Modus Market Maps
The origin of this report can be traced to a dinner conversation between the author and a digital media industry colleague where the question was posed; “given the dominance of the global platforms in digital advertising and marketing, would it actually be possible to reach a meaningful audience across Southeast Asia, using only a local Southeast Asian owned and built AdTech/MarTech stack?”
We didn’t know the exact answer, but we did know from experience that there is a wide range of locally SEA owned and built AdTech and MarTech available. This report sets out to establish some answers to this question with 240+ companies listed in this report, and while achieving a complete tech stack from local players without any intersection with global platforms may require considerable work, there’s no doubt that Southeast Asia has a vibrant and growing AdTech and MarTech sector.
The primary selection criteria for the inclusion of a company in this report is that the company is founded and headquartered in Southeast Asia. If we have inadvertently omitted your company, please let us know. We thank our industry ‘veterans’ and colleagues for their valuable insight in the preparation of the report: Ganga Chirravuri, Adam Hobson, Fionn Hyndman and Dominic Powers
Digital ad spend in Southeast Asia, 2022: USD $4.2 billion …but still only 32.9% of total media ad spend
eMarketer has reported* that digital ad spending in Southeast Asia has grown from USD $3.13 billion in 2020 to USD $3.68 billion in 2021, a 17.8% growth rate, and is forecast to rise to USD $4.20 billion in 2022, a further 11.3% increase. While this is certainly strong growth, what is more revealing is the fact that eMarketer also forecasts that the USD $4.2 billion for 2022 still only represents 32.9% of total media ad spending for SEA, well behind other global markets. In particular, large advertising/media markets such as the US and China, and the broader Asia-Pacific region now see digital ad spending having taken a majority share of total advertising expenditure, compared to traditionally dominant broadcast and print media. eMarketer is forecasting that total APAC digital advertising will comprise 63.4% of total media advertising spending across the region.
USD $500 million near-term incremental growth forecast…but a larger USD $3.9 billion market opportunity awaits
The gap between digital ad spend as a % of total ad spend for Southeast Asia and other markets represents a significant opportunity for Southeast Asia and its local AdTech and MarTech ecosystem. High levels of market growth and shifting ad spend will drive the sector for the rest of this decade as advertisers and marketers continue to move their advertising & marketing expenditure from traditional media to digital media. In simple terms, if today the local ecosystem had the same % share as other markets, the local digital ad spend would be USD $8.1 billion, representing a large opportunity for growth from the current forecast of USD $4.2 billion. The current forecast suggests there will be USD $500 million in digital ad spend either from new budgets or existing budgets moved from old media to new media over the forecast period to 2024.
In publishing this report we aim to continue playing a meaningful role in the Southeast Asia Ad/MarTech ecosystem as we regularly update this first Modus Market Map, and in due course publish additional market maps for other tech sectors in Southeast Asia.