Marketers around the world face similar challenges, around areas such as changing media consumption and the impact of new technologies, but in Asia, priorities can differ according to data from the WARC Marketer’s Toolkit 2020. 

The data conducted for this year’s Marketer’s Toolkit consisted of a survey of almost 800 client and agency side practitioners around the world, and reveals some interesting variations, particularly in Asia.

Society

When considering the societal topics and consumer concerns likely to impact clients’ marketing strategy in the year ahead, the top four global priorities are, in order, data, environment, the low-attention economy and changing social media habits.

In Asia, however, changing social media habits are the biggest issue, with 90% citing this as either very important or quite important against the global figure of 81%. And while 76% expected the environment and sustainability to be an issue, this lagged the global figure of 84% and was only fourth in the list of Asian marketers’ considerations.

Technology

Globally, the emerging tech factors seen as being most important are AI, enhanced payment technologies, livestreaming, and chat bots.

AI drops to third in Asia, where enhanced payment tech is the biggest game changer, cited by 86% of respondents compared to 75% globally. Livestreaming (82%) is also seen as more important in Asia than the rest of the world (74%).

Economy

Globally, marketers are expecting Instagram, YouTube and Google to be the digital channels seeing the most increase in investment. And while these are also the top three for Asian marketers, almost half of the latter group (47%) also anticipate increasing spending on TikTok, compared to a third (33%) of marketers globally.

Industry

As regards particular industry issues, Asia sees viewability as the biggest cause for concern, cited by 48% of respondents there compared to 39% globally. There are also far more Asia marketers without a data protection strategy: almost a quarter (23%) say they or their clients have none in place – a figure that falls to 14% in a global context. 

WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2020 is available to download here. More information from a deep-dive into each of the five chapters, available now to WARC subscribers, will follow over the coming weeks.
Two free-to-attend events to discuss trends from the Marketer’s Toolkit will take place in London on 29 November and in New York on 12 December. 

Sourced from WARC