Social ad spending in the Asia-Pacific region will grow faster than social ad spending in North America or Western Europe, according to a new report from eMarketer. The area will see a 48% increase in social network ad spending in 2013 (passing the $2 billion mark), growth partially fueled by its huge social network user base and variety of social networks for marketers to choose from.
The rate of social network ad spending growth in Asia-Pacific is “middle of the pack” among other global regions, but is significantly higher than the growth rate in more established markets like North America and Western Europe. By 2013, Asia-Pacific will account for a greater percentage (22.9%) of global social network ad spending than Western Europe (with 22.3%). This gap will widen to nearly three percentage points by 2014.
This growth is largely driven by Japan and China, with their “more sophisticated social network economies.”
China has the world’s largest social networking market, with 307.5 million users by the end of 2012 (nearly double the US user base, according to eMarketer’s estimates). Social network ad spending in China will rise 51.3% next year (higher than Asia-Pacific’s 48.3% growth rate) to $612.8 million, despite growth being limited to “homegrown” social sites including Tencent Qzone, Renren and Sina Weibo.
With Asia-Pacific’s enormous user base of 616 million, it comes as no surprise that marketers will continue to invest more in social network ad spending in the region.
