Tag: Indonesia

Indonesia – China-based entrepreneurial public relations and marketing services firm Influence Matters has officially expanded its operations in Southeast Asia with the opening of a new Indonesia hub and the appointment of Emily Xu as managing partner.

The firm’s expansion comes as it adapts to its clients’ expanding regional focus for fast-growing economies, including the SEA region.

Influence Matters’s new office in Indonesia will serve as their hub for SEA operations; it will accompany Chinese B2B tech companies planning to enter the country and the region. The new office will also be working on strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones with like-minded agencies in each market in the region.

The PR and marketing firm aims to provide clients seeking evermore effective and impactful PR programmes with an agency that understands their business, technologies, products, and local market dynamics.

It strategically chose Indonesia, a country with the fastest-growing economy in Asia, for cross-border businesses, with a particular focus on IT, fintech, smart industry, and smart logistics.

Meanwhile, as part of its expansion, Influence Matters also named Xu its new managing partner. A consummate corporate communications strategist, she has been working with the firm for over six years in operational and strategic positions.

In her new role, Xu will oversee and develop the agency’s growing cross-border corporate communications business for international companies in China and Chinese companies expanding in Asia.

Simon Vericel, managing director and founder of Influence Matters, said, “Influence Matters’ mission has always been to bring innovators closer together and innovations closer to markets and customers in Asia by delivering influence through storytelling that reaches business leaders and technology adopters.”

He added, “Our PR and digital communication programmes have helped numerous technology innovators find customers, investors, and partners in China; we are proud to now bring our expertise to SEA and connect more innovators together.”

Indonesia – As the country strives for a healthier dining environment, Dulux Indonesia, alongside Innocean Indonesia, has spearheaded an initiative catered specifically to reducing flies among school canteens in Indonesia.

This collaborative effort came up with a campaign called ‘Project Yellow Canteen, which encompasses a solution to the long-standing problem of sanitation and diseases spread by insects through the discovery of flies’ aversion to the colour yellow.

Prior to the implementation, an on-ground experiment was conducted, with two tables: one painted in a bright yellow and the other left untouched. Results then observed that flies were attracted only to the non-yellow table, demonstrating the effectiveness of the flies’ dislike of the colour.

This particular discovery led to an on-ground initiative to paint the tables, benches, and walls in several Indonesian canteens with cheerful yellow hues. This has brightened school canteens and improved students’ well-being,  providing students with a cleaner and healthier dining experience. 

Since its implementation in October, ‘Project Yellow Canteen’ has now embarked on transforming cleaner and healthier dining spaces, with Dulux Indonesia showcasing the impact of innovative solutions and social responsibility.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Cloud services provider Tencent Cloud has launched its recent affiliation with data centre platform Digital Edge, revitalising the connectivity landscape in Indonesia. 

In this partnership, Tencent Cloud is expected to have direct access to ‘Edge Peering Internet Exchange’ (EPIX), operated by Gemilang. Through this platform, the facilitation and exchange of data among cloud users will be more efficient and systematic. 

EPIX also provides ultra-high-speed access as a carrier-neutral internet exchange platform. This tool is essential for connecting with the global network as it allows rapid and cost-effective interchange of IP traffic between carriers, ISPs, content providers, and enterprises. 

Consistent with their commitment to foster connectivity, the said collaboration also brings together a strengthened digital infrastructure in Indonesia’s growing markets.

Jimmy Chen, vice president of Tencent Cloud International and managing director of Southeast Asia, said, “We are pleased to further establish ourselves as a major international cloud services provider, hand-in-hand with EPIX in Jakarta. This achievement is a testament to our 20+ years of experience in technological innovation and our robust infrastructure foundation. 

“By establishing this connection, we are taking a significant step towards promoting connectivity in emerging markets and driving the advancement of digital infrastructure. We are genuinely excited about the vast opportunities this collaboration presents and remain fully committed to accelerating the digital transformation across diverse industries in Indonesia,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Jonathan Chou, chief product officer at Digital Edge, also shared his esteemed support for the partnership, stating, “Digital Edge is committed to offering diverse connectivity options to our colocation customers, including providing internet exchanges to enable peering and foster a thriving digital ecosystem within our data centres. 

“Through working with leading cloud services providers such as Tencent Cloud, we are able to further our mission to bridge the digital divide and bolster digital infrastructure across Asia’s fast-growing markets, including Indonesia,” Chou ended. 

Presently, Tencent Cloud has already established a global infrastructure network that extends to 26 geographic areas and 70 availability zones, including two data centres in Jakarta, Indonesia. It has also provided 400 technologies and connectivity solutions to support enterprise-grade digital transformation. 

Jakarta, Indonesia – Police authorities from the West Java Regional Police have arrested an individual who was responsible for major piracy operations on live sports in Indonesia. The move was congratulated by the Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) and its anti-piracy arm, the Coalition Against Piracy (CAP).

The arrest was made upon the prior complaint from the OTT streaming service Vidio, which stated that the individual–who operated the pirated sites PaseoTV and OkStream– were illegally streaming pirate content owned or licensed by Vidio, including the Premier League, Ligue Un and AFC.

Moreover, OkStream was one of the most popular pirate streaming sites in Indonesia, with millions of views every month. 

The owner and operator of the sites also operated a Telegram account that was used to share links to Paseo and OkStream sites. He now faces potential penalties of up to eight years in prison and a fine of up to two billion Rupiah (~US$126,000).

Gina Golda Pangaila, senior vice president of legal anti-piracy and government affairs at Vidio, said, “Vidio has always been committed to being at the forefront of fighting piracy. Vidio’s piracy mitigation commitment requires collaboration not only with law enforcement and industry associations, but also cooperation with the public. Effective anti-piracy measures are critical for maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the content industry.”

Meanwhile, Matt Cheetham, general manager of CAP, commented, “Indonesia has one of the best site blocking programs in Asia-Pacific, however site blocking is not sufficient alone to protect content, and action by local enforcement teams remains a vital component in protecting both the local content industry and consumers who are increasingly being targeted by pirates for the spread of malware, viruses and identify theft.”

He added, “CAP’s research shows that social media and messaging platforms are the most popular forms of consumers accessing pirate content in Indonesia, and Telegram by some distance the most popular platform for this activity in Indonesia.”

Melbourne, Australia – Australian firm Digital Classifieds Group has announced the acquisition of online property marketplace Lamudi in the Philippines and Indonesia. This follows DCG’s recent acquisition of the Bangladeshi property marketplace portal Bproperty in January this year.

The consolidated group now operates real estate portals in 5 high-growth Asian markets, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Papua New Guinea and will see its global workforce grow to more than 900 staff.

The acquisition marks a major transition for DCG, having rapidly expanded over the last 12 months into Bangladesh, and now Indonesia and the Philippines. 

For the firm, with Southeast Asia expected to grow strongly in the next 5-10 years to become a leading region globally, and with market-leading portals in countries accessing over 600 million people, DCG is strongly positioned for growth in the coming years.

Mathew Care, group CEO at DCG, said, “Lamudi, under the stewardship of the dubizzle Group and the management team, have created dominant classifieds and transactional property marketplaces in two of Asia’s most exciting markets: Indonesia and the Philippines.”

He added, “Our vision is to build a market leading classifieds group in South East Asia, a region of incredible opportunities, and this acquisition is a catalyst to delivering this vision. I am incredibly excited to enter these markets and welcome the Lamudi team to the DCG family.”

Meanwhile, Kian Moini, founder and CEO at Lamudi, commented, “DCG and Lamudi have shared a similar vision for many years; to provide the best and most trusted platform to transact property in their respective markets. Both companies have delivered on this promise, and I’m confident that Lamudi will continue to achieve new highs under DCG. This is an exciting new chapter for Lamudi and our staff.”

APAC – Consumers in six markets across three regions now spend more than five hours each day in apps for Q3 2023 with APAC leading the way, according to the report by mobile analytics provider data.ai.

Data from the report indicates that globally, Indonesia surpassed the five-hours-per-day threshold the most in Q3 2023 with more than 6 hours per day, followed by Thailand with 5.7 hours and India making top 5 with 5.2 hours.

Additionally, Singapore holds firm in the top 10 countries with a 10% growth in usage from Q2 2023 with 4.7 hours spent, adding to how daily time spent on mobile apps has climbed double-digit percentage points across several markets in APAC.

The report also focused on the emergence of Threads, which was launched by Meta at the start of Q3, which skyrocketed up the charts and reached 150 million downloads faster than any other app in history. For APAC, Singapore saw Threads as the top app in terms of downloads and download growth for the quarter, but it remains to be seen if it can sustain its position at the top in Q4 2023.

Furthermore, Threads was also regarded by the report as the number one breakout app in terms of downloads for Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand.

Lastly, in terms of consumer spend in APAC,  the top breakout apps by consumer spend growth vary in different markets, but the focus for Q3 2023 centres around social media apps such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, accompanied by new trends such as AI photo editing apps and generative AI apps.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Following the recent regulation by the Indonesian government on the use of social media for e-commerce transactions, TikTok Shop has finally announced that it is shutting down its local operations in accordance with local orders.

“Our priority is to remain compliant with local laws and regulations. As such, we will no longer facilitate e-commerce transactions in TikTok Shop Indonesia by October 4, and will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities on the path forward,” TikTok said in a press statement.

The ban follows a recent government regulation which prohibits the use of social media for e-commerce transactions, adding that it’s aimed at quashing e-commerce sellers that are purportedly abusing pricing tiers on social media to promote their products.

Following this, a question arises: is there still hope for social commerce in Indonesia?

Social commerce will still exist–even with regulations

For Rolly Pane, managing director for Indonesia at Clozette, despite the new regulations, social commerce will still be around, as the new regulations only prohibits having social media and e-commerce inside one app.

“Social commerce can still be done, promoting products in social and driving people to e-commerce. The only difference is that it will not happen in one ecosystem or app. It just has to cross over apps,” Pane told MARKETECH APAC.

However, he noted that with this regulation, there would be a significant drop in e-commerce transactions which originated from social media posts and engagements.

“The biggest downfall is that there will be a larger amount of drop-offs when it is cross-app compared to being in one ecosystem or app,” he said.

Despite all of thise, Pane says that brands can still implement alternative strategies to make their social commerce strategies still stand out.

“Promotion of products will still be done as it is being done now. The only difference is that when the promotions are clicked, it will no longer be in the same ecosystem. It will drive the consumers to a different ecosystem / app to conduct the transactions,” he concluded.

Who loses this game? Merchants or consumers?

Meanwhile, Anish Daryani, founder and president director at M&C Saatchi Indonesia explained that with 2024 being an election year in Indonesia, showing support for MSME’s by securing their interest is considered as an important move by the government.

It is worth noting that the government said that the new regulations aims to protect the interests of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME’s), given the lack of adoption of digital platforms on their part, and inability to compete with what has been labelled as ‘predatory pricing’ on social platforms.

“On the brighter side, the regulation removes ambiguity from e-commerce and provides clear guidelines towards the dos and don’ts of running e-commerce businesses, which [was] long overdue,” he said in an exclusive interview with MARKETECH APAC.

However, Daryani notes that other local merchants who have long utilised social commerce will ‘lose’ in this game, who have used it to connect with their patrons. He also added that with the new regulations, the livelihood of about 6 million social sellers and 7 million affiliates on TikTok Shop alone were hugely affected.

He also stated that end consumers are also affected as well, whose support to their social commerce merchants were the driving force behind their success.

“In my view, the biggest loser in this regulation, however, is the end consumer, who would now be deprived of exciting prices that were sometimes too good to be true, and discovering great quality products from skilled entrepreneurs, which in itself was a massive support for local businesses,” Daryani added.

Social commerce barely scratches the surface of the local industry

Despite all of these regulations, Daryani believes that social commerce will continue to move forward in Indonesia, adding that there is more growth for the Indonesian social commerce scene, compared to more mature markets like of China’s.

“Though this regulation would bring social commerce to a stop, there is no stopping commerce from becoming more social,” he quipped.

Looking at the issue from an agency perspective, Daryani believes that continued social media communication will still help amplify e-commerce, with social media and e-commerce now serving separate purposes in the customer purchase journey.

“From a communications perspective, digital content will still continue to fuel demand for products and services through the upper funnel (awareness and consideration), while the objectives of the lower funnel (purchase, retention and advocacy) would be met by e-commerce platforms,” he said.

He also added, “The use of influencers to review and recommend products will continue to expand. Overall, this would make discoverability of content more organic, so the quality of content would have to be better going forward.”

Indonesia – The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) has released a study with Milieu Insight to understand the usage of different video services in Indonesia and consumer attitudes towards them. The study looked at video across social media, user-generated content (UGC), linear TV, messaging services and premium OTT.

Data given by AVIA and Milieu Insight suggested that amongst Indonesians, UGC and social media content garners more attention in audience engagement and advertising, but premium OTT has the best content according to 75% of respondents.

Indonesian consumers also associate premium OTT the most with positive emotions. When asked about feelings after watching an hour of different types of content, premium OTT services significantly outscored user-generated content and social media in eliciting happiness (51%) and amusement (73%).

According to the study, while premium OTT is still at an earlier stage of development in Indonesia than free UGC and social media services like YouTube and TikTok, it is clear that those who use premium OTT value it more. When asked what video services they would first be prepared to forego, only one in the top ten services was premium OTT, and the top 4 were all social media or UGC services.

Talking about the results, Louis Boswell, CEO of AVIA, said, “We believe the power and opportunity of premium OTT is hugely significant and offers a real and relatively untapped opportunity for advertisers in Indonesia. The proven quality of the environment, the stickiness of the content and the positive emotions created by it are critical for advertisers, and this study clearly demonstrates that.”

“Given the dominance and high penetration of UGC and social media video services in Indonesia, the fact that this smaller but growing category of premium OTT performed so well in these categories is quite remarkable. We believe advertisers need to sit up and take note,” he added.

Indonesia – Wunderman Thompson has named Samir Gupte as the new chief executive officer for its operations in Indonesia. 

Gupte comes from Ogilvy, where he most recently served as executive director and head of operations, and brings with him more than 25 years of experience within WPP.

Gupte spent 23 years with Ogilvy, dividing his time between Indonesia and India. He moved from India to Indonesia in 2013 and began working for OgilvyAction as the managing director. He led in the merger that created Geometry Global at this time. He made a transition to SohoSquare, Ogilvy’s second integrated agency, later in 2016.

After serving in that capacity for two years, Gupte was appointed managing director of Ogilvy Indonesia. In this role, he oversaw client interactions and built a diverse, effective team. The agency acquired clients during his leadership, including Kimberly-Clark Softex, Converse, Sunpride, and Asian Paints. 

Speaking about his new role, Gupte said, “I am really excited about this next chapter in my career. Having worked very closely with Wunderman Thompson teams on key clients like Nestle and Unilever, I am aware of the sheer talent and the potential that exists within the agency. The current leadership team has done a great job of consolidating the different services within the agency. My focus now will be to strengthen our capabilities in CX, data, content and ecommerce, and drive growth for our clients in Indonesia.”

Meanwhile, Audrey Kuah, APAC CEO of Wunderman Thompson, remarked, “Samir brings vast integrated marketing experience growing some of the world’s largest brands in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. His expertise in integrating brand, digital, data and technology, combined with his growth ambition for us, we are pleased to have Samir join our leadership team.”

Singapore – Around 74% of marketers in Indonesia cited advanced machine learning technology as the most important factor when selecting mobile app performance marketing solutions, according to data from Moloco. 

The new global study found that marketers are adopting data-driven solutions and prioritising performance marketing over traditional brand marketing. 

Globally, 63.2% of companies surveyed saw a year-on-year boost in their mobile app performance marketing budgets compared to the revenue from brand marketing. This shows that mobile app performance marketing has a clear and resounding power to drive revenue, user acquisition, and profit, especially during times of economic uncertainty.

In Southeast Asia, the use of advanced machine learning (ML) came out as the number one factor when selecting a mobile app performance marketing solution.

Especially in Indonesia, a staggering 74% of marketers consider advanced ML to be the most important factor for precise targeting in mobile app performance, followed by Vietnam (60.4%) and Japan (52%). Meanwhile, only 22.6% of marketers in Korea and 22.3% in Singapore prioritise advanced ML when selecting a mobile app performance marketing solution.

Indonesia, with 61%, also takes the lead when choosing APRU (average revenue per unit) as the preferred KPI, which is higher than the rest of the markets in SEA and globally.

In terms of budget allocation for mobile app marketing, companies in every country surveyed allocated more than half their marketing budgets to mobile ads, with Indonesia ranking the highest at 81.8% while Singapore and Vietnam allocated 59.2% and 58%, respectively.

It is worth noting that performance mobile app marketing continues to grow consistently across all industries, with 64.7% of surveyed companies increasing their mobile ad marketing budget in 2023 compared to the previous year.

Daisuke Yokokawa, vice president of global marketing at Moloco, said, “The global shift in marketing from reach to results continues to gain momentum across different countries and various industries.” 

He added, “Many mobile app marketers are aware that the secret of big tech’s success in advertising is advanced ML technology and the performance marketing solutions that they provide. This global trend is due to the clear and resounding power that mobile app performance marketing has to drive revenue, user acquisition, and profit, especially during times of economic uncertainty.”

Meanwhile, Jennifer Ha, project leader and partner at Ipsos Strategy3, said, “Performance marketing is on trend, regardless of the country.Marketers are typically loath to share their best kept secrets, but thanks to this anonymized research study, we now have detailed insights about their strategic marketing decisions and investments. Ultimately, having consistent results such as measurable and impactful ROAS underpins the success of many global performance marketing budgets.”