Online Ad Spend in Asia Pacific

28 June 2010, Regional

Several recent reports have drawn some interesting conclusions about the online advertising market in the Asia-Pacific region. The takeaway: Things are heating up much faster than expected.

The Nielsen Company recently reported double digit growth for Q1 2010 advertising spending in Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand over the same period in 2009. Ad spending in the first quarter of 2010 totaled IDR13.2 trillion ($1.27 billion), NT$9.9 billion ($299.5 million) and THB22.79 billion ($664.4 million), respectively. Out of those three countries, Indonesia recorded the highest growth at 26%, followed by Taiwan (22.8%) and Thailand (10.8%).

Online ad spending led the rebound in Thailand, growing 68.29%, mostly due to lower levels of investment. It’s important to note that Nielsen Indonesia did not include online advertising and Taiwan did not separate out figures on Internet ad sales from its total advertising spending.

Nielsen’s Hong Kong office also recently reported that online ad revenues reached HK$255 million ($32.7 million in US dollars) in Q4 2009 to boost full year spending to HK$869 million ($111.4 million US). The total number of advertisers and campaigns more than doubled from Q4 2008 to Q4 2009, signaling an acceptance of online ads among advertisers in Hong Kong.

The Interactive Advertising Bureaus of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore also recently released their latest data for total advertising spending, with the Web leading the way. Online advertising in Australiawas up 17% in the first quarter of 2010 year-over-year, propelled by a surge in search and directory spending. In May, IAB New Zealand reported a 12.3% increase in Q1 2010 and IAB Singapore estimates that online spending grew 30.2% from the first half of 2008 through the first half of 2009.

 

I know it’s quite a bit of data to digest in a short blog post, but it boils down to one point: Online advertising saw sustained growth throughout Asia-Pacific, compared to a 9.8% contraction in total advertising spending worldwide from 2008 to 2009 as estimated by ZenithOptimedia.

It’s not anything new to say that Asia is a huge opportunity for marketers looking to reach out overseas to seemingly untapped masses. The region’s exploding mobile market, for example, offers plenty of potential for advertisers. (There are more mobile Internet users in China right now than there are people living in the United States. If that’s not potential I don’t know what is.) What this data does show, however, is that online advertising is booming in the Asian market, and for the first time, marketers won’t be able to count on Asia being “untapped” much longer, at least online.

 

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