Brands drowning in 'digital waste': TNS Digital Life research

The latest Digital Life Study by TNS suggests that brands have failed to listen to what their consumers want, noting that nearly half of the Asia-Pacific consumers surveyed did not want to engage with them via social media.

This finding the company has termed as “digital waste”.Some 43 per cent of Singapore consumers do not want to engage with brands. While in Hong Kong, the figure was slightly lower at 42 per cent, and rising to 52 per cent in China.

Brands must plan and manage online engagement carefully to avoid alienating consumers and doing more harm than good, the study advised.

The research studied more than 72,000 consumers in 60 countries, asking about online behaviour.

Arnaud Frade, regional director digital strategy at TNS Asia-Pacific, said "digital waste" is the accumulation of thousands of brands rushing online without thinking who they want to talk to and why. 

“Whilst many brand owners understand the value and relevance of the vast online world, many fail to understand the audience they are connecting with.”

The fast growth markets have shown a huge appetite for increased internet access and mobile services. Marketers there are more open to brands on social networks, with 73 per cent of Vietnamese and 69 per cent of Indonesians saying that social networks are a good place to learn about brands, compared to only 50 per cent in a developed market like Korea, and 62 per cent in Singapore.

The study added that as online communities mature, brands that can cut through the digital noise have fantastic potential to drive rapid growth from this nascent consumer base.

Marc de Lange, director of technology and services sectors at TNS in Hong Kong, noted that while the online world presents massive opportunities for brands, it is only through deploying precisely tailored marketing strategies that they would be able to realise this potential.

“Choosing the wrong channel, or simply adding to the cacophony of online noise, risks alienating potential customers and impacting business growth.”

Ryan Lim, business director at Blugrapes Singapore, said while it is vital for the study to define “social media”, the whole social network would include blogs, Twitter and forums, besides the commonly-known Facebook and Youtube.

“The majority of people don't like and don't want to be bothered by inclusive ads and banners. If you include all types of online advertising, 43 per cent (for the case of Singapore) is actually quite low,” he told Campaign.

He added that Facebook and Twitter have taken different approaches, whereby they display ads at one side of the page and only users who find the ads relevant will respond.

“Whether users engage to the ads would depend on their interests, but brands still need to appear in front of them. We did a study earlier and found out that only 0.03 per cent of the users click on the Facebook ads. It is all about relevancy,” he noted.