Ad channels prove popular on YouTube Thailand 7 months after launch

Ariya Banomyong, Thailand country head for Google, said that before YouTube Thailand landed, Thais spent millions of hours in a day watching video on YouTube. And two-thirds of them were watching via mobile devices.
Now, that traffic has doubled in only seven months.
“The success of YouTube in Thailand is due to the readiness of the online ecosystem, including users, content creators, and brands. Ads on YouTube are called ‘willing to see’ ads, since users can skip them any time they want, but if they do not, that means they are willing to watch because of the attractive content,” Ariya said.
Besides Thailand, the other top five Asian countries for brands using YouTube for advertisement channels are Japan, the Philippines, India and Indonesia.
According to YouTube’s Ads Leaderboard, which ranks the most watched adverts on YouTube, DTAC’s “Power of Love” is the most watched in Thailand. Vatcharaphong Siripark, senior vice president and head of brand communication division at Total Access Communication (DTAC), said this video was also ranked among the top 10 viral ads worldwide.
“This ad got 1 million views in the first nine hours and got more than 12 million viewers worldwide in less than a month,” he said.
Yukontorn Wisadkosin, managing director of Ford Thailand, said the automaker’s marketing strategy was “digital first”. The company this year increased its digital-marketing budget from 15 per cent last year to 20- 25 per cent of the total.
 “Ford Thailand’s increased digital-marketing budget is following Ford worldwide. We want to be a smart brand, and because of consumers’ multi-screen behaviour, we need to be on any screens people are watching,” she said.
“The Ford Thailand YouTube Channel is ranked No 1 for the most views and most video uploads in the automotive-industry category six months from its launch. We are proud to be second only to our US colleagues in terms of subscribers to the official Ford YouTube Channel. We will continue to engage with audiences in new ways, with consumer-driven content and compelling video,” Yukontorn said.
Ariya said that according to TNS research, half of YouTube users surf the Internet while watching television. That means audiences are divided into three groups: television only, television and YouTube at the same time, and YouTube only. If brands do not have a presence on YouTube, they will lose the third group.
Namtip Prasitsakulchai, senior vice president of Krungsri Auto Marketing for branding and advertising, said digital marketing was a new channel allowing the company to reach customers at any time, anywhere, and to match the shifts in consumer behaviour.
“We pride ourselves in being a market shaper and will continue to search for new opportunities to reach customers,” she said.