Hong Kong marketers to boost spending for online, new free-TV options: HK2A and Nielsen

Wanda Gill (pictured), vice president of Watch with Nielsen Hong Kong, shared the findings with more than 200 marketers and agency executives at a luncheon in Hong Kong yesterday.

“Digital and online advertising is growing in importance in the marketing and media mix,” said Gill, “marketers will need the support of advertising and media agencies to deliver optimal integrated solutions across offline and online media and they need better tools to gauge return on investment.”

The survey highlights that social media, online video advertising and mobile apps remain the hottest trends. At the same time, 17 per cent of marketers are considering an increase in TV spending with the city's new free TV entrants.

“While some marketers will provide additional funding to support digital marketing, the shift to digital will be more at the expense of the print media relative to other conventional advertising or marketing channels,” added Gill.

Here are some highlights from the survey:

• Hong Kong marketers’ sentiment toward the global economy has improved, at 35 per cent positive in 2014, up from 17 percent in 2013. Those who believed the global economy is getting worse declined from 53 per cent in 2013 to 27 percent in 2014.
• More than half of respondents (52 per cent) feel optimistic about their own company’s performance as a result of the brighter global economic outlook. However, increases in operation costs (60 per cent) and the local economic downturn (57 per cent) remained the top two major economic concerns among respondents. 
• Eighty-two percent of marketers indicated that they would increase their advertising budgets by 6 per cent or more, a 7 per cent  increase from 2013.
• In terms of budget allocation, several facets of online advertising experienced growth within the marketing mix: Internet display ads (8 per cent), social media (8 per cent), paid search (3 per cent) and search engine optimization (2 per cent).
• Social media and mobile social media continued to be considered the hottest trends in advertising (74 per cent), followed by online video advertising (42 per cent) and mobile apps (37 per cent).
• For traditional media, television (18 per cent) and newspapers (19 per cent) received the largest allocation of advertising spending, while budget allocations for magazine advertising dropped from 12 per cent to 7 per cent.
• With the anticipation on new free TV channels and mobile TV, 17 per cent of respondents plan to increase their TV budget while four-out-of-five (79 per cent) of marketers will keep their budgets at the current level. 
• While more than one-third are indecisive, nearly half (47 per cent) of marketers will fund new free-TV players with existing free-to-air TV budgets, while 34 per cent will fund new mobile-TV options. Two-out-of-five (21 per cent) plan to shift current online/mobile budget to new mobile-TV players.

The survey covered various commercial sectors including top-spending advertisers and concentrated on both their planned advertising spending and business focuses in 2014. The survey enters the 15th consecutive year in 2014 and is HK2A’s annual endeavour. Around 100 self-administered online questionnaires were received from key advertisers and screened for final analysis from 3 January to 6 February.