WhatsApp at 97% penetration in Singapore

Unsurprisingly, 86% of the country’s respondents say it is their most-used app, according to research by Blackbox, published by eMarketer.

Facebook Messenger trails in second place, used by 57% of respondents in Singapore. Only 2% said it was the chat app they use the most.

KFC’s Tmall page contributes to 2.4m chicken nugget sales

KFC has more than 5,000 restaurants in over 1,100 cities in China, and as of September 6th, the chicken restaurant has its own Tmall shop.

The Tmall shop offered discounted meals when purchased in bulk (e.g. 30 breakfasts for c.$30). The page ran in conjunction with an augmented reality game in restaurants, where Tmall app users could ‘capture’ the Tmall cat and receive discounts on the KFC Tmall page.

And the stats? 3m uniques to the KFC Tmall page on day one alone. 80,000 30-piece chicken nugget packs were sold (that’s a whopping 2.4m nuggets).

kfc tmall

28% of APAC consumers have not interacted with mobile ads in six months

An IAB report finds APAC to be the region most unresponsive to mobile advertising.

28% of APAC respondents said they had not interacted with mobile ads in the last six months, compared to 19% in both South America and Europe.

This may be seen to be particularly surprising given mobile adoption in APAC (44% of Chinese respondents buy on mobile every month). More from Mumbrella.

Multichannel marketing and channel preferences across APAC

Experian’s Digital Consumer View Asia report has plenty of data to be drilled into.

Here are some highlights from the survey of 1,235 respondents across six Asian markets (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and China).

Across the region as a whole, email is still the preferred method of brand communication for consumers (34%, with greater preference in Singapore and Hong Kong), but consumers are increasingly open to marketing through social media channels (29%).

Other preferences in descending order were SMS (17%), app notifications (13%) and chat apps (7%, though higher in China and Thailand).

The chart below shows how many consumers made an offline purchase after receiving comms in a particular channel.

Chat apps in particular vary in their effectiveness across territories (65% in Thailand, 21% in Singapore).

Respondents across the region that have made an offline purchase as a result of viewing an online advertisement or promotion

purchases as a result of different comms

Elsewhere in the study, more than 60% of all respondents noted receiving too many messages. Email and social media channels were the biggest ‘spammers’ on the list.

In Hong Kong, fully 81% of respondents said they get too much email from companies.

Percentage of respondents across APAC who said they receive too many messages in a particular channel. 

too much communication

Alibaba expects a whopping Singles Day

It’s a little over a month until Singles Day on November 11th and Alibaba is expecting 600m transactions through Taobao and TMall.

This would represent a 30% increase on 2015, and is the prediction of Judy Tong, chief executive of Cainiao Network Technology, which does delivery and transaction logistics for Alibaba.

Properly segmented data the biggest challenge for APAC advertisers

A Criteo survey of more than 400 senior marketing professionals in retail across APAC revealed their main challenges faced in achieving online advertising and marketing goals:

  • Properly segmented market/consumer-level data (55%)
  • Difficult to achieve or justify ROI (53%)
  • Finding the right solutions providers (50%)
  • Lack of management/department support (44%)
  • Silos/organizational structure (42%)
  • Lack of technical knowledge (39%)
  • Lack of budget (15%)

The report gives details more findings about performance marketing in APAC. Check it out.

Alibaba takes biggest share of bumper China ad spend

Emarketer has revised its forecast for China digital advertising spend.

Alibaba is now estimated to take more than a quarter of yearly digital adspend – $12.05bn. Alibaba therefore goes ‘top’, ahead of Baidu, which has suffered some bad press in recent months and been affected by new regulations.

China will take a fifth of all digital adspend worldwide in 2016 – $41.66bn.