Asian branded content underperforms

Content marketing in APAC sees the lowest clickthrough rate (CTR) of all regions, excluding Australia.

Polar’s Branded Content Performance study surveyed 100 clients about their content marketing campaigns in various regions.

CTR content marketing campaigns in APAC was 0.27%, with highest average in Europe (0.55%).

asian branded content

The story is different when Polar looked at average time spent (ATS). Here, APAC campaigns were only bettered by those in MENA.

An ATS of 199 seconds in APAC was far above the 140-second global average.

Content was shown to suffer diminishing returns over time, with 80% of views generated in the first month and 36% of views in just the first week.

asian branded content

Mobile wallet surge in India as high denomination notes are scrapped

As Indian Prime Minister Modi announced with only four hours notice that 500 and 1,000 rupee notes would be withdrawn from circulation, mobile wallets saw a surge in usage.

The notes were rendered worthless to combat counterfeiting, with Kiran Vasireddy, senior vice-president at Paytm, telling the FT “we have seen unprecedented growth over the past few days.”

Paytm claims that 4m people started using its wallets in the week after the demonetisation, with site traffic up 700% and app downloads up 300%.

At MobiKwik, money being added to wallets has gone up nearly 2,000%.

Cross-border transactions driven by APAC

PayPal reports that cross-border sales volume has grown by 38% in two years, from $15bn in Q3 2014 to $19bn in Q3 2016.

The Ipsos survey of 28,000 consumers from 32 countries found that China is now the most popular cross-border online shopping destination for global consumers.

21% respondents admitted to shopping cross-border from Chinese websites in 2016. The US was the second most-popular online destination (17%), followed by the UK (13%).

An average of 37% of cross-border purchases in APAC were made on a mobile device, with the figure in China rising from 27% in 2015 to 35% this year.

In Europe and North America that figure was only 15%.

APAC agencies not allowing transparent audits

Some APAC media agencies are not engaging in transparent auditing procedures according to new research by FirmDecisions.

This leaves agencies open to accusations of overcharging.

FirmDecisions, a marketing contract specialist, studied 121 audits it had carried out in APAC. Campaign reports the following findings:

  • 26% of APAC advertisers did not have a signed contract with their media agencies.
  • 25% of contracts did not allow sufficient audit rights.
  • In 43% of cases, access to financial records was restricted by agencies.
  • 60% of contracts had insufficient rebate return clauses.

Image via Campaign

agency audits in apac

China’s top brands

Marketing Interactive reports that brand consultancy Prophet has listed the top 50 relevant brands in China.

10,000 consumers were surveyed globally in the construction of the list, with Alipay coming top amid increasing competition amongst mobile services.

Here’s the top five brands most influential to Chinese consumers:

  1. Alipay
  2. WeChat
  3. Visa
  4. Marriott
  5. UBER

International news influences China’s richest

Despite censorship, international TV and digital news reaches 45% of affluent Chinese consumers.

Further findings from the Ipsos study are reported by Campaign Asia and include a combined digital and print reach for international monthly publications of 27% among China’s affluent consumers.

Image via Campaign Asia

china affluents news consumption

South Koreans watch video ads..

..for longer than other nationalities.

South Korea has a viewable completion rate of 48%, according to a TubeMogul report (based on 15-second desktop video ads).

That puts it top of the pile above Japan (41%) and Indonesia (44%). Not all APAC markets show such persistence for completing videos, with China’s completion rate at just 16%.

Malaysia’s was even lower at 14%, though issues such as ad fraud and internet connectivity are still being grappled with.

Singles’ Day generates $17.8bn GMV in 24 hours

The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival saw gross merchandise volume (GMV) of RMB 120.7bn ($17.79bn). That’s a 32% rise on Tmall and Taobao sales on the same day in 2015.

RMB 98.97bn ($14.6bn) in GMV was generated on mobile devices from 657m delivery orders. That figure was up from 467m delivery orders last year.

Over 1bn payment transactions were processed in total across the day.

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singles day