Tag: marketing insights

Australia – Nearly half (43%) of marketing leaders intend to boost their account-based marketing (ABM) budgets, a significant rise from 28% recorded at the same time last year, according to a survey by xGrowth in collaboration with Media Collateral.

The survey reveals a shift in spending sentiment as the economic downturn recedes, with senior marketing leaders across Asia-Pacific ramping up investments in 2024 and signalling plans for further increases in 2025.

The survey highlights a notable shift, with 46% of marketing leaders maintaining their current general marketing budgets—up from 23% last year—while 13% have increased spending, a significant rise from just 4% in the previous year.

Meanwhile, only 31% reported a decrease in spending compared to 58% last year. 

“After 18 months of budget cuts driven by economic uncertainty, marketers are signalling a return to growth with increased spending planned for 2025. This positive shift in sentiment suggests confidence in the market’s recovery and the vital role marketing plays in driving business success,” said Shahin Hoda, managing director at xGrowth. 

The survey also explored how APAC marketing leaders are leveraging the growth of generative AI and its transformative impact on their marketing strategies.

ABM practitioners increasingly view generative AI as a game-changer. In 2024, over 45% of APAC marketing leaders reported that generative AI has shaped their ABM strategies—a significant increase from 23% in the previous year.

Additionally, 74% of respondents believe AI will simplify their work, marking a significant rise from 47% in 2023. The proportion of those who feel AI delivers better results has also surged, climbing from 24% last year to 47% this year.

The percentage of respondents who believe AI reduces costs has risen sharply from 38% in 2023 to 58% in 2024. Notably, concerns over legal and data security issues have decreased significantly, dropping from 24% last year to 15% this year.

“Marketers are leveraging AI tools to create highly personalised campaigns, analyse data in real-time, and boost efficiency—achieving results that were unimaginable just 18 months ago. Initial concerns about legal and security are fading as marketers embrace AI’s potential,” Hoda explained. 

The survey also highlighted the expanding role of generative AI in marketing, with AI-powered content creation—such as blog posts, emails, and social media copy—leading the way at 70%. Personalisation emerged as another key application, cited by 51% of respondents. Additionally, marketers are increasingly leveraging generative AI for campaign planning (28%) and data analysis (24%).

Regarding the adoption outlook for generative AI, 91% of senior marketing leaders anticipate increased use of AI tools within their organisations over the next two years. With only 1.67% expecting a decline, the findings underscore a strong commitment to expanding AI’s role in ABM strategies, solidifying its position as a cornerstone of future marketing initiatives.

Boston, USA – Brightcove has announced the launch of ‘Marketing Insights,’ a new offering within the company’s video insights and analytics platform. ‘Marketing Insights’ provides advanced insights and robust video campaign measurement data so marketers can optimise their content marketing strategies by directly measuring the business impact of video content.

‘Marketing Insights’ allows marketers to track data from inbound traffic to their videos capturing viewer origins through UTM parameters and analysing which campaigns are driving video views and conversion. It offers detailed insights into the effectiveness of video content and viewer engagement, watch time, and which sources drive qualified audiences.

Brightcove’s current product lineup enables integration with leading marketing automation platforms (MAPs) and providing a detailed analysis of viewer interactions and the success of various marketing sources. This link between content performance and marketing efforts allows for improved strategy refinement and more intelligent decisions about where to allocate resources.

Kathy Klingler, chief marketing officer at Brightcove, said, “Video continues to be one of the most powerful ways to engage audiences, yet measuring its impact on business outcomes has long been a challenge. With the launch of our new Marketing Insights offering, we’re further empowering marketers to gain deeper visibility into the performance of their video campaigns and their broader marketing strategies.”

She added, “As a data-driven marketer, I’m excited about how these new capabilities will help brands connect the dots between campaign performance and real business value. This solution is a game-changer for any marketer looking to drive measurable impact.”

Meanwhile, Scott Levine, chief product officer at Brightcove, commented, “We’ve transformed the traditional concept of UTM links, a tool marketers have relied on for years, by integrating it directly into our video player. This allows us to capture detailed video traffic source data and seamlessly incorporate it into our platform to show ROI from traffic attribution and inbound marketing.”

He added, “By providing actionable insights, we’re helping our customers understand what drives audience engagement and how to optimise their marketing strategies. This integration simplifies campaign optimisation and budget planning, making it faster and more efficient than ever.”

‘Marketing Insights’ is the latest addition to Brightcove’s suite of AI-powered solutions, joining the company’s Brightcove Audience Insights™ solution, which currently offers Media and Ad Insights for media companies and Publisher Insights for publishing companies. Brightcove’s ‘Marketing Insights’ is purpose-built to address the unique needs of marketers across industries. By going beyond traditional metrics, it provides tailored, actionable data that empowers marketing professionals to drive more effective, data-informed decisions.

Singapore – Online advertising has continued to grow despite the challenging economic conditions, reaching $3.732b for the Q3 2023, according to data which was drawn from the IAB Australia Online Advertising Expenditure Report (OAER) prepared by PwC, showing how online advertising increased by 7.8% year-on-year and 2.1% over the preceding quarter.

Specifically, the data suggests that total expenditure by category in Q3 2023 quarter was $1.630b for search and directories, $1.451b for general display and $649.2m for classifieds. 

Furthermore, general display advertising increased 2.7% over the June 2023 quarter and 8% year-on-year from the September 2022 quarter. Search and directories also softened by 1.6% from June 2023 but increased 10.6% year-on-year from September 2022.

Within general display advertising, audio advertising expenditure recorded no growth quarter over the June quarter reaching $68m for the September quarter, but it increased 16.2% year-on-year from September 2022. Video advertising recorded a 5% growth quarter-on-quarter to reach $968.1m for the September quarter and 15% growth year-on-year from September 2022.

Additionally, the retail, automotive, and health & beauty sectors all reported strong growth in Q3 2023, with retail reaching 17.1% share of general display advertising, automotive increasing to 15.4% and health and beauty reaching 7.9%. Finance (8.7%) and FMCG (5.7%) remain in the top five industry categories for expenditure.

Lastly, connected TV continues to yield the greatest share of content publisher’s video inventory investment, increasing from 45% in Q2 2023 to 54% in Q3 2023 buoyed in part by Women’s Football World Cup activity. Desktop reduced from 38% to 25% in the same period, while mobile investment increased from 17% to 21%.

Talking about these results, Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia, commented, “It is encouraging to see marketers continue to invest in advertising to drive growth. However, investment in different media environments was not universal and the market was tough for many organisations.” 

“Retail continues to be the number one advertiser category with investment from local and global retailers. It is also pleasing to see the uplift in automotive advertising with the share of spend in the general display category above 15% for the first time since September 2020,” she added.

Singapore – Around 3 out of 4 Singaporeans have said that they are now more confident in recognising scam calls and SMS than they were 12 months ago. This is according to the latest data from cloud communications and customer experience (CX) software company Toku.

An overwhelming 91% of respondents believe that organisations are making an effort to educate the public about scams, empowering them with the knowledge to identify and thwart scams effectively.

An example of a government initiative that made a noticeable impact is the SMS Sender ID Registry (SSIR). In early 2023, the SSIR made it mandatory for organisations to register their brand names with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore to verify their identity when they use SMS.

According to data, 87% of Singapore consumers said the SSIR has made it easier to identify the legitimacy of the SMS they receive. 63% also noted that the SSIR has resulted in them receiving less spam or scam messages.

Thomas Laboulle, founder and CEO at Toku, said, “Over the past 12 months, consumers in Singapore have shown a clear shift in their awareness of scams and a rise in their confidence in dealing with them. his has had an impact on the levels of trust they have for the communication channels they use, leading to changing preferences and behaviour in how they interact with brands.”

Despite scam SMS still being prevalent, around 73% remarked that they are more confident in recognising them. Less than a quarter of consumers clicked on URLs in these messages over the past 12 months, and only 13% encountered monetary loss as a result.

The same confidence is also reflected when it comes to scam calls. Around 75% expressed confidence in their ability to identify scam calls, and the number of consumers who picked up a scam call in the past 12 months fell by 19%.

Despite being digital natives, more than a third (36%) of millennials willingly click on suspicious SMS links even if they’re marked “Likely-SCAM” – the highest proportion amongst all the age groups. In contrast, only 8% of those aged 18-24 and 13% of those aged 45-54 are likely to click on these suspicious SMS links.

Labouelle added, “This result may be surprising, but it’s in fact in line with numbers from the Singapore Police Force. Data released by the police in September 2023 showed that those aged 20 to 39 were the most likely to be cheated in scams, making up more than 50% of all victims.”

The data also uncovered how many Singaporean consumers have clear preferred channels for communication from brands. For instance, SMS remains highly preferred by Singapore consumers for OTPs (79%), bank alerts (76%), and appointment reminders (72%). At the same time, WhatsApp gained popularity for marketing messages (47%) and order updates (55%). 

Meanwhile, approximately 3 in 4 consumers are inclined to contact an agent over the phone when confronted with urgent matters pertaining to payment or finance. Similarly, 2 in 3 will reach out to a phone support agent to resolve issues associated with products and service faults.

“Our research shows that Singapore consumers have varying levels of trust and preferences for different channels and types of communication. Organisations should pay attention to these preferences to meet customers where they want,” Laboulle said.

He added, “The rise of generative AI gives companies an unprecedented opportunity to reinforce consumer trust and build more personalised customer experience. AI can take over repetitive and tedious tasks while empowering human agents with the right information and context to further improve their customer service.”

Singapore – With millennials being referred to as the generation of ‘digital natives’, it comes as no surprise that they are one of the most influential demographics in the current era of marketing. This being said, research on key trends among millennials conducted by market research firm GWI shows what millennials from APAC cater to when it comes to their behavior towards media consumption and brand purchases.

Data from GWI’s study touches on how millennial preference can contribute to the rise of brands, media platforms, and even influencers, as well as what millennials seek in brands that they purchase on a regular basis. 

When it comes to media consumption, the study shows that APAC millennials are actually spearheading the growth of the podcast as a media platform, with 25% of respondents  listening in for at least two hours a day. This also leads to respondents saying that 12% of them discover new brands or products through podcast advertisements.

APAC millennials have also been found to be easily swayed by nostalgia, with the study stating that 65% of respondents prefer if brands or companies bring back old logos and ads. The same can be said with the effect of memes in advertising, as the study says that they are more engaged with finding memes funny when compared to the later Gen Z demographic.        

Moving on to brands, influencer marketing plays a significant role in marketing to APAC millennials, with 85% of respondents saying that they trust influencers. Nearly 4 in 10 APAC respondents say influencer recommendations are more trustworthy than regular ads, which translates into purchase behavior — as there is an 8% more likely than average likelihood for them to purchase a product recommended by influencers.

Lastly, brand trust towards millennials is vital in terms of reliability, as 45% of the respondents are loyal to the brands that they already like in terms of quality control. Respondents also said that they are 11% more likely than average to cite a live-chat feature as a purchase driver, and the number one thing they expect from brands is to be socially responsible.

Singapore – New research from WARC in partnership with ID Comms has highlighted the key trends across three different areas of programmatic advertising: the search for solutions in the post-cookie era, digital wastage in the programmatic supply chain, and the emergence of new addressable channels. 

The report suggests that a majority of marketers and advertisers fall short in programmatic advertising with overlooked privacy regulation changes, digital ad spend wastage, and below average confidence towards data, analytics, and insight systems within emerging channels. 

According to the report, about 58% of marketing leaders seem unaware of the impact of privacy regulation changes on their systems, tools, and business. In response, advertisers are actively seeking alternatives for targeting and measurement such as the use of first-party data, data partnerships, employing cookieless target methods, and exploring persistent identifiers as an alternative to tracking users across multiple platforms and devices.

Despite some improvements, the report states that nearly a quarter of the annual $88 billion spent on programmatic advertising still goes to waste. To reduce this wastage, advertisers include supply path optimization (SPO), wherein they streamline routes to advertising inventory by eliminating unnecessary intermediaries in the supply path. They also adopt in-house capabilities to enhance programmatic trading, and even engage in sustainability measurement, with some advertisers striving to minimize their carbon footprints.

Data also shows that CMOs report allocating a quarter of their entire marketing expense budgets to marketing technologies, yet marketers utilized just 42% of their martech stack capabilities in 2022, down from 58% in 2020.

Furthermore, there are new addressable channels such as gaming, connected television (CTV), programmatic audio, digital out of home (DOOH), and retail, but there is still a challenge as 62% of advertisers express only moderate confidence or less in their data, analytics, and insight systems. This confidence gap poses several obstacles to the expansion of these channels such as the need for holistic and standardized data, the pervasive issue of ad fraud, and the delicate balance between open web and walled garden Demand Side Platforms (DSPs).

However, the report mentions that marketers can still future-proof programmatic activations and improve business capabilities by establishing well defined business objectives, identifying and mapping one’s current capabilities, perform a gap analysis and identifying future business use cases, reviewing current programmatic maturity and future areas of progression, producing the final roadmap for their efforts, and activating their workstreams with the right support. 

Paul Stringer, managing editor for research & advisory at WARC, said, “The efficacy of programmatic – automation, real-time measurement and sophisticated targeting – are being threatened by the growing push for data privacy and the demise of the third party cookie.

“While programmatic advertising may have failed to live up to its early promise, change is afoot and a new wave of growth and development beckons. In this report we explore key shifts across the programmatic landscape and how they are impacting advertisers,” he added. 

Singapore – MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Vase.ai, recently gathered marketing leaders in the region to shed light on how brands can refine and fortify their brand and consumer insights strategy.

On July 27, brand and agency heads from Accenture Song, BigPay, Popeyes, and Vase.ai shared a space in the webinar ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’ to discuss how they are best leveraging consumer insights to deliver marketing and advertising that cuts across consumers. 

In the keynote presentation, CEO of Vase.ai, Julie Ng, revealed the ‘magic formula’ that materialises consumer insights into smart business actions. She also shared how to identify ‘signal’ from ‘noise’ in a goldmine of data that is available today, as well as the key ways to effectively gather these ‘signals’. 

Moderated by MARKETECH APAC’s Regional Editor Shaina Teope, the Country Marketing Head of BigPay, Jia Nina, and the Marketing Lead of Popeyes for APAC, Tanushri Rastogi, delved into a panel discussion in which each shared how their brands are uniquely building up and implementing their brand insights structure. In this panel, audience learnt how brands from fintech and F&B breathe life into marketing intel and realising it into campaigns that not only persuade consumers into action but also into products that elevate consumer experience.

To cap off the fruitful discussion, the webinar saw a fireside chat between Vase.ai’s Julie Ng and Neeraj Gulati, partner at Accenture Song. The two talked about how to develop an insight-driven marketing campaign, and how targeted and strategic consumer insights, in the end, help to ensure ROI. 

The webinar drew 153 marketing professionals out of 424 registrations. The attendees came from a variety of industries, including consumer products, telecommunications, tech, retail, banking, transportation, and consulting, and most hailed from the markets of Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore. Those who took part were from companies Astro, Beiersdorf, Boost Holdings, Globe Telecom, Heineken, J&J, L’Oréal, PETRONAS, Porsche Singapore, redONE Network, Rustan Commercial Corporation, Smartfren, Smartone, U Mobile and many more.

Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC and also moderator of the panel, commented, “Marketers are in a continuous challenge of transforming an intangible but crucial asset as marketing data and shaping that up into something that would be deemed beneficial for consumers and revenue-generating for brands. This industry discussion is important because expert minds from the brand and agency side are given the platform to share tried-and-tested methods in doing just that so that brands need not start from the ground up.” 

Julie Ng, CEO of Vase.ai, remarked, “Many marketers know that consumer insights are important to drive growth, but not many know where to begin and how to elicit tangible and relevant results from consumer research with minimal resources. I hope my presentation not only answered these questions, but also inspired a growth and agile mindset: build a consumer insights system, not a consumer insights project because a system is something we will keep using, iterating, repeating and improving for our competitive advantage.”

Meanwhile, on the partnership with MARKETECH APAC, Ng commented, “Honestly, this is the first stress-free webinar I have partnered up with. I could focus entirely on preparing my presentation without worrying about everything else – project management, advertising and promotion, ensuring quality webinar attendance, and most importantly, transparent communication – because I trusted MARKETECH APAC would deliver. And deliver they did.” 

On-demand access to the webinar is now available. Get your access HERE.

Singapore – One of the boons of the digital age is the wealth of data we’re able to obtain in our hands. In the marketing world, data is the air by which campaigns breathe, but now that insights collection is not as difficult as it was before, the constant matter that baffles us is – how do we actually make sense of all this information? 

This is the focus of MARKETECH APAC’s upcoming industry discussion – ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’. In partnership with Vase.ai, the webinar aims to help marketers and brands in Southeast Asia effectively translate their marketing intel into smart campaign actions and strategies.

Together with some of the brilliant leaders in marketing in the region, we will be delving into a discussion that puts the doubt and uncertainty we’ve been harbouring to the fore when it comes to our consumer insights business in the aim to provide appropriate solutions. Get answers to questions like how do you mobilise marketing insights? How do we turn them into agile marketing? How do we build a brand insights structure that would weather unforeseen crises? 

To be held virtually on 27 July 2022 at 2 pm SGT, the marketing experts that will be joining us are Jia Nina, the country marketing head of BigPay for Malaysia; Neeraj Gulati, partner at Entropia; Elya Eusoff, GM of MSL Malaysia; and Tanushri Rastogi, the marketing Lead of Popeyes for APAC. Each of them will be sharing their insights into every crucial part of insights mining in marketing such as transforming the data at hand into actionable insights and developing an information structure that would help weather any crisis, may it be brand-related or economic.

“Data is overflowing, but how do we extract the most vital insights and make sense of it all? Having a gold mine of data is one thing, but knowing how to use it to the best of our marketing campaigns is an entirely new challenge. Let this industry gathering of leaders from SEA help you jump into a clear path,” said Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC. 

Meanwhile, Julie Ng, Vase.ai’s CEO and co-founder, commented, “It goes without saying that the pandemic has underscored one thing: marketers need to be nimble, confident, AND effective enough in responding to ever-changing consumer expectations – even if it means letting go of your previous plans to pivot. What better way to do this than to ask consumers directly what they want whenever you want?”

Ng adds, “I’m excited to share how you can harness the power of on-demand consumer insights to drive your marketing efforts for the second half of the year.”

Join us this 27 July at ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’. Register HERE to secure your spot. 

Hong Kong – iClick Interactive Asia Group (iClick), an independent online marketing and enterprise data solutions provider in China, has launched its flagship marketing analysis tool iNsights, which gives brands in-depth and actionable consumer behavior insights to drive more effective marketing campaigns.

In the past months, iClick announced upgrades to iAudience and iActivate, its market intelligence and ad campaign management platforms. With the new tool launch, the iSuite solution of the company now completes the full campaign cycle including its audience targeting solution iAccess.

iNsights is a one-stop tracking solution that tracks and analyzes cross-channel campaigns covering China and overseas markets, eliminating the use of multiple marketing tracking systems.

Utilizing full-data analytics to produce reliable and accurate insights, iNsights provides for brands a better understanding of marketing-driven traffic as well as on-site audiences’ behaviors to facilitate more effective re-targeting. The tool is also said to carry a user-friendly dashboard that renders complicated data into visualized interactive graphics.

“iNsights effectively addresses the difficulties presented to marketers by the shallow insights provided by raw data and selective sampling data analysis, as well as the inconvenience and incomparability of multiple tracking systems for different regions,” said Frankie Ho, president of international business at iClick.

“Our recent update of iAudience and the launch of iActivate and iNsights are part of iClick’s commitment to continually build up and develop the best full-stack solutions for global marketers. iClick has always devoted itself to helping brands gain a better and deeper understanding of markets in real-time and to creating the best marketing strategies driven by data and advanced algorithms,” added Ho.

Hong Kong – China-based independent online marketing and enterprise data solutions provider iClick Interactive has launched an upgrade of its advertising campaign management tool, iActivate.

iActivate is a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign management platform that consolidates a number of ad platforms into one single platform, streamlining campaign monitoring and management. 

The platform is said to work in tandem with iClick’s Tracking Solution, providing marketers with customized reports and actionable insights into the effectiveness of their advertising spend. 

“iActivate provides straightforward and intelligent market insights that address the pain points faced by marketers of receiving insufficient and overly-general campaign data,” said Frankie Ho, president of international business at iClick. 

iActivate is an addition to iClick’s suite of products, which include iAudience, iAccess, iAX and Tracking Solution. 

Ho said that following the upgrade of iActivate and iAudience, the company’s audience analysis-focused platform, the company will continue to leverage iClick’s existing consumer profiles, as well as its advanced technology in machine learning and its AI to enhance and improve solutions.