In my spare time, I serve as the Chairman of the Asia Digital Marketing Association. We publish an annual Digital Marketing Yearbook, stuffed with data, insights and case studies on what’s happening online in Asia Pacific, to help marketers and advertisers make the most of their digital potential.  The 4^th edition is out now and can be downloaded free at www.asiadigitalmarketingyearbook.com.

To give you a taste of what’s going on in our region, here’s a look at some of the trends — and of course there is much more detail in each of the country sections of the Yearbook.

• Internet users in Asia Pacific spent more than 5.6 trillion minutes online in 2009, and bought US$7 billion in virtual goods.
• When it comes to making online purchases, Asians across the board listen closely to their friends. Nearly half (48%) of South Korean internet users said they had bought something in the past because it was either discussed or recommended by one of their online friends, as have 38.2% of Malaysians, 40.4% of Japanese, 42.2% of Vietnamese, 48.4% of Indonesian’s and one third of Filipinos.
• Mobile shopping is taking hold of the region, with nearly eight out of 10 Asian mobile users engaging in some form of mobile shopping activity in the past year.
• The Koreans are the top shoppers, with 97% of internet users say they have shopped online.
• Indians spent the least amount of time online of any Asian nation, at 11 hours per month.
• 63% of Singaporeans online watch TV at the same time.
• Japan leads the pack with mobile social media – more than 75% of social network users only access the sites via their mobiles.
• The Filipinos lead the world in SMS, with two billion text messages sent every day.
• Hong Kong people take the instant message crown, spending twice as much time IM’ing as anyone else in the region.
• More than half the Asia Pacific region’s online population is Chinese, but they are the least prolific users of search in Asia Pacific.
• Australians spend more time on social networking sites than anyone else in the world (seven hours a month) and 27% of all Australians blog.

Online advertising spending has rebounded, following recovery from the recession, and continues to grow. However, there is no consistent pattern across the region. In 2009, Japan’s online ad revenue grew just 1.2% over 2008, but hit a milestone: more money was spent on online media than on newspaper advertising for the first time. In China in 2009, 16.69% of all ad spend was online. Contrast this statistic with the Philippines, where just 1% of total advertising expenditure is online and SMS reigns supreme. For reference, Singapore’s percentage of online spending stands at approximately 6%.

We waded through terabytes of statistics on platform usage, media consumption, and broadband and mobile penetration to compile this Yearbook, and it’s easy to see why some marketers lose sight of their customers and become pre-occupied with the technology. Our hope is that the Yearbook gets beyond the facts and figures, and provide insights that will make marketers better equipped and more successful.

At the end of the day, there really is no such thing as a digital strategy, just solid marketing strategies that happen to use digital channels. No one has a crystal ball into what devices, applications, web services, and sites tomorrow’s customer will use, so stay engaged with your customers and flexibly follow the trends across muiltiple platforms.

Tagged as: ADMA, Asia Digital Marketing Association, Asia Pacific, Australia, China, Digital marketing, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Statistics, Taiwan, Thailand, The Philippines, Vietnam

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