Social media ad spend set to reach $5.8 billion

According to the research, marketers in Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea will increase their investment in ad spend on social media at 21.6 per cent in the next five years. This forecast excludes mobile messaging apps such as Kakao Talk, Line, WeChat, and WhatsApp.

Japan, according to the study, is the largest and most mature social ad market, contributing a large portion of spending in the five markets, even with a somewhat small share of the social population. China is the greatest contributor to growth, with its social ad spend forecast to be almost triple in the next five years.

Commenting on the new report, "Asia Pacific Social Media Advertising Spending Forecast, 2014 To 2019", Forrester analyst Xiaofeng Wang highlighted two key factors for the growth: low market maturity coupled with a large and active social-media population; and increasing social-media consumption.

“Collective social ad spending in these five AP markets end up being less than half of that in the US in 2014," Wang said. "The maturity of the APAC social ad market is low considering the large numbers of people in the region who use social media, and as this market matures it will grow faster than in the US."

The percentage of the online population using social media in the five Asia-Pacific markets will increase by double digits from 2014 to 2019, Wang added, as further Internet adoption brings even more consumption of social media.