Wednesday, September 28, 2011
According to eMarketer data from April, overall ad spending levels in India, Russia and Brazil are still low, but the Chinese market will see nearly half a billion—$448.7 million—in mobile ad spending this year. Next year, eMarketer predicts, advertisers in China will spend $717.8 million on mobile.
To learn more about mobile ad spending in BRIC countries, click here.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Overall ad spending levels in India, Russia and Brazil are still low, but the Chinese market will see nearly half a billion—$448.7 million—in mobile ad spending this year. Next year, eMarketer predicts, advertisers in China will spend $717.8 million on mobile.
To learn more about mobile ad spending in BRIC countries, click here.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The day is coming when Asia-Pacific will surpass North America as the world’s biggest advertising market. According to data published in eMarketer’s new “Global Media Intelligence Report,” which was released in collaboration with Starcom MediaVest Group, the question is not whether Asia will overtake North America in advertising spending; the question is when.
Currently, Asia-Pacific is in second place behind North America in total media ad spending worldwide. Advertisers are expected to spend $135.1 billion in the region in 2010, compared to an estimated $176.6 billion in the North American market.
But growth rates are a different story. The overall advertising market in North America is expected to grow about 2% each year through 2014, when it will reach $190.6 billion overall. Asia-Pacific, on the other hand, will see growth rates between 4% to 8% each year until 2014, when the total media ad market reaches $173 billion in the region.
Currently, North America controls 36.6% of the worldwide advertising market, compared to Asia-Pacific’s 28% share. But North America’s share will decline to an estimated 33.8% of the market by 2014, while Asia-Pacific’s slice will increase to 30.7%. Based on current growth rates, it’s likely that as the Asia-Pacific ad market continues to mature, it will eventually outshine that of North America sometime beyond 2014—most likely, in 2016 or 2017.
At the simplest level, the reasons behind the shift come down to sheer numbers. We’ve written before about the staggering number of mobile phone users in China (850 million in 2010, at last estimate), along with the fact that there will be more mobile internet users in China this year than the entire population of the US.
In addition to mobile users, massive “untapped” populations of internet users in China and India are another reason. China currently has an estimated 518 million active internet users, according to eMarketer estimates, compared to just 63.6 million in India. Combined, these two populations make up the fastest-growing demographic of internet users in the world, pegged by eMarketer to increase to over 1 billion by 2014. Knowing that, it’s no wonder marketers are spending more in Asia-Pacific, though I’m not sure whether we should be heartened or disheartened that, in a few years, we won’t be No. 1 anymore.
The “Global Media Intelligence” report covers six major regions worldwide — including countries in Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, North America, and Latin America — and focuses on digital and traditional media advertising spending trends, demographics, broadband and mobile penetration, media usage, and consumer behavior in each region. It is available exclusively for eMarketer Total Access clients.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
My latest report – on wireless usage and advertising trends in the BRIC countries (Brazil / Russia / India / China) – launches today. Given their large populations, some of the numbers are understandably eye-popping. The full report is available here for Total Access subscribers, but here are a few stats that stand out:
The China stats highlight a key trend I identify in the report, namely that mobile subscriber growth is slowing, but mobile Internet user growth is speeding up. The days of triple-digit subscriber growth are long past. And as subscriber bases solidify, it is now the mobile Internet user populations that are increasing rapidly, albeit from small bases.
They also reveal the degree to which the adage “Everything is bigger in Texas” applies equally to China. Staggering as it may to conceptualize, there will be more mobile Internet users in China in 2010 than the entire population of the US.
Granted, these mobile Internet users do not currently monetize as well as smaller mobile audiences in, say, the US, so aggregate mobile advertising spending levels in China are still low relative to the size of the mobile Internet user base. Nevertheless, the growth trend is significant, and China’s mobile subscribers and Internet users will generate by far the highest advertising spending among the BRIC nations ($223.2 million in 2010, more than tripling to $699.9 million in 2012).
It’s easy to get caught up in the lure of big numbers and overlook the reality on the ground. The fact is that even as a rising number of consumers are purchasing smartphones, many mobile users across the BRIC footprint will remain on less sophisticated devices and legacy second-generation mobile networks well into the middle of the decade.
For marketers interested in reaching the bulk of BRIC mobile consumers today, this means emphasizing messaging campaigns and reserving flashier mobile sites and applications for the small vanguard of smartphone users. By the same token, marketers should also be prepared for changing behaviors as network speeds increase and mobile consumers graduate to more expensive devices and data services.
