Tag: Ad spend

Singapore – Advertising spend on retail media networks (RMNs) in Southeast Asia is projected to hit US$4.b by 2030, underscoring the increasing significance of RMNs as a pivotal channel for advertising by marketers in the region. This is based on the latest study by GrabAds and Kantar.

Globally, RMN ad spend is expected to surge by 73% in the next seven years, surpassing growth rates in search (47%) and social (45%).

The study also reveals that year-on-year growth of RMN ad spend in Southeast Asia is forecast to be higher or consistent with the growth being seen globally. The study also notes that Southeast Asian marketers will prioritise investments towards RMN channels this year, with year-on-year ad spend growth projected to increase from 8% in 2024 to 11 % in 2030.

Ad spend growth on RMNs in each of the Southeast Asian countries is also projected to grow higher than the global growth index, with Indonesia leading the pack with a forecasted growth of 219% from 2023 to 2030. Indonesia is also projected to have a CAGR of 13.41%, which is around 1.9x higher than the projected global rate.

Moreover, said study reveals the four main types of RMNs in Southeast Asia- social media RMNs, which are digital marketplaces within social media platforms; e-commerce RMNs, digital retail marketplaces that offer advertising spaces; large retailer RMNs, which differ from e-commerce RMNs by nature of their physical retail spaces; and superapp RMNs, which consist of an ecosystem of services. 

The increasing share of RMNs in marketers’ media mix over the next 7 years is also propelled by the unique market dynamics in Southeast Asia. The study also highlighted that 2 out of 3 Southeast Asians find it important to have products and services on demand. 61% also shared that it is very important to have products or services to anticipate their needs, compared to the global figure of 52%. 

This suggests that Southeast Asian consumers prefer seamless, convenient transactions that fulfil their needs quickly. Superapp RMNs are well-positioned to serve these consumer needs with their O2O full-funnel ecosystem powered by first-party data.

Ken Mandel, regional managing director at GrabAds and brand insights at Grab, said, “Tomorrow’s hybrid shopper will look very different from today’s shopper. Marketers are tasked with the arduous task of identifying the right ads to serve at the right time to the right consumers to value-add to the buying or discovery experience.”

He added, “RMNs provide a full-funnel sales flywheel to help marketers do just that – first-party transaction data from RMNs inform marketers of users’ real needs and interests, thereby delivering ads that provide a suitable solution for the right occasion, while their full-funnel ecosystem allows marketers to close the loop and track return on investments accurately. As marketers increasingly invest in this emerging channel, it is crucial to design ad campaigns that leverage RMNs’ unique features, creating immersive experiences that extend beyond the conventional buying journey to also include loyalty and advocacy.”

Meanwhile, Katie McClintock, regional managing director at Kantar, commented, “RMNs allow marketers to serve highly relevant ads to consumers by showcasing products and brands that cater to their immediate needs and behaviour across the buying journey. This approach to advertising adds value to consumers rather than disrupting the browsing experience.”

She added, “Keeping up with consumer habits and behaviour is the only way for brands to be meaningfully different, and we at Kantar believe that RMNs, with first-party data informed by real consumer transactions, can give brands the tools they need to provide greater value for consumers and build strong brand differentiation.”

Singapore – Global advertising expenditure on connected television (CTV) is expected to hit the $26b this year, and yet there are still no clear indications whether the industry will see a ‘hockey stick’ growth. This is according to the latest data from WARC.

CTV ad investment forecasts this year remain minor in the context of a $526.8b global pureplay internet ad market and the $115.2b Meta is expected to earn in ad revenue. Meanwhile, YouTube’s ad revenue in 2023 is still forecast to be 17.4% greater than the entire CTV ecosystem, with that gap narrowing to 13.2% next year. 

However, CTV media owners are mostly competing for existing TV budgets rather than winning share of spend from digital channels like social, or accessing new budgets such as retail media (it only took retail media 10 years to grow tenfold, and in the same time the size of the CTV ad market only grew three-fold.

WARC notes that the CTV landscape is highly fragmented across tech vendors and content publishers. This poses issues, not least in the ability of brands to measure incremental reach.

For the company, scale is the first consideration. While linear TV can reach tens of millions with a single creative, CTV’s key selling point – i.e. its ability to help brands to target audiences and avoid wastage – risks contradicting that key attribute of mass scale. 

Alex Brownsell, head of content at WARC Media, said, “CTV ad spend is growing, but not as fast as one might expect. Whilst eyeballs are rapidly shifting from broadcast to streaming, this is evolution, not revolution.

He added, “The market is fragmented, and CTV ad investment is mainly being drawn from existing budgets. More work must be done to help CTV to realise its full potential and ensure that media owners are able to attract ad dollars from beyond the current confines of the TV market.”

Singapore – With brands nowadays catering more and more to the trend of digital ads, digital ad spend waste in the April to June quarter is down more than $30m on the first quarter of 2023, but advertisers still continue wasting nearly half of their advertising dollars each quarter, according to data revealed by independent digital media agency Next & Co.

Last quarter, advertisers threw away $77.1m from their ad spend budgets, which represents an average of 40% wastage across total audited media spend, compared to more than $104 million between January and March 2023.

The report found that retail brands were responsible for wasting the most in digital ad expenditure, with a figure of $25.4m. It was followed by finance at $22.3m, insurance at $12.3m and health at $7.7m. Education and real estate brands had the least waste at $5.3m and $3.8m respectively.

Across digital media channels over the last quarter, most digital ad spend was wasted on Google at $33.9m, followed by Facebook at $31m, LinkedIn at $7.7m and Bing at $3.8m.

John Vlasakakis, co-founder at Next&Co, said, “As we enter the new financial year, many brands will be taking stock of their advertising budgets, particularly amid ever-increasing economic and inflationary pressures. The latest data shows there is still plenty of room for improvement in terms of how brands are spending their advertising dollars. As we head into campaign planning for the biggest retail events of the year, with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, businesses need to get a sound understanding of the efficacy of their digital ad spend, and a better measure of return on investment.”

He added, “An independent audit of overall planned spend and past spend can reveal insights into where wastage is occurring, how to get better campaign optimisation and results, and how dollars can be best spent. The new financial year will be about businesses working smarter, not harder, particularly as budgets come under pressure, making every ad dollar count in the coming months.” 

Singapore – For the first half of 2022, SMRT Trains has ranked first in the top 20 advertisers/groups with high percentage of ad spend in Singapore, while services, such as airlines, banks, and beauty, amongst others, has topped first in the top 20 industries in Singapore with an estimated $262.9m ad spend, according to global information, data and market measurement firm Nielsen.

The report also found that Lazada was second, and the Ministry of Communications and Information was third on the list of top 20 advertisers/groups in Singapore.

Meanwhile, agricultural/industrial and commercial have secured the second spot in the top 20 industries in Singapore with an estimated $78.16m ad spend, while retail was in the third spot with an estimated $54.95m ad spend.

Arnaud Frade, Nielsen’s head of commercial growth for APAC, said that in today’s complex and crowded media landscape, audiences have access to more content across more platforms than ever before, and to stay ahead, businesses need reliable advertising intelligence to develop efficient media strategies and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

“According to Nielsen’s ROI Report, media spend needs to be between 1% and 9% of revenue to stay competitive. It is crucial for marketers to continue to turn to Nielsen Ad Intel for quality intelligence, to differentiate themselves from the competition and to carve out the best path forward for their brand or media property,“ Frade added.

The insights released are to provide a glimpse into the Nielsen Ad Intel solution available to help boost marketers’ ad strategies. In this release, Nielsen highlights the biggest 20 advertisers and industry spenders in ten APAC markets, including Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea, as well Taiwan, and Thailand.

Nielsen Ad Intel reveals that while spending varies according to each market, the biggest advertisers are within consumer goods, retail, communications and food across the reported markets during the first half of 2022. In industry rankings, governments across the region boosted ad spending during the first half of 2022.

Singapore – As digital advertising expenditure reaches new records, advertisers continue to waste their ad dollars through the Asia-Pacific, with more than $137.4m set to be wasted in the January to March 2022 quarter, according to data from independent media agency Next&Co.

The report found that brands in the retail sector will report the most digital ad spend wastage, of almost $32m. It was followed by insurance at $28m, finance at $26.5m, real estate at $19.8m, education at $16m, and health at $14.7m.

Across digital media channels, the most digital ad spend will be wasted on Facebook at $53m, followed by Google at $45m, LinkedIn at $28m, and Bing at $10.7m.

The data was collected using the company’s proprietary media auditing tool Prometheus.

John Vlasakakis, co-founder at Next&Co, said, “It’s alarming to see what are unacceptable levels of digital ad spend wastage in the region, especially as digital spend is set to reach $4 billion in Southeast Asia and increasing to a third of all ad spend. Prometheus has now audited more than 500 brands across APAC, with all showing varying levels of wastage across industry categories – brands need to become more aware of the dangers of complacency breeds. Spending smarter and not harder needs to be the attitude amongst brands of all sizes as this is how scale and company growth can be achieved.”

He added, “Procurement also needs to provide more negotiating power to marketing. For example, the fact that one financial services provider had procurement negotiate the cheapest rate but allowed for a clause for the agency to never be audited during their three-year term gobsmacked me. If that isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is. Digital marketing activity isn’t occurring above board, and they are now powerless to take action.”

Singapore – Despite the decline in the advertising industry last year due to the pandemic, it proved to be less severe as they continued to roll out into this year, as new findings from advertising company dentsu projects the industry to see significant growth by 2022 at a rate of 6.3%, including within the Asia-Pacific region.

While 2020 remains the weakest performing year since the global financial crisis, the decline in growth has been raised since dentsu’s January 2021 forecast from -8.0% to -5.2%. In 2021, the market is seeing an 8.0% growth recovery, an improvement of 2.1% points on January’s prediction. Looking to 2022, recovery is set to continue when spending is likely to reach US$243.6b.

The forecasted growth of the advertising industry is highly attributed to the increase in ad spending among brands agencies, both regionally and globally.

According to the report, ad spend in APAC is expected to grow by 8.0% or US$17b to US$229b. In the region, Australia and India are forecasting particularly high growth rates in 2021, with 2021 growth expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels in China.

The report also noted that in APAC, the 6.2% rise in digital spend last year is forecast to grow by 12.8% in 2021 to reach US$124.5b, representing a 54% share of total ad spend globally. Forecasts for social and video will increase by 33.4% and 10.8% respectively, as well as within the search advertising space, targeted at a 7.8% increase, therefore reaching digital spend to US$23.1b in 2021.

With restrictions lifted on social activity, out-of-home (OOH) advertising will see a bounce back post impact of the pandemic, rising 7.5% in 2021 in the region. Cinema has a slightly longer recovery, with a decline to 5.0% in 2021, yet expected to bounce back in 2022. Radio will also see growth by 4.3% in 2021.

Regional live events such Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics Games have continued to be a significant driver of growth in linear TV ad spend in APAC, which has noted 3.9% increase in 2021 to reach US$59.2b. Data suggests a shift towards connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) media and audiences moving more towards digital media consumption mean linear TV spend will remain below pre-pandemic levels until beyond 2021.

“It is promising to see a return to growth in the APAC region with two of our markets in the top five contributors of ad spend growth; China and Japan. While China continues to see strong levels of growth driven by digital and OOH, Japan’s growth will be buoyed by events like the 2020 Olympic & Paralympic Games, and the House of Representative elections [in Japan] and the advertising spend associated with it, particularly in TV,” said Ashish Bhasin, CEO for APAC at dentsu international.

He also added that Australia and India are two of the top year-on-year growth markets, forecasting a surge in ad spend. 

“Australia has had a stronger economic recovery after the pandemic particularly in TV and Digital where the government focused much of their COVID-related campaigns, while India is expected to see a resurgence in Digital advertising spend though TV is still the main contributor with a 40.9% share,” Bhasin added.

Meanwhile, Prerna Mehrotra, CEO for media in APAC at dentsu international and managing director for media in Singapore at dentsu, commented that they are optimistic that the region will bounce back to positive growth in ad spend, with some channels likely boosted higher than pre-pandemic levels. She also noted that the main driver behind the growth is economic recovery, with the APAC GDP set to increase by 7.3%, and a stronger-than-ever push to digital marketing.

“Serving as a stimulus the pandemic has accelerated digital adoption. Digital media will continue to drive ad revenue growth this year with a strong performance in social (+33.4%) and video (+10.8%) and the majority of spends in mobile. We will also see more investments diverted towards addressable and the digitalization of OOH channels,” Mehrotra stated.

She added, “Programmatic DOOH will also be a key growth driver in the future. With the growing numbers of supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platform (DSPs) partnerships and increasing demand for location-based solutions to ad-reaching consumers in these times of uncertainty, advertisers will benefit from the speed, flexibility and targeting capability that the medium will provide.”

New Zealand – As expected, digital advertising, in the middle of the pandemic, is forecast to comprise the larger fraction of ad spend by New Zealand advertisers in 2021 with 59% to comprise their overall media budget, according to a new global report by global media investment and intelligence company MAGNA. 

Although New Zealand, being primarily an island, has been successful in containing Covid-19, advertisers are still inclined to put their dollars into digital channels, which can be mainly attributed to how the media practices have evolved to leverage the appeal and impact of digital formats, whether lifestyles are hindered by the virus or not. 

The projected growth in digital follows 2020’s 3.3% growth rate. According to the report, most of the digital growth will come from spending on mobile devices, which will see specifically an 18% increase and to represent 67% of total revenues within digital advertising. 

Overall, the advertising economy in New Zealand is seen to increase by 7.6% in 2021 to reach NZD 2.8b ($1.8b).

Still in line with changing preferences of audiences, the report said that linear advertising revenues will see an uptick of 2.9% to represent 41% of total budgets, an actual down from taking 49% of budgets as recently seen in 2019. 

Meanwhile, in terms of specific mediums, television spending is forecast to grow by 5.6%, to represent one-fourth of total budgets. The report said that this will bring total spending levels back to 92% of their 2019 levels. On the other hand, radio and OOH are seen to fare slightly worse with a 2% growth to reach 86% of 2019 spending levels, and a 5% growth to reach 68% of 2019 spending levels, respectively. 

Globally, as the economy recovers faster than expected with a GDP of 6%, marketing activity, and advertising spending are likewise projected to demonstrate the same upward growth. With the added driver of rescheduled international sports events, the report forecasts global all-media advertising spending to grow by $78b, a 14% increase, to ultimately register an estimated $657b in 2021, a new all-time high, said MAGNA. 

Meanwhile, in the Asia Pacific, while the rollout of COVID vaccines has not been as aggressive as many Western markets, there were still fewer cases and deaths as well as fewer shutdowns vs. those markets in the west. This has not stopped consumers in the region from changing their behavior in the same ways as in heavily COVID-impacted markets, which meant more indulgence to stream, more adoption of e-commerce, and more integration of digital platforms into their daily lives. As a result, economic recovery and organic digital growth will power APAC’s total advertising spending to a 12.8% increase in 2021, following 2020’s 3.3% growth. This will see total advertising budgets in APAC reach $203b, significantly ahead of 2019’s $186b total.

According to Gurpreet Singh, managing director at MAGNA APAC, digital will continue to be the biggest growth driver across most markets fueling a faster recovery. Singh also said that since linear media was the most affected last year, its recovery back to pre-covid levels is going to remain a big challenge across the majority of APAC markets for the next few years.

“2021 will see higher than usual growth in ad spend bouncing off of the reduced spend we saw in most of the APAC markets last year. This will largely result in regaining lost ground, however, some markets will take more than a single year for their ad spend to recover from the impact left by covid,” Singh said.

APAC remains the second largest global advertising region, behind North America but $59b ahead of EMEA. 

Singapore – Digital media agency JOLT Digital has announced the launch of its new media planning technology J-CAL, which allows marketers to create more effectiveness to their campaigns through calculated budget spend and expected return of ad spend (ROAS).

J-CAL is customizable to each client’s specificities and works for any size budget. It has been built using thousands of data points from campaigns over the past five years in Asia. Furthermore, J-CAL is not only focusing on campaigns that have a performance objective but also on branding campaigns. It is undeniable that branding is critical as it not only helps grow brand health metrics but also sales. 

“At JOLT, we think that allocating thousands of dollars deserves a scientific approach and that’s why we have created a technology, J-CAL, that predicts the most optimal budget allocation to each channel, as well as campaign’s return of ad spend (ROAS),” the company said in a press statement.

For Sebastien Lepez, founder and CEO of JOLT Digital, part of the reason why J-CAL was launched was due to the fact that most planners only rely on ‘gut feeling’ on how much a campaign should spend in order to be effective.

“After using J-CAL for some of our clients, we realized that something was missing. A campaign’s objective is not always focusing on performance. Most often there is also an objective of Brand building. That’s why we have incorporated a brand building dimension in J-CAL and in the calculation of the return of ad spend (ROAS),” Lepez explained. 

He also cited the recent news of Airbnb shifting their campaigns’ objective to brand building rather than performance as one of the inspirations for the media planning technology launch.

“J-CAL has taken nine months to develop and I think we have created a technology that is very unique and very robust. A lot of data, efforts and thinking has gone into it. We truly believe that it is going to game-change media planning,” Lepez stated.

He added, “Our industry is in need for a change and it’s been requested by clients for many years. After years working at agencies and clients, I had time to observe the gaps and now I am able with JOLT and with J-CAL to fill these gaps. J-CAL is going to game-change media planning and bring a more scientific approach to it.”