Malaysian Market for Marketing & Advertising
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Franz in Advertising
Marketing Online – Statistics 2009
The Internet marketing industry in Malaysia didn’t grow in a special way – It slammed itself as much onto the wall as any other fast developing countries out there while bringing truckloads of offline business into the online world. Since local data is so important when it comes to perfecting a firm’s understanding of a local market, much haven’t been done by local agencies to perfect those data, other than big boys like comScore or Nielsen.
Also, they provide very general information which may not be very useful when it comes to psycho-targeting, market behavioral analysis and forecasting for marketing campaigns.
SKMM (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) has not performed a very refreshing job on top of that. As the regulator of multimedia and communications in Malaysia, SKMM plays a very important role in providing data (if not educating) the general public on what’s REALLY going on in a large geographic location.
But first:
Value of Internet marketing isn’t just ‘VISITS’.
Forget mathematical statistics and metrics such as Unique Visitors, PageViews and Time Spent on site for a while there. In Elioe.com’s 2009 whitepaper on “Idiotic Basics to Google Analytics” it has been said that visits/impressions/hits/visitors mean different things and indicates almost absolutely nothing of conversion-favorable value. But the prime understanding of many decision makers in Malaysia is this – More visits = More views. More views = Higher conversion value. Higher conversion value = Higher sales. On one front, that’s grammatically and politically correct.
On another front, we tend to look too much at ‘VISITS’ / ‘VISITORS’ / ‘PAGEVIEWS’ and ‘TIME ON SITE’. But the real question is – What do these metrics alone tell you about:
- What are the visitors doing on your site?
- What are they really interested in?
- What are their drawing factors to click the ad?
- How many click-throughs leading to sales conversions that are vital to follow up on?
- Relative behavior and visitation patterns performed on the landing page?
And so forth. Since Google Analytics is a Javascript-based delayed tracker, it leaves even more room for errors when it comes to really identifying what’s going on. If we were to look at the direction of research companies like comScore and Nielsen, it’ll probably cost a bomb.
There are a few ways where you can evaluate site performance and identify user behavior on your site: Analytics customization (which brings reports in a whole new different way), market volatility reports, Webconomy outlooks and marketing campaigns.
If the Malaysian government is planning to spruce up the ICT industry in terms of business sense, first provide data to work on. And I believe SKMM holds a lot (if not all) of the responsibility to support itself and/or other companies in growing that way.
Advertising Spending Trends by Category, as of August 2009
This chart shows that Internet spending accounts at the high of 0.7% for this four month, have the growing trend of spend on broadcasting, dropping trend of publications and fairly average spend on outdoor advertising. In 2007, RM40 million is spent on Internet advertising.
The Advertising industry in Malaysia is a multi-billion Ringgit industry, with telecommunications companies being pretty dominant, (for now it’s Celcom) topping at #1. But when you look at the effectiveness of their advertising to bring substantial benefits to their website, it’s almost saddening. Here, let me demonstrate to you what I’m talking about.
The above chart shows total spending for 5 big brands – Maxis, Celcom, Digi, Telekom Malaysia and Giant. At an average of RM4 million a month on advertisement. Now take into consideration the 0.7% you see on the upper chart on March. It accounts for an approximate value of RM28,000/mo on Internet advertising spends. With positive tolerance level at 20%, total spending for an entity in average is only RM33,600/mo.
Additional brands that are not included in the chart are: Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Information, AirAsia, Walls, Milo, Dutch Lady, Panasonic, Astro, Malaysian Airlines, KFC, Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia Tourism Board and Grand Brilliance.
Ironically on JUNE 2009, comScore reports the following websites having most visits for that particular month. Put a little more focus on the average minutes per visitor. MUDAH.MY and HMETRO.COM.MY is #1 and #2 respectively, but in terms of Unique Visitors, Star Publications is above HMETRO and MUDAH is just second to follow in the whole list.
But on the “REACH” part, Maybank2u.com.my and Mudah.my is at the VERY bottom, surpassing even CBS, Wordpress, AOL, Ask and Tagged. So where are telecommunications companies really expanding in terms of total market share on the Internet? These data serves to point out a few possibilities:
- Malaysian businesses that spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing online do not contribute to the growth of ‘LOCAL MEDIUMS’ to benefit itself and neighbouring countries.
- Malaysian businesses relate Internet advertising to a lot of ’short term goals’ than ‘long term and very sustainable programs’.
- There are still a lot of room for improvement in the ICT industry, particularly in truly understanding the worth of Internet marketing/advertising.
- Malaysia’s Government 2.0 plans/visions MAY not succeed by 2010.
- There are none/little reputable local hotspots for Interactive Media such as videos.
- Niche markets in consumer-based industries have not properly set its presence online.
- Malaysia is only at the starting point of becoming a self-sustainable Webconomy.
- Local and foreign investors have a lot of opportunities to exploit Malaysia as their corner or stepping stone to ASEAN markets.
- News-centric sites are dominant, therefore have adverse effect on individual professionals online.
- Malaysian web surfers may not be very ready with local dominance of web applications, particularly everyday-use apps.
Now compare data like these to your analytics reports, marketing strategies and plans. Charts like these are good research tools and possible key indicators of “Possible Online Ad Purchases” or “Where Most Malaysians Goto Online”, but definitely not for “Activity Vibrancy of the Malaysian Market” or “Ringgit Value to Ad Spend”.
The same concept applies to your Google Analytics, Sitemeter or WebStats report.
