Aussie adland out of touch

A fascinating survey of professionals from Australia’s advertising industry has revealed how out of touch adland is with society at large.

The study by Think TV asked 1,636 advertising professionals and 1,016 members of the public about their hobbies and media usage.

Some of the results are shown in the chart below. Most notanly, adland professionals significantly overestimate social media usage amongst the public.

In more detail, representatives of adland believed that:

  • 32 Percent of normal people had used Buzzfeed in the past seven days. The actual figures was 7%.
  • More than half the population (53%) had used Twitter. Only 13 Percent had done so.
  • Three quarters of the population had used Snapchat in the last seven days (76%). 25 Percent had done so.
  • 22 Percent of the public look to TV for adverts they will like. 42 Percent admitted this was so.

More from B&T News.

adland estimates of population media usage

Chart via B&T News

VR demand in China to rocket?

PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report includes a section on virtual reality. In it, as you can see from the chart below, VR units are predicted to surge to over 257 million globally in 2021. The demand in China for VR headsets is forecast to hit nearly 86 million units by 2021.

These figures though chiefly comprise of portable mobile VR units that are not dedicated to VR (most likely smartphones paired with a headset, like the Gear VR from Samsung). What they say about the likely appetite for VR is up for debate.

The PwC report does, however, include estimates of VR content revenue – $3.6bn in China by 2021. To the sceptics (your author), this seems pretty robust.

vr demand

iBeacons may be an effective tool for offers in Thailand

Warc reports on an ESOMAR paper, titled ‘Shifting customer engagement in the multichannel retail era’, which looks at the impact of an iBeacon campaign undertaken in Tesco Lotus stores across Thailand.

5,000 iBeacons were installed in stores with the report looking at how consumers interact with pish messages. Of the 15 million Clubcard loyalty users in Thailand, 4 million use the mobile app which can interact with iBeacons.

The study shows that 8.7% of the customers who were successfully exposed to iBeacon coupon offers took action, and spent significantly more at both retailer and brand level. At a brand level, 45% of the shoppers taking action were new to the brand associated with the coupon.

Among consumers exposed to offers via iBeacons, there was a 27.4% higher customer activation rate compared to customers who were not exposed. Health and beauty products saw particular success.

Malaysia ecommerce market to grow 23% per year through 2021

This prediction comes from consultants A.T. Kearney and its Global Retail Development Index, which looks at a variety of geopolitical and business factors.

The Index ranks the top 30 developing countries for retail investment, with India and China’s positions, 1 & 2 respectively, coming as no surprise.

Malaysia ranked third thanks to high disposable income, tourist numbers and government investment. Electronics and media are the biggest sectors for ecommerce in the country.

Youku Tudou losing ground to Weibo & others

Youku Tudou, the video platform owned by Alibaba and often referred to as the YouTube of China, is becoming less desirable to brands who want to capitalise on shorter-form video.

Apps such as Weibo allow for more of a browsing experience with short form video, similar to the now-defunct Vine.

Though Youku has 500 million monthly active users, research by agency L2 shows that of the top 75 global luxury brands in China, the proportion with an active Youku brand channel is down 16% since 2016.

Read: Everything you need to know about livestreaming in China

38% of messaging app users in Australia say it is their primary form of contact

WhatsApp and other messaging apps are becoming increasingly popular in Australia.

The Works and its Datafication project shows that 11.9m Australians use messaging apps, an increase of 13% from 2016. 38% of messaging app users report it as their primary form of contact, up from 33% in 2016. More than half of messaging app users (56%) said they use an app every day.

Snapchat usage in Australia has risen 55% over the last year to 4.4 million people, with WhatsApp up 35% at 4.5 million (up 35%). Facebook Messenger is by some way the leading platform with 10.4 million users.

You can explore the Datafication study to look at messaging app usage by Australian city, see Sydney below.

messaging stats

Mobile video in India no longer preserve of metropolitans

The falling cost of mobile data is seeing mobile video consumed by people across society in India. Culture Machine and Kantar IMRB analysed an 8,000-strong smartphone panel and interviewed with 1,500 users of ‘over the top’ video services.

  • 40% of mobile video users came from lower socio-economic groups.
  • Non-Metro consumers accounted for 65% of video views on smartphone
  • YouTube delivered greater reach than Facebook, but the social network delivered greater engagement.

More from Telegraph of India.

Alibaba increases stake in Lazada

Alibaba now owns the large majority of Southeast Asian retail platform Lazada. A $1bn investment took its stake from 51% to 83%.

Lazada offers access to a small market that therefore has lots of potential for growth.