Audiences across Southeast Asia now have more ways to watch content than ever before. They stream on mobile devices during commutes, watch on smart TVs at home, and move between platforms throughout the day.
For advertisers, this obviously creates a massive opportunity to reach engaged viewers, but it also introduces a persistent challenge: measuring who you’re actually reaching and which touchpoints drive results. The numbers tell an interesting story about where this is heading.
A recent study conducted by Nexxen on Navigating the Future of OTT marketing in Singapore identified that Southeast Asia’s advertising landscape continues to experience interesting changes, driven by substantial OTT and Connected TV adoption.
In fact, in Singapore alone, OTT video users are projected to reach 4.5 million by 2029, with user penetration expected to rise from 68.3% in 2025 to 72.8% by 2029. This data suggests a meaningful shift in how audiences consume content and engage with the ads they see while enjoying it.
The expansion of ad-supported streaming has accelerated this change. Our survey suggested that some 60% of viewers identify cost as a key factor in their platform choices, and as a result, ad-supported content has become quite attractive.
The engagement levels support this trend: 51% of viewers watch ad-supported content multiple times a week, while 35% watch daily. For advertisers, this marks a great opportunity to reach viewers, but it also introduces complexity that traditional measurement methods struggle to address.
The multi-screen reality
While Southeast Asia remains mobile-first, the big screen is growing alongside it. In Singapore, 77% of viewers stream on mobile devices, but 64% also use smart TVs, making it the second most preferred platform.
Computers follow at 51%, with tablets at 42%. This multi-screen consumption pattern means audiences move fluidly between devices throughout the day, watching the same content across different screens or engaging with different platforms depending on context. This fragmentation creates a fundamental measurement challenge. Each touchpoint generates data, but connecting those data points to understand actual reach and attribution has proven difficult. Traditional impression-based metrics, built for a simpler media environment, tell advertisers how many times an ad was served but not how many unique people actually saw it.
In households where multiple family members watch TV together, impression counts can understate true reach as co-viewing isn’t taken into account. 10,000 impressions might come from just a few thousand individuals encountering the ad on CTV – assuming they watch TV on their own – leading to deflated audience estimates when viewed purely through impression-based metrics.
Without considering co-viewing, budget allocation decisions rest on deflated numbers that don’t reflect actual audience exposure and ultimately devalues CTV investments.
The attribution challenge compounds this issue. Even when advertisers know their ads are being delivered, understanding which touchpoints drive action remains unclear. When someone visits a website after exposure to a CTV ad, mobile display campaign and audio spot, determining which channel or combination of channels influenced that action becomes guesswork without proper cross-channel attribution.
What accurate measurement enables
The impact of improved measurement extends beyond fixing data inaccuracies. It changes what advertisers can achieve with their campaigns and how effectively they can allocate resources.
OTT advertising already demonstrates its effectiveness when measured properly. In Singapore, 36% of viewers research a product online after watching an ad, while 33% visit the brand’s website. These actions represent tangible outcomes, but connecting them to specific media exposures requires measurement capabilities that track across channels and devices.
True Reach measurement addresses the undercounting problem by attributing ad exposure with co-viewership, rather than device-level impressions. When advertisers can determine that a campaign reached 500,000 people, compared to just 300,000 when co-viewing isn’t considered, they gain a more accurate cost per reach, a clearer view of true audience penetration and the ability to determine the real value CTV is driving.
This matters particularly in markets with high ad-supported streaming engagement, where repeated exposure should reflect the true reach of individuals within households, not just accumulated impressions.
Cross-channel attribution solves the second challenge by connecting ad exposure to measurable outcomes. By tracking when someone sees an ad across television, digital, audio or out-of-home and linking that exposure to subsequent actions like website visits, advertisers can identify which touchpoints actually drive engagement. This visibility enables budget shifts towards channels and devices that deliver results, rather than distributing spend based on assumptions about contribution.
The combination of accurate reach measurement and attribution creates a complete view of campaign effectiveness. Advertisers can quantify how many people they’re reaching, understand which media investments drive outcomes, and optimise accordingly. In Southeast Asia’s mobile-first, multi-screen landscape, where audiences engage frequently with ad-supported content across various platforms, this level of precision becomes essential for competitive advantage.
Preparing for continued growth
As OTT and CTV consumption continues expanding across the region, measurement complexity will increase rather than diminish. More platforms, more devices and more sophisticated audience behaviours will widen the gap between impression-based metrics and actual business outcomes.
The industry requires measurement solutions built for this environment, not retrofitted from methods designed for different markets or older media landscapes. Solutions must account for regional viewing patterns, household structures and the specific ways audiences move between screens. They need to work with locally calibrated data that reflects actual consumption behaviours rather than relying on aggregated estimates or third-party proxies.
For advertisers, access to this level of measurement changes the proposition. Instead of navigating the region’s complexity with limited visibility, they gain the insights needed to make informed decisions about reach, attribution and optimisation. For the industry, it establishes what accurate, actionable measurement should deliver as the market continues developing.
The growth in ad-supported streaming, the expansion of smart TV adoption alongside mobile dominance, and the increasing sophistication of audience behaviours all point towards continued change. The measurement challenge is solvable, but it requires capabilities specifically designed for how people in this region actually watch, engage with and respond to advertising across their screens.
This article is written by Amresh Kumar, Director of Sales, Southeast Asia at Nexxen.
