Tag: Research

The Philippines – MARKETECH APAC‘s What’s NEXT returns this year with a stronger push to bring the industry together through a variety of knowledge-sharing activities. MARKETECH APAC will continue to feature thought-leadership articles written by renowned marketing leaders to cover various marketing areas, as it did last year.

With MARKETECH APAC‘s ongoing push to create relevant video content, we will gather the best in the industry this year and sit down with them to discuss how marketers can prepare for the upcoming year of marketing opportunities and challenges.

On November 3, 2022, What’s NEXT 2023 will kick off with a regional webinar, What’s NEXT: Events in Asia Pacific, in collaboration with event tech platform, Hubilo. On November 8, in partnership with influencer marketing platform Vamp, another regional webinar, What’s Next: Influencer Marketing in APAC, will be held.

True to its mission of creating a well-connected marketing community in Asia Pacific, What’s NEXT 2023 concludes with a two-day hybrid conference, What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in Asia Pacific, on February 21-22, with at least 120 physical attendees in Manila and 1,500 virtual attendees from various markets in Asia Pacific.

The conference will spark offline and online discussions about digital, e-commerce, customer engagement, CX, esports, research, B2B, metaverse, and other relevant topics that will help marketers future-proof marketing strategies.

MARKETECH APAC’s What’s NEXT 2023 will be a go-to platform for checking out the marketing industry’s new trends, opportunities, and challenges to be explored in the region through this holistic approach.

Keep an eye on our website and social media pages for updates on the hybrid conference.

Please contact Joven Barceñas at [email protected] if you are interested in becoming a partner.

New Zealand – Out-of-Home (OOH) media company JCDecaux in New Zealand and behavioural insights company, NeuroSpot, have released the results of their latest proprietary research project called the ‘Distinctive Creativity’. This study is part of the JCDecaux Intelligence programme, which dedicates funds to annual local research projects to better understand how consumers connect with the company’s OOH touchpoints. 

The study revealed that OOH creative incorporating distinctive brand codes – including logo, colour, shape, tone of voice and style of imagery – averaged a 13% uplift in category mental availability versus weakly coded ads.

Moreover, the study also found that ads with strong brand codes are liked 31% more than weakly coded ads, while liked ads drive uplifts in category mental availability by 18% because strongly coded ads are easier to cognitively process, which leads to perceived preference. 

Victoria Parsons, senior insights and strategy specialist at JCDecaux New Zealand, noted that the first looked at format, and this study extends to creative. 

“At JCDecaux, we subscribe to the view that advertising ‘works’ through building memory structures that consumers call on in a buying situation. This study puts specific numbers around our knowledge that strongly coded Out-of-Home advertising can influence decision making and drive a sales effect,” said Parsons.

The study aims to examine how using distinctive brand codes in OOH creative influences mental availability. Mental availability is one of the most important metrics for brands and is often under-measured compared with awareness or consideration. Mental availability predicts the propensity for a brand to come to mind in a buying situation versus simply being known.

Cole Armstrong, NeuroSpot’s managing director, shared that there are points for showing up, but if brands really want to impact their customers, it’s the way they surface their brand via OOH advertising that will make the difference. 

“If you ensure your ads are strongly coded with distinctive brand codes, the potential for you to leave a lasting impression in the minds of consumers is significantly increased,” said Armstrong.

Meanwhile, Gary Rosewarne, sales director at JCDecaux New Zealand, said, “Our role as a leader in Out-of-Home is to help advertisers create the best Out-of-Home campaigns. We know that creativity drives effective outcomes for brands, but we can now validate that creative using strong brand codes delivers a sales effect. It is not about one or the other but ensuring Out-of-Home campaigns deliver both.”

Singapore – One of the challenges for online sellers looking to provide service and sustainability is that 23% of everything that global shoppers order online is returned and almost 39% admitted to over-ordering with the intention of returning unwanted items, presenting another dilemma for retailers’ digital supply chain, according to global e-commerce consultancy Wunderman Thompson Commerce. 

The same research found that the worst offenders for returns in the APAC region were consumers in India, sitting at the top of the global chart at 44%. Yet, the least likely to return in the region was Japan at 13%. It also revealed that the increasing influence of retail marketplaces continues to drive consumer spending online, which can be predominately seen in the APAC markets, as China leads the way in online spending sitting at 66%, followed by Indonesia and India at 64%, Thailand at 60%, Australia at 55%, and Japan at 48%.

But winning online means getting the service right – one of the biggest changes post-pandemic is the expectation and demands that consumers have of retailers. About 24% of global consumers now expect delivery in two hours, and the APAC region leads the charge in these demands with 46% of consumers in India expecting delivery in under 2 hours, Indonesia at 27%, and China and Thailand at 25%. These delivery expectations present a conundrum to retailers with 48% of global consumers demanding faster delivery, while 68% said that they wished that brands and retailers offered better environmental practices. 

Meanwhile, when consumers were asked if they ‘actively choose brands that are more environmentally responsible’, the region sits well beyond the global average. Thailand consumers sit at number one globally at 83%, followed by Indonesia at number two with 82%, India at number three with 81%, and China at number five with 71%. Australia and Japan had further to go in making active in sustainable choices, sitting at 46% and 38% respectively.

Aadit Bimbhet, regional commerce director at Wunderman Thompson APAC, shared that the COVID-19 has accelerated digital adoption globally and in Southeast Asia nearly 70 million new shoppers are estimated to have come online for the first time, while marketplaces remain the dominant force online, consumer loyalty and preferences in APAC are evolving in the face of fragmented online journeys. 

“Consumers expect to engage with brands across multiple touch-points and brands have to start enabling connected commerce experiences to efficiently acquire and retain shoppers. Furthermore, as competition for shoppers in APAC increases, delivering brand experiences that are consistent, cohesive and engaging will be crucial to capturing a share of heart, mind and wallet in the long run,” said Bimbhet.

Meanwhile, Hugh Fletcher, global head of consultancy and innovation at Wunderman Thompson Commerce, noted that TikTok, Twitter and Instagram, marketplaces and e-commerce more generally offer shoppers an instant way to engage with, and purchase from, their favourite products and services.

“However, this means demands are higher, expectations are loftier, and consumers have reduced patience; they want products and services at the click of a button and won’t settle for second-best. Couple this with the rising cost of living and retailers face a fight to get consumers’ cash as they choose where they shop, which brands to invest in and what digital services to use,” said Fletcher.

In addition, the research shows that consumers have a healthy appetite for retailers to invest in emerging tech trends, including cashless payments with 58% and checkout-less supermarket services such as Amazon Go with 64%. The online world is also creating enormous value for retailers, with 60% of consumers planning to increase their usage of digital shopping channels. This has been driven by working from home (WFH), with 69% of consumers saying they have shopped more online, and 62% saying they have discovered new brands as a consequence of WFH.

The results have been even better this year for online marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, Mercado Libre, and Rakuten, amongst others. About 64% of global consumers go as far as to say they are excited by the prospect of buying everything through one retailer and 36% have already started their search on top marketplaces. While Amazon sits at number one across Europe, UK, USA, and UAE, APAC sees more diversity, with more marketplaces vying for consumers and social media platforms featuring heavily.

Bengaluru, India – With the Indian payment ecosystem undergoing a paradigm shift in recent years, digital payments in India is expected to constitute nearly 65% of all payments by 2026 and valued at around US$10t in that same year, according to a report by digital payments company PhonePe and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

According to the report, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system has supercharged India’s transition to non-cash payments, especially in person-to-person (P2P) fund transfers and low value merchant (P2M) payments. Not surprisingly, UPI saw about 9 times the transaction volume increase in the past 3 years, increasing from 5 billion transactions in FY19 to about 46 billion transactions in FY22; accounting for more than 60% of non-cash transaction volumes in FY22.

It also noted that a key outcome of the many significant shifts in customer behaviour was an acceleration of digital payments in India. Customers switched to e-commerce and contactless modes of digital payment to minimise contact and infection risk. More than a 50% jump was observed in monthly transaction volumes across UPI, Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) over 6 months following the imposition of lockdown in March 2020.

Karthik Raghupathy, head of strategy and investor relations at PhonePe, said, “This indicates that digital payment has truly gained ubiquitous acceptance across the country. While Tier 1-2 cities have witnessed high acceptance of digital payments, penetration in Tier 3-6 cities shows headroom for growth. The next wave of growth will now come from Tier 3-6 locations, as evidenced in the past two years wherein Tier 3-6 cities have contributed to nearly 60 to 70% of new customers.”

Meanwhile, Prateek Roongta, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, commented, “India is set to become a digital payment economy as a source of payments invert with 65% transactions being done digitally by 2026, as opposed to 40% transactions today. Merchant payments will emerge as the most powerful driver of this growth, especially in the offline segment due to growing QR code deployments. We expect that merchant payments will soon outpace person-to-person fund transfers.”

He added, “We will increasingly observe digital payments get embedded in all forms of commerce, we will also witness the progression from embedded payments to embedded finance. As more and more merchants begin to accept digital payments, it will unlock a significant change in access to credit for small merchants due to the creation of a digital transaction trail.”

Toronto, Canada –  Independent programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) ad tech company, Hivestack, has today announced the launch of a new research division that will focus on exploring in-store, programmatic media activation in the metaverse. Former Microsoft Research managing director and computer vision pioneer P. Anandan joins Hivestack as a special advisor to spearhead the initiative.

According to a recent eMarketer report advertisers spent $31B USD in 2021 in the US on retail media, with a path to $100B in the coming years. The findings of the report showed that the majority of the ad spend went to advertising on Amazon and Walmart’s digital assets. A growing trend is that large, big box retailers are implementing custom ad tech stacks with identity solutions to monetize their online marketplace as well as their physical stores. 

Metaverse stores will enable advertising opportunities for marketers to connect with consumers – in particular, their avatars, at the point of purchase – on virtual in-store walls, virtual digital endcaps, and even virtual in-store audio advertising. Preliminary research shows that consumer engagement in the metaverse will far exceed current online experiences and thus lead to deeper engagement with ensuing greater outcomes for advertisers.

Andreas Soupliotis, founder & CEO of Hivestack shared, “With the launch of our research division, we are prototyping how ad tech can be used to programmatically activate ad opportunities in virtual retail stores in the metaverse. In this environment, the consumer is technically inside their homes shopping via VR headsets, but their avatar is out-of-home. Much of Hivestack’s full-stack technology for digital out-of-home activation and monetization applies to retail metaverse advertising, but some important computer science gaps remain to be addressed. We launched this initiative to formulate the needed technology to make programmatic DOOH a success in the meta as well as the physical world.“

The use of meta and crypto-related concepts to buy and sell DOOH ads is already happening. As an example, Hivestack’s exclusive partner in Japan, LIVE BOARD (a wholly owned subsidiary of NTTDocomo and Dentsu Japan) have already started to experiment selling outdoor advertising space as NFTs, representing the first initiative in Japan to sell outdoor advertising rights as an NFT.

P. Anandan commented on his new role of special advisor at Hivestack, “I am thrilled to be advising Hivestack on this new direction of avatar-based out-of-home advertising. There are some important technology, product and engineering challenges that need to be addressed in order for marketers to benefit from this new generation of advertising.”

According to Anandan, there are many unanswered questions regarding how media payments will be made to metaverse retailers, with cryptocurrencies possibly being used. In such cases, RTB bid requests and responses between DSPs and SSPS would be based on cryptocurrency CPMs. With this, he is looking forward to helping Hivestack grow a research team that will address these new frontiers in ad tech and provide marketers with the solutions they will need to succeed in the burgeoning field of ‘Meta Marketing’.

Kevin McDonald, CEO of Kinetic Canada, commented, “The retail metaverse is opening up a new reality for consumers that blends the sensations of physical, out-of-home shopping with ease of mobile shopping.”

Kevin adds that Kinetic Canada is laser-focused on driving precise measurable outcomes for our clients. As the lines blur between consumers and their avatars, the combination of real-world, retail DOOH and metaverse retail digital out-of-home advertising is an important area of exploration to them and their clients.

Singapore – Southeast Asia research and analytics firm Milieu Insight has unveiled the new update of its mobile survey app, Milieu Surveys, which provides flexibility and convenience of gaining insights into localized trending topics.

Milieu’s opinion-sharing community is made up of an extensive representative panel across all ages, and segment groups, enabling quality consumer research results at quicker turnaround times. Milieu Survey’s innovative survey technology allows respondents to take surveys, polls, and quizzes, as well as learn, and earn at the same time.

The new app update builds on its previous version, focusing on offering a superior user experience with a host of new gamification features. By utilizing highly visual gamification elements, language localization features and engaging, interactive content, the new app experience encourages active participation and delivery of high-quality data.

The new key features include ‘play’, which allows users to earn points from participating in surveys, taking daily quizzes or ‘Hot Topic’ polls, and also earn booster points from time to time. It also includes ‘track’, which enables users to view their status tier and track how many points they have earned, surveys completed, and activity history. And lastly, the ‘spend’ feature, which allows users to redeem their reward points for attractive items such as shopping vouchers or donations to charity.

Gerald Ang, Milieu Insight’s founder and CEO, shared that they started Milieu Insight to make market research accessible to everyone – consumers and businesses alike.

“We are excited to have reached a new milestone with our Milieu Surveys mobile app, as we continue to innovate and find new ways to transform the market research landscape, empowering our clients to move beyond legacy ways of conducting consumer research,” said Ang.

Meanwhile, Stephen Tracy, Milieu Insight’s COO, commented that the success of their data collection app, Milieu Surveys, was built on their unwavering commitment to user-centricity.

“Our latest app upgrade doubles down on our commitment to offering our users a great experience, while adding exciting new features and ways to collect new types of data that are opt-in and permission-based,” said Tracy.

Mumbai, India – With more organizations in India heavily investing in technology or technological assets that will allow them to thrive in the coming times, Merkle B2B, the B2B arm of dentsu’s customer experience agency Merkle, and financial news organization Bloomberg Quint have launched ‘The Media Guide’ to understand the world of evolving Indian tech buyers and the factors influencing their decisions.

The study, commissioned through Greyhound Research, has been conducted with Indian CIOs (Chief Information Officer) and ITDMs (IT Decision Maker), to identify their concerns, issues, and preferences about a brand, product or solution while making a purchase.

According to the study, CEOs and managing directors are personally getting involved in the technology decision-making process. They are seeking business leaders and external parties (analysts/consultants) to gain deeper insights and better bargains from the existing and new vendors. 

In terms of media channel utilization, 80% of traditional and 73% of startup organizations in India prefer to use local podcasts and videos along with their global content pieces to strengthen context. Meanwhile, 40% of startup organizations and 23% of traditional organizations in India? find global video content to be helpful while identifying a technology vendor.

Other results showed that 73% of respondents from traditional organizations continue to value conferences and events, while only 53% of startup organizations prefer them as part of the new technology buying decision-making process. Lastly, 60% of traditional organizations and 100% of startup organizations in India find online technology magazines to be effective in their technology buying decision-making process.

“Our intent is to get an on-ground understanding of the tech buyers’ evolving world and unearth insights that can help tech marketers make informed decisions. Merkle believes that today’s customer-focused marketing leader is evolving with the core pursuit of placing people at the heart of the business strategy,” said Abhay Kulkarni, managing director at Merkle DWA.

He added, “Our aim is to help marketers stimulate their thinking towards the future of marketing while getting actionable ideas that can impact businesses, and ultimately, strengthening their ongoing approach to people-based marketing.”

Manila, Philippines – Through time, the use of social media is becoming more intertwined into people’s daily lives, and is also becoming a major avenue for conversations that would benefit both consumers and brands.

On Twitter, whatever is happening, be it as grand as opening a new business or simple joys, people share it with their network, making the platform the go-to place to see the latest in culture and trends.

Research shows that there are five key trends on how Filipinos converse around food, beverages, and personal, as well as home care on Twitter. The first trend is around one’s creativity in the kitchen, which is the result of boredom of Filipinos amid the ongoing pandemic. 

Cooking and baking have become creative outlets for new skills, and part of the people’s routine is to tweet their creations, sharing their trusted food brands and their favorite marketplace. The data from Twitter also shows that Filipinos’ most mentioned retailer for packaged food is foodpanda Philippines.

Next on the list is Filipinos’ love for coffee. Conversations about this much-loved drink continue to grow on Twitter Philippines, increasing 3% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, as cafes enticed people to look for innovative ways to make a statement with coffee. And with this, Robinsons Supermarket topped the list as the most talked about beverage retailer for Filipinos on Twitter.

Filipinos also tweet about pop culture on Twitter, which helped increase the conversation interestingly around hair care. There’s a 15% increase in the tweet volume on hair care for the first quarter of 2021 compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, as they actively pay attention and discuss the latest hairstyles or colors being sported by their favorite idols. This made Watsons Philippines rank first as the top mentioned hair care retailer among Filipinos in the platform.

Meanwhile, Filipinos gained a new perspective on self-care during the pandemic, building up their skincare routine and Twitter has also become the top-of-mind platform to look for suggestions and tips. More than 12% in April 2021of tweets are related to personal and skincare compared to May 2021. Part of this growth is the equally progressing conversation on tackling unrealistic beauty standards. Twitter revealed that Shopee Philippines is the most talked about among retailers and providers of self-care products.

And lastly, Filipinos were found to grow fondness for tweeting about being at home, making them more attentive to their own space. As the pandemic continues, people have grown interested in home improvement to keep their homes safe and clean. They can be seen sharing their aesthetic home buys, which is mainly from Lazada Philippines, therefore ranking first as the most mentioned retailer of home care products.

Chandan Deep, Twitter’s head of emerging business for SEA, shared that people on the app and the conversations that they create are what makes Twitter unique, and 71% have rated it as a great platform for brand interaction, making it the number one among its peers.

“These people lead the conversation and are passionate to share about diverse topics such as beauty, food, and health. What makes them powerful as consumers is that they try, buy, and share their experience on Twitter,” said Deep.

New York, USA – Global technology company IBM, through its AI advertising solutions arm IBM Watson Advertising, is announcing the launch of a new research initiative in order to apply open-source AI technology, developed by IBM, to better understand how prevalent unwanted bias is in advertising, while simultaneously laying the foundation for potential mitigation. 

Said work aligns with IBM Watson Advertising’s overarching mission to make AI the catalyst for improving solutions, services and trust in the advertising ecosystem, and builds upon IBM’s leadership in transforming business across industries with AI.

A part of the research initiative’s inspiration stems from a study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which found male characters appeared in advertisements 12% more than females. This while women-led and gender-balanced videos yielded 30% more views than other videos, revealing a demand for more inclusive content.

For IBM Watson Advertising, the goal is to drive a deeper understanding of the factors leading to unwanted bias in advertising and how AI can help, spanning audience segmentation, creative messaging, performance optimization and campaign impact. Armed with this information, marketers and IT vendors may be able to develop a roadmap for the responsible use of AI to reduce unwanted bias and more effectively create and execute campaigns.

“We find ourselves at a moment in history where a long-overdue discourse on socioeconomic inequalities is dominating the national agenda and compelling action. Our hope is that AI can be the catalyst for reducing unwanted bias in advertising, just as it is helping to transform the advertising industry as it rebuilds for an era without third party cookies. Through this research we are taking an important first step toward that goal, applying scientific rigor to determine just how big of an impact AI can have,” said Bob Lord, senior vice president for Worldwide Ecosystems at IBM.

Areas of the research initiative include:

  • Incidence of bias in advertising – The prevalence and frequency of bias in campaigns through the analysis of performance data. For instance, using the AI Fairness 360 toolkit, a suite of open-source AI tools developed by IBM and donated to the Linux Foundation, the study will look at how certain audiences of past and active campaigns are being targeted with creative content to assess whether bias was present.
  • Role of signals in determining bias – How heavily signals, which refer to the context in which an advertisement is delivered, impact bias. As an example, if a creative message is deemed to be unbiased on its own yet is delivered on a digital channel alongside an inherently biased signal, the advertisement may be perceived as biased.
  • Capabilities of AI to potentially mitigate bias – How useful AI can be in identifying instances of bias, and what can be done to fully capture the power of AI to potentially reduce occurrences of bias in advertisements.

As a start, data from the Ad Council’s “It’s Up to You” COVID-19 Vaccine Education initiative will be used for this initial research phase. The AI Fairness 360 toolkit will be used to examine the data and determine whether there are ways AI can be useful to help mitigate discrimination and bias.

“Collective bias has been prevalent in our industry for far too long, and the need to study its origins and impact is critical so that we can effectively work together to create progress. The Ad Council is proud to be the first industry partner of many working alongside IBM to help fuel this compelling research mission,” said Lisa Sherman, president and CEO at the Ad Council.

India – With the festive season already kicking off, shoppers are getting geared up for their holiday spend. In India, consumers have revealed that during this time, they are more likely to buy a product online when it is discounted and have an easy return policy, according to a study by global marketing company OMG and international research group YouGov.

The two came out as the top priorities for online shoppers in India, coming after good quality of products, which inevitably reigns their purchase specifications. On-time delivery is also a top priority for majority, or 32%, of consumers. Meanwhile, about the same percentage, 20%, is reflected across those who stated the following factors in their holiday purchases: products being in a single place, authenticity of products, brands that are homegrown, flexible payment options, and e-commerce that have varied brands. About 9% of consumers, on the other hand, stated ease of navigation among e-commerce as a priority. 

The study also probed into the kind of products Indian consumers are buying the most online. Food essentials came out with the highest percentage of consumer intent. Groceries and health food drinks for children led the list. Indian shoppers were also shown to depend on e-commerce when looking for household entertainment products.