A week before the awards presentation, the channel noted that the number of page views on its site, mtvasia-awards.com, had doubled to more than 50 million. The average stay per visitor also doubled to about 18 minutes.
However, the number of votes dropped to six million from almost 18 million last year. MTV attributed the decline to procedural changes aimed at identifying and eliminating duplicate votes.
Chris Steward, MTV Networks Asia senior vice-president of advertising sales, said: "Strategically, when we first conceived of this franchise, we wanted to ensure we were reflecting the opinions and tastes of young adults in Asia."
He said that the registration process had been tightened up, although "it's still very easy to fill through" and that the votes are audited, which accounted for the sharp drop this year.
Voting in categories as the 10 favourite music artists, favourite video and top male and female singers was underway in 10 markets - Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippiines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and India - continued until last week. The winners were due to be announced tonight (January 24) in Singapore.
Ballots were cast in one of four ways - via MTV Asia Awards' website, SMS or fax or mail.
This year's awards attracted four partner sponsors, two more than in 2002: Toyota Motor Corporation, Nokia, Mastercard and Panasonic. There were also 11 market specific sponsors, including San Miguel for Southeast Asia, Smart Communications for the Philippines, StarHub for Singapore and an internet and information services company, Shenzhen New Power Technology, for China.
Smart head of personal communications and mobile services, Anastacio Martirez, said the sponsorship allowed the telco's "cutting edge technology to reach more youths through our borderless world of telecommunications".
Steward said the large number of telco companies sponsoring the event was significant.
"Nowadays, when you are marketing to young adults, it is critical to reach them at every available contact point. Most of their activities are varied and multi-tasking so it is necessary to afford them the opportunity to consume media whenever they want to," he said.