Singapore – Last April 6, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Smartly.io, launched a webinar to discuss the current state of social advertising in APAC. The industry discussion, ‘Social Advertising Trends in APAC 2022’, gathered marketing leaders from brands like HappyFresh, KFC Malaysia, and Unilever Indonesia to draw their expert insights on the best strategies for social advertising today.
Stewart Hunter, the director for customer success of Smartly.io for APAC, delivered the keynote presentation and shared why a multiplatform strategy stands to be the best plan of action for brands in this new period of social media.
According to Hunter, a Smartly.io-led report showed that APAC brands are truly becoming social media-first where over 84% of brands in the region are spending over 50% of their advertising budget on social media advertising, which is the highest percentage globally compared to their North American and European counterparts. Of where they wish to direct this ad spend in 2022, the top social media platforms eyed were Facebook, followed by Instagram, YouTube, and then Twitter.
Hunter said that 2022 is the year for brands to truly go multiplatform.
“Your customers are already there, [and] are already across social media platforms; now the brands, the CMOs are really looking to make sure they are truly following their consumers and potential consumers,” said Hunter.
While there used to be fewer social media platforms for advertisers to focus on previously, now that more users have gone multiplatform, so should brands and advertisers.
In addition, in order to deliver effective social advertising today, Hunter said that brands must harness the human and tech resources needed for today’s social media landscape. As they adopt new multiplatform and multiformat strategies, social media advertising creation and delivery that still involve manual processes will prove to be cumbersome.
As more brands and advertisers focus on social media advertising, they will need to attract talent, amid the growing competition for skilled employees. Hence it is key to harness the power of automation to drive campaigns across various platforms and generate the greatest results.
When it comes to talent, Hunter said this doesn’t necessarily mean removing talent, but rather, unleashing the creativity of their people to add additional value to the brand.
“Within this year, how are people going to use automation to blend a range of processes [is important] so they can achieve creativity at scale,” added Hunter.
On-demand access to the webinar, Social Advertising Trends in APAC 2022, is now available here.
