Audience fragmentation is old news – ‘TV is now everywhere’
South East Asia may be behind its Western counterparts in the adoption of addressable TV, although signs in the market suggest the tide is now turning. But with viewers increasingly using mobile streaming and video-on-demand services, it’s a trend marketers and broadcasters can no longer afford to ignore
Film noir to colour, low definition to hi-res, bulky backs to wafer-thin bezels – television manufacturers have always convinced audiences to upgrade their sets by selling them the latest shiny new box. Which might be why last year’s marketing launch for Samsung’s Smart TV felt so different.
For maybe the first time in Asia, the South Korean giant focused its attention on advertising how its latest set came with a complimentary 12-month iFlix subscription, meaning users could access its on-demand TV shows and movies with a set-top box. More surprisingly, a key selling point was ditching the appliance itself. Its ‘Smart Hub’ interface, Samsung boasted, could be accessed on purchasers’ mobiles, too.
In all, it marked a radical shift to the marketing adage that content is now king.
And it’s no surprise: in South East Asia, the TV game has changed dramatically in the past five years. As data becomes increasingly commoditised, people are spending an average of 3.6 hours on mobile internet a day, with video content expected to account for 78% of data consumption by 2021 globally.
By the end of September last year, South East Asian countries amounted to 1.82 million paid streaming video-on-demand accounts, with most of the growth coming from Malaysia and Indonesia. In the latter country, mobile video is consumed regularly by 68 million people daily, with the average person spending up to three hours a day on YouTube, according to eMarketer.
Amid this landscape, one of South East Asia’s biggest players, iFlix, now claims to have 15 million subscribers – a 250 per cent growth in the first six months of this year. And Iflix now has many competitors: Hooq, Viu, Genflix, Tribe, are among just a few global players fighting for eyeballs among the region’s 600 million-strong population – with global behemoth Netflix hanging over them all.
Given its early stages, figures showing the adoption of smart TVs in South East Asia remain scant. According to data provided by Nielsen, smart TVs’ penetration reached 22% last year in Malaysia, rising by 1% from 2016. Figures for Singapore and Indonesia remain harder to come by. However, there is no doubt that the market is poised for an explosion.
On the rise: South East Asian countries amounted to 1.82 million paid streaming video-on-demand accounts last year
As Charles Baillie, the Asia Pacific managing director at global advertising technology company RhythmOne, explains: “The Connected TV market is still developing across the region when compared to more mature markets such as Australia, Japan and China.
“That being said, adoption has certainly been on the rise over last 12 months, in particular with Singapore, Philippines and Thailand leading the way, followed by Malaysia and then Indonesia. As the price points for Smart TVs continue to become more competitive, I anticipate the growth curve to accelerate significantly over the next six to twelve months.”
Naturally, given this recent upsurge, brands and media agencies are starting to wake up and smell the coffee.
According to Baillie, whose company specialises in providing a programmatic marketplace across multiple screens, the demand for buying connected media is rapidly picking up pace in South East Asia.
“We’ve seen levels of brand and ad agency awareness and interest pick up significantly over the last six months,” Baillie explains. “From the conversations we are having, there is no consistent ‘owner’ across the media agencies yet, but there is definitely growing appetite with both advertisers and their agencies to explore, test and prove its value.”
However, connecting all the dots between TV networks, over-the-top players and a household’s multiple devices is far from an easy feat. While online media fragmentation has long posed a thorn in marketers’ sides, connected TV presents an entirely different prospect. Not only are traditional free-to-air broadcasters, such as Singapore’s Mediacorp and Astro in Malaysia, clamouring into the OTT space, there are, of course, an entire host of SVOD services, with even YouTube now making headway into producing its own content. According to a report by the IAB Australia, navigating the landscape requires a “collaborative process across a wide spectrum of the broadcast and digital media industry”.
Meanwhile, RhythmOne is beginning to bridge these gaps in the ecosystem by integrating its ad-buying technology not only into the apps, but into the TV hardware itself, through deals with the likes of Sony, Panasonic and LG.
As such, while addressable, connected TV may be far from mainstream in South East Asia, marketers need only look to neighbouring Australia to see where the land lies. Though often pigeonholed in the same market development as the US and UK, Australia was likewise a late bloomer to addressable TV.
Although catch-up formats have been in existence for well over a decade, national network Seven became the first major broadcaster to start offering connected TV as late as 2016. However, it is estimated that connected TV now makes up 45% of total Australian content consumed. In light of this, connected TV is a trend both South East Asian broadcasters and marketers can no longer afford to ignore.
Baillie: ‘Linear TV will increasingly become a thing of the past, with the exception of global events like the World Cup’
“We are still some way off connected TV making its way to the ‘top’ of the marketing agenda, but it is fast becoming a key channel in advertisers’ multi-screen media mix,” concurs Baillie. “Continued market education is critical to help marketers and their agencies understand the value of connected TV and what role it plays in their broader media plan.
“We believe it’s our role at RhythmOne, together with others involved in this space, to help with that education process. I’m confident we’ll then see Southeast Asia follow the same growth trajectory as Australia before too long.
“We have been talking about the fragmentation of viewership and distraction of attention amongst consumers for as long as I can remember. That is old news. Linear TV will increasingly become a thing of the past, with the exception of global events like the World Cup which help bring us together.”
He adds: “Consumers are jumping between laptops, smartphones, streaming media players and before too long, we’ll probably see virtual reality and augmented reality devices become the norm. At the end of the day, Smart TV is just another device where consumers are increasingly spending time. Therefore, if a brand wants to be relevant, they should be there too.”
So how can South East Asian brands and their media agencies start to take advantage of this rapidly evolving landscape? For Baillie, the answer is as simple as diving in, testing and finding out for yourself.
“Like with all digital ad campaign strategies and execution, there is no substitute for firsthand experience, and hands-on use of new tools and technologies,” he argues. “Marketers need to think and plan in a way that is aligned with how consumers behave by adopting a ‘TV everywhere’ mentality. Now is the time to align your brand at the forefront of media innovation.”
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