malt’s by Suntory Spirits in nineteenth. New products also saw heavy ad placement, including Suntory Locomore WATER / Sesamin 1000 by Suntory Beverage & Food in fifth place, Sato no Gohan New Standard by Sato Foods in twelfth, and BifiX Yogurt α by Ezaki Glico in fourteenth. The April 2026 regional TV commercial airing rankings also showed clear movement ahead of the long holiday period. Universal Studios Japan, the overall top-ranked advertiser, placed first in both the Tokyo and Osaka areas and second in the Nagoya area, indicating large-scale nationwide advertising beyond the Kansai region. Local leisure facilities were also prominent: Huis Ten Bosch ranked third in the Fukuoka area, while Rusutsu Resort by Kamori Kanko ranked third in the Sapporo area. Fukuoka and Sapporo each had their own local number-one advertisers: Takayama Shichiten maintained its firm lead in Fukuoka, while TV Hokkaido’s campaign commercial, “7ch TVh Spring Shopping Support Special Campaign,” took first place in Sapporo. SMN’s TV commercial metadata is generated by a system jointly developed with Sony. The system analyzes broadcasts in major cities across Japan in real time and produces TV commercial broadcast history data. It has been in operation for about 20 years and has accumulated more than 100,000 pieces of TV commercial metadata and over 50 million historical broadcast records. The highly timely data can also be used as a trigger for web ad delivery, serving as a bridge between mass media and internet advertising. The large volume of daily accumulated data is used to confirm companies’ own TV commercial airings, investigate competitors’ advertising activity, and conduct cross-media marketing analysis by combining it with big data such as web advertising data, purchase data, and viewing log data from smart TVs. Founded in March 2000, SMN Corporation develops marketing technology businesses based on technologies cultivated within the Sony Group. To solve customers’ marketing challenges through technological capabilities, the company continues to advance by integrating big data processing and artificial intelligence technologies. SMN currently provides services including the DSP Logicad, the marketing AI platform VALIS-Cockpit, and TVBridge, an ad delivery service that uses TV viewing data, helping address a wide range of marketing challenges.