Digital Advertising on Emerging Markets

The recent growth of emerging markets in Asia and Latin America has already forced businesses to reconsider their ad strategies in various niches and put more focus on digital marketing and advertising activities. Much due to the fast development of Internet and mobile technologies, digital ads become gradually more effective in terms of promoting either a brand or its particular product on an emerging market.

However, online advertising in China, South Korea and Thailand (top-3 emerging markets of 2013) is far trickier than it seems at first glance, much because of these countries’ numerous peculiar aspects.

Major trends

Clearly, the digital ad industry in emerging economies is rapidly developing, yet in some segments, the market is still somewhat “raw”. As for the prevailing trends of 2014, these include:

• Increase of the overall online ad spending


• Shift of focus on to content marketing, mobile and video marketing activities


• More trust towards digital and lessened ad spending on offline marketing and advertising.


• Growing amount of interest from the side of large international businesses.

Benefits vs. Challenges

As mentioned above, emerging markets presuppose both their pros and cons in terms of digital marketing and advertising, caused by numerous factors. Hence, businesses should consider them, while developing potentially successful campaigns in these regions.

In particular, some of the core benefits of running online ads on emerging markets are the following:

• A wide range of ad opportunities due to relatively low competition rates


• Fast-growing penetration of Internet and mobile technologies


• The shaping of a middle-class audience segment, generally more responsive to digital ads.

At the same time, among the main challenges for advertisers there remain:

• Fragmentation of the market


• Substantial difference between social classes


• Specifics of mobile devices (e.g. mobile phones with limited functionality)


• Few luxury branding opportunities


• Competition against local companies

What to expect?

Most experts agree that digital advertising on emerging markets is only going to develop further in the upcoming years, and businesses are likely to increase their online ad spending. At the same time, the demand for creative and exclusive ad campaigns, appealing to audience’s specific preferences will become gradually larger.

“Potential benefits of running effective ad campaigns on emerging markets are huge, yet it is vital to take a vast array of customers’ preferences in these countries into account, if a business wishes to succeed”, Anton Ruin, CEO of Epom ad serving company explains.

Digital Advertising on Emerging Markets