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Looking at Asia helps multinationals know what’s coming down the road, says Google APAC CMO Simon Kahn

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By Charlotte McEleny, Asia Editor

August 1, 2016 | 3 min read

Google has released its micro-moments research into APAC, arguing that the region is too important in terms of mobile insights to be basing decisions off western data.

Google Korea Office

Google's office in Korea

The business has pushed harder into APAC in recent years and chief marketing officer for the region, Simon Kahn, says that now it’s reached the right level of maturity, it’s building out its own insights to help the industry make better decisions around marketing strategy, particularly for mobile.

“My message to multinationals who operate in Asia is that Asian consumers are leading the way in term of digital and it is vital for companies to understand what happens in Asia. This is to better address consumer needs but to also see what is likely to be coming down the road in Europe and the US,” he said.

This is driven by the research which revealed that APAC contains four of the world’s top 10 markets for smartphone penetration. According to Google, nine countries in Asia already have the same or a higher smartphone ownership rate than the US, where the majority of global marketing strategies are born out of.

“You see some dramatic changes too. One of the things we looked at was the smartphone penetration rates and in South Korea, which is in the top five globally, last year is was at 83 per cent but this year grew by almost 10 per cent year-on-year. For markets like Vietnam, it was at 55 per cent last year and this year 72 per cent, putting it on a par with US. Despite being mature, that increase was still dramatic in Korea,” he explained.

Another key insight from the research included the speed at which people in different APAC markets made decisions due to the access to information that they hold 24/7. In Vietnam and Thailand, 97 per cent of smartphone users said that online research has contributed to making purchase decisions more quickly now than they did a few years ago.

The research helps shine a light on how fragmented APAC can be, let alone when comparing to the US. For example, In fact, 84 per cent of smartphone users in the Philippines are more likely to buy from companies that provide instructional video content, compared to 48 per cent of their American counterparts.

Kahn says this means that while there are common threads to the research overall, primarily in that it shows the importance of having a good mobile experience, learning how to make more effective advertising in these ‘micro-moments’ then came down to how brands applied their own data and insights.

“The first step is brands need to understand what the micro-moments are for their customers and that differs by product and vertical. The second step is learning when it is the exact right time to serve the message and whether that’s an ad or content,” he said.

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