Advertisers start to grasp online world

Though the proportion of advertising expenditure via digital media seems to be limited, Mindshare Thailand, a leading marketing and media network company, says many local companies are trying to figure out how to find the optimal mixture for this new platform.
“Given this trend, we expect to see advertising spending via the digital media platform increase to Bt9.3 billion in the next three years,” said Katika Saiseni, head of digital at Mindshare Thailand.
He said local and international advertisers in Thailand were considerably split on how they allo-cated their budgets in the digital |segment. Most international advertisers have a mixture of display media, social media and search engines in their digital-marketing budget.
Meanwhile, local advertisers have different mixtures that vary according to their familiarity with digital platforms.
For example, a local brand that is in the early stage of digital-ad spending will skew its budget towards display media. But one that has already gained experience with digital media for a year or so will adopt a broader mixture.
He said the market leaders in digital ad spending were among FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands, automobile companies and the property industry.
This year, digital-ad spending is forecast to reach Bt2 billion, accounting for 2 per cent of the advertising-industry total of Bt100 billion. Next year it will reach Bt3.3 billion, or 3 per cent of an estimated Bt121 billion. By 2014, digital spending could hit Bt5.44 billion, or about 4.5 per cent of overall media spending forecast at Bt121 billion, while the forecast for 2015 is about Bt9.31 billion, accounting for 7 per cent of projected ad-industry total of Bt133.1 billion.
Apart from these developments, Thais are changing their behaviour related to watching television. A good example was the recent London Olympic Games.
In the “London Olympic Audience Review”, Napaporn Jeatawattana, head of Mindshare’s trading arm The Exchange, reported that TV remained the platform |for about 82 per cent of Thai audiences viewing the Games, or about 45 million people. But during the Beijing Olympics four years ago, the company found that 87 per cent of Thais, or about 44 million, watched via TV.
However, the decreasing TV audience did not imply that the popularity of the Olympic Games was declining, she said. In fact, there were more choices in terms of viewing platforms, such as YouTube and smart mobile devices.
In regard to print-media consumption among Thais, Suresh Ramalingam, managing director of Nielsen Thailand and Vietnam, said Thai consumers still preferred physical hard-copy versions of books, newspapers or magazines rather than electronic ones. More than one-third of Thais claimed to have purchased or subscribed to hard copies via online channels, while only 18 per cent had done so for electronic reading materials.
Nielsen Thailand believes that Thai consumers still prefer online content to be free of change, in contrast to the paid hard-copy version. Therefore, coupled with the long-instilled habit of reading on printed paper, the concept of paying for subscriptions or making a purchase of an electronic book, newspaper or magazine is still far from prevalent among Thais.
“Therefore, we are optimistic that we will see a migration of the mode of reading preference in the near future,” Suresh concluded.