What do you dislike about Rakuten Advertising?
We unfortunately are having a very frustrating experience with Rakuten Advertising, particularly when it came to terminating our contract.
To be transparent, we missed the termination deadline by a short period. Despite reaching out shortly afterwards, there was no flexibility, and we were informed that the contract had automatically renewed until March 2027, with a significant buyout required for an earlier exit.
While we understand that contractual deadlines exist, the handling of the situation felt extremely rigid and was already disappointing for us.
Unfortunately, the process became even more frustrating from there.
After further discussions, Rakuten eventually offered an adjusted early termination effective by the end of 2026, with the contract fully ending on that date and no further payment obligations beyond it. We appreciated that compromise, but since then the process has involved months of follow ups regarding the revised termination agreement, final termination date and updated conditions.
Since April, my email thread with Rakuten has grown to more than 70 emails. For a longer period from June onwards, our account manager stopped responding entirely, which eventually forced me to go through the general support channel again just to get the conversation moving.
Since then, there have been many more emails, repeated follow ups and several internal escalations, but still no final resolution. We were repeatedly told that different departments and directors were involved, yet we still have not received the final documentation or a clear conclusion.
It is now the end of August, more than a few months after we first raised the issue, and we are still waiting for a final answer.
Based on our experience, we would strongly recommend that companies review Rakuten Advertising's renewal and termination conditions very carefully before signing, as there appears to be very limited flexibility even when a termination request is submitted shortly after the deadline. For us, the value did not justify the overall cost, especially considering the complexity of the platform for our creator focused use case and the amount of time required to manage the partnership and resolve contractual issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
