Kuala Lumpur, 26 April 2018 – Integral Ad Science (IAS), the global measurement and analytics company that empowers the advertising industry released its first Southeast Asian, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Media Quality Report for H2 2017 today.
This report covers media quality benchmarks across brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability on desktop platforms, global video, mobile web, and mobile in-app with data from Southeast Asia including Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam as well as data from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
BRAND SAFETY: Malaysia’s online environment poses the least threat to brand safety risk (2.2%), well below SEA (3.5%) and global (7.9%) benchmarks
Based on data collected from billions of impressions analysed in the second half of 2017, Malaysia’s online environment was found to be among the safest in the region for display ads, with only 2.2% of online ad impressions flagged for featuring alongside content that present risk to brand safety.
According to the report, brand risk across all buy types in SEA, HK and Taiwan is 3.5% which is below the global benchmark of 7.9% for H2 2017. Indonesia (9.1%) and Thailand (8.6%) have higher brand risks in the region while Singapore’s online environment at 2.5% came in second safest after Malaysia.
IAS’ brand risk metrics characterise the safety of the environment in which ads appear. Impressions are flagged for appearing alongside content such as adult content, alcohol content, hate speech, illegal downloads, illegal drugs, offensive language and violence, which pose a risk to the brand’s safety.
VIEWABILITY: Malaysia has the highest viewability rate (68.7%) compared to SEA (58.9%) and global average (55.8%)
The viewability of online ads in SEA, HK, and Taiwan was 58.9% which is above the global benchmark of 55.8% for H2 2017. In comparison, Malaysia has the highest rate of viewable ads at 68.7% performing well above both SEA and global average. This proves that the industry efforts on improving overall viewability in that market have paid off.
FRAUD: Singapore and Hong Kong attracted a high fraud rate in the region
Fraud rates for campaigns that optimised against fraud remained relatively flat showing optimisation efforts are paying off. Vietnam had the highest average rate of optimisation against fraud in SEA at 0.6%.
Non-optimised desktop display fraud rates across SEA, Hong Kong, Taiwan is an average 7.2%, compared to the global desktop display average of 8.7%. Non-optimised fraud levels are representative of campaigns where no fraud mitigation strategy is in place.
In H2 2017, Singapore and Hong Kong had higher fraud risk at 20.7% and 14.0% respectively, because ad fraudsters tend to follow where the digital spend goes and be more active in the advanced markets.
Niall Hogan, Managing Director Southeast Asia, Integral Ad Science, comments, “This report shows the importance to advertisers, and buyers and sellers of digital media, of looking at SEA on a country level. Display Brand Safety overall is relatively low at 3.5% across the region, but peaks in Indonesia at 9.1%.
Likewise, we see low levels of Fraud in most SEA markets, but it is high at 20.7% in Singapore. This is most likely because fraudsters are chasing the higher CPMs that a market like Singapore commands. It is only by looking at their own data, in the different markets that they advertise in, that advertisers will be able to identify potential problems, and ultimate make changes that improve efficiencies and save them money.
The H2 2017 benchmarks for Malaysia should boost the confidence of advertisers to allocate more budget to digital media. Although traditional media still dominates the Malaysian ad market, with the industry’s efforts to tackle the brand risk and improve viewability, we think digital media spending will continue to grow in Malaysia.”
Brand Risk
Media Quality Report Brand Risk benchmarks are broken out into moderate, high and very high thresholds of risk. The majority of risk in SEA, HK, and Taiwan fall within the moderate category for both publisher direct and programmatic buy types.
Compared to the global average, overall brand risk across all buy types in SEA, HK, Taiwan is 3.5% which is below the global benchmark of 7.9% for H2 2017. Global brand risk has been on the rise since H1 2017 largely driven by headlines around topics such as violence and hate speech.
In SEA, HK and Taiwan, over one third of the risky impressions fall within the offensive language and controversial news category. This may be due to an influx of premium publisher coverage around offensive language and controversial news which is classified as moderate risk.
Key findings across display ads
- Malaysia’s brand safety risk was the lowest for display ads at 2.2%
- Singapore has the second safest online environment after Malaysia with only 2.5% of its display ads featuring in unsafe environments
- Indonesia’s online environment posed the highest threat to brand safety in Southeast Asia with only 9.1% of display ad impressions flagged for appearing on unsafe websites
- Following closely behind Indonesia for display brand safety risk was Thailand with some 8.6% of its ads flagged as a risk to brand safety
- In the Philippines too, risk to display ads was high at 6.9%
- The mature markets of Hong Kong and Taiwan accounted for relatively high level of risk to brand safety with 5.7% and 6% of ad impressions respectively flagged for appearing alongside content deemed unsafe
Viewability
Across all buy types, nearly 1 in 4 impressions is still in view after 15 seconds. Taking a closer look at SEA countries in H2 2017, Malaysia and Singapore have higher viewability, in comparison to other markets.
Key findings for display ads
- Malaysia has the highest rate of viewable ads (68.9%), surpassing Southeast Asia and global benchmarks
- Singapore has the region’s second highest ad viewability at 64.5%
- Taiwan and Thailand are at par with 59.2% ad viewability, well above global average of 55.8%
- Indonesia and Vietnam were almost at par with only 53.2% and 53% of display ads being viewable
- The Philippines too performed below global and SEA average with only 54.9% of display ads being viewable
- Interestingly, when it came to the market with the lowest viewability rate, it was Hong Kong at 50.7%
The SEA, HK & TW Media Quality Report was based on nearly 500 billion global impressions from advertising campaigns that ran between 1st July and 31st December 2017.
Built on in-house data science and engineering expertise, IAS’s brand safety solution has capabilities in multiple languages, across eight risk categories (adult, alcohol, hate speech, illegal downloads, illegal drugs, offensive language & controversial news, violence and gambling), covering 40 languages and nearly 99% of internet users.
The full report can be viewed here https://integr.al/2Hz6XpC.
