Plenty of countries in Asia have game-playing populations worth targeting. But CPE (cost-per-engagement) campaigns work unusually well in one of them — and the reason has less to do with luck than with three numbers most UA teams never put side by side.
The Door That’s Already Closed
Start with the market that isn’t actually available. China requires every game to clear a government license (banhao) before distribution, and only around 240 to 360 foreign titles get approved in a typical year (source: Game Developer, “China Cracks Down on Unlicensed Mobile Games”). There’s no Google Play to speak of, and in 2020 Apple removed more than 2,500 unlicensed games from its China App Store in a single week (same source). For most UA teams outside China, the market is functionally closed.
What’s Left, and How Big It Actually Is
That leaves Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Korea’s monetization is genuinely strong — Niko Partners places it in the same high-ARPU tier as Singapore and Chinese Taipei (source: Niko Partners, “Top-10 Asian Markets”). But the population behind that market is small: Korea sits at roughly 51.6 million people against Japan’s 122.4 million — about 42% the size (source: StatisticsTimes, 2026 population data for Japan and South Korea). Japan, meanwhile, is the highest-ARPU market Niko Partners surveyed in Asia, at $351 per user (same source).
| Market | Access | Population | ARPU Tier | Ad Rate Tier (eCPM) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | Open | 122.4M | Highest surveyed ($351) | Tier-1 ($15–40) |
| Korea | Open | 51.6M (~42% of Japan) | High-ARPU tier | Tier-1 |
| China | Restricted (license required) | — | — | — |
The Chart That Doesn’t Show It
None of that shows up on a standard ad rate card. By AppLovin’s 2025 publisher benchmarks, Japan sits in the same “Tier-1” eCPM band as the US and the UK — $15 to $40 per thousand impressions, no distinction made (source: AppLovin 2025 Publisher Benchmarks, via Coinis). On a media rate sheet, Japan reads as just another wealthy market among several.
What that number leaves out is what a Japanese user actually does after the ad. Japanese users spend an average of $166 a year on apps — the third-highest figure in the world, behind only China and the US (source: Business of Apps, “Japan App Market Statistics 2026”). Retention holds up too: 26% on Day 1, 11% on Day 7, 4% on Day 30, as of Q1 2026 (source: Adjust × Sensor Tower, “Japan’s Mobile Market in 2026”).
What CPE Is Actually Buying
An eCPM rate is a price on being seen. CPE is a price on being finished — an install only becomes a paid event once a user completes a defined action. In a market that’s open, large, and worth more per user than its rate card admits, that distinction is the whole strategy: instead of buying exposure to a market that looks ordinary on paper, CPE buys the users who prove, by finishing something, that they belong to the market that isn’t.
That’s why CPE campaigns tend to perform well in Japan specifically — not because the market is cheap, but because the standard way of pricing it doesn’t show what the market is actually worth.
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