T

he Sinar Mas Group, in cooperation with Excite Japan, a subsidiary of Japan’s giant Itochu Corporation, launched an internet advertising site Excite Point on Wednesday in response to the rapidly growing e-commerce sector in Indonesia .

As an interactive advertising website, Excite Point offers points to visitors who participate in the activities of companies advertising on the excite.co.id website, such as downloading content, making purchases and writing product reviews. Visitors to the site can redeem their collected points for products or phone credit.

Points can be exchanged into mobile phone credit provided by Smart Fren, the telecommunications subsidiary of Sinar Mas.

Excite Japan’s CEO, Kiyoshi Imagawa, said that tapping into Indonesia’s booming market was one of the firm’s strategies to survive the current global economic turmoil.

“Looking back, the reason we were able to survive the ups and downs in the Japanese market was due to our culture of adopting cutting-edge technology and cultivating new markets,” he said during the portal’s launch in Jakarta.

Itochu’s chief operating officer, Shunuke Noda, said Excite Point would support the firm’s business expansion in Southeast Asia.

Sinar Mas managing director G. Sulistiyanto said the point-reward website had huge potential to flourish in Indonesia, where interest in the Internet was growing.

Last year, the number of Internet users in Indonesia grew by 30.95 percent to 55 million from 42 million in 2010, according to MarkPlus Insight research.

Google has said that the annual contribution of Internet businesses to gross domestic product (GDP) will likely jump from the current 1.6 percent, or around US$13.3 billion, to at least 2.5 percent by 2016.

Imagawa said the website was aiming to attract three million users and 50 advertising companies by the end of this year.

Currently, about 10 companies, mostly Sinar Mas subsidiaries, have placed advertisements on the site.

“This portal will be supported by Sinar Mas’ six business lines, especially by our telecommunications provider, Smart Fren,” said Sulistiyanto.

Sulistiyanto hoped that the 300,000 Sinar Mas employees would support the site’s growth by being initial users.

Excite is one of Japan’s leading portals, community and Internet service providers, attracting 35 million hits per month. The company, founded in 1997, is listed on Japan’s JASDAQ bourse.

Its parent company, Itochu, is one of the world’s largest general trading companies, operating in various sectors, including energy, food, metals, machinery and information and telecommunications.

The Osaka-based firm, which has 130 bases in 66 countries, yielded $150 billion in total trading transactions and $53 billion in revenue in the fiscal year 2011. (yps)