When it comes to advertising stats, numbers count for a lot. With 3.3 billion mobiles currently registered in Asia, it makes sense that with an overall larger market they’re probably doing better. Regardless, as a technological hub Asia is far superior in accepting new technology such as mobile advertising than we are in Europe. In fact, Gartner reported in 2012 that advertising revenue reached a whopping $4,333 million and is set to double by 2016. But why?
In the past decade Asia has pioneered the use of mobile technology and users have adopted it into their daily lives very quickly, meaning the industry has seen consistent growth. According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Asia already had 2.9 billion mobile users by the end of 2010, with America and Europe lagging behind with 969 million and 741 million respectively.
Many mistake Asia’s success in mobile with its large populations in India and China, however, much of Asia’s mobile growth is due to the continent’s experimentation with new tech. Many of the recent mobile related innovations that we take for granted such as QR codes were actually developed and tested in Asia before being rolled out and adopted by advertisers across Europe, America and beyond.
With so many mobiles to target, Asian brands have the best reach via smartphones and tablets as these devices are always on. In fact, in some places like Hong, Kong, Dubai or Singapore there are more mobile phones than people, which suggests that people are using them almost constantly both for work and in their personal lives. In fact ITU statistics show that the number of people with their own mobile phone number is as high as 74%.
Mobile phones have only recently become our main means of communication in the UK with Gartner findings of a 64% adoption rate, however with the accelerated growth in Asia at 81% they have long far outnumbered landlines by 5:1 and fixed broadband lines by 12:1. Asian users are sharing more information than ever via their mobile phones which makes it a prime place for advertisers to market their products or service.
Users in Asia have demanded better and cheaper mobile plans to enable them to spend more time on the web. Places like Japan and South Korea were some of the first regions in the world to offer mobile email, 3G and unlimited data plans at reasonable prices which has made mobile a very effective way for advertisers to target their perfect customers. Asian brands are much more tech aware pairing mobile with traditional media strategy to maximise their effect.
Two of the largest mobile phone providers in the world Samsung and LG are based in Korea and are consistently pushing the boundaries of technology forward to help make the mobile experience more involved, and more user focused to allow advertisers more innovative means of advertising to their audience. It makes sense that these brands will pioneer their new technology close to home, and Asia benefits from being on the cusp of everything new.
Asia’s mobile market is accelerating faster than ours because the majority of people want it to, and as a technological hub many innovative products and services are tested and implemented close to home first before being rolled out across the globe. In fact Informa believes that Asia will soon become the largest ad market overall, accounting for 30.9 percent of the global share by 2015. Do you think Europe and America have any hope of catching up?
By Kristopher Hamilton, Digital Marketing Executive at adizio.
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