The Asia-Pacific region has proved to be a promising region for the social networkers for expanding their domains of enterprise and attracting the endorsers to expand business with them. Although North America still leads the segment with 42.3% share of worldwide social media spending worldwide in 2014 but the APAC region has captured the second spot in this index in the latest forecast report on Worldwide  Social Network Ad Spendings By Region 2013 – 2016, overtaking Western Europe. In 2014, the Asia Pacific region accounted for 29.2% market share, a year-over-year growth of 0.6%, in social network ad spending worldwide whereas the Western European region just held 22.4% of the stake for the same.
The ad spending expenditure of APAC region
The Asia Pacific region accounts for 54.7% of the total global population and 47.5% of the worldwide Internet users, but in contrast to the number of Internet users, it harbors 52.2% of total social media users and this large chunk of social media users from the APAC region has scorched the analysts for deducing a growth of 53% in social network ad spending this year as compared to 2013. The total expenditure of the social networks on the ad campaigns in this region is expected to exceed the $5 billion dollar mark this year and it would account for 12.2% of digital ad spending, which is higher than its share in UK.
China Qzone at the moment is the king of social media network in the APAC region having 645 million users followed by Sina Weibo with 503 million registered users but Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) this year outpaced all other social platforms in terms of Y-O-Y growth (10.2%) accounting for 410 million active users in July 2014.The dominating countries in the Asia Pacific region have been China and Japan in terms of social network economies because in both these nations people follow a brand on social media site in large numbers as compared to the US. The region’s share in terms of ad spending is expected to rise by 2% in the next year as this much decline in the same sector is forecasted in the North American continent.
The greatest contributors of online search and browsing in the world have been the developing nations like China, Brazil, India and Japan, but the Asia Pacific region supersedes the Latin American region (both of these constitute the majority of developing nations) in terms of buying stuffs online with almost 14 out of 22 product categories under consideration exceeding the buying rates to the browsing rates. Hence the marketers are anticipated to spend 3 out of 10 dollars on social media advertisement in this APAC region as 36.5% of worldwide B2C e-commerce is expected to be accumulated from this region in 2014.
The major Internet giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter are competing to increase their revenue from mobile ads and with the APAC region catering 47.6% of global mobile users, this part of the world is expected to be the most preferred avenue for expansion in the mobile ad revolution. By 2018 eMarketer has forecasted that mobile ad spending would account for more than 50% of all online media, which in turn will account for about one-third of total ad spending.
Spending per user in APAC region yet to revive
While the expansion of social media ad disbursement has been significant in the APAC region, the spending per user is still on the staggering zone. This is due to the fact that most of the developing nations of this region like India and Indonesia have immature digital advertising economies. The mobile ad industry is also facing a huge disparity in the Asian markets because the mobile ad expenditure as a percentage of digital media spending will approach 70% in the U.S. in 2018, in China it will be about 30%, which will be directly proportional to the slower growth of social media ad spending as in the Asia Pacific region about 52% of online shoppers prefer mobile for purchasing.
Even after the prevalence of so many gloomy trends in the segment of social media ad spending in the APAC region, the marketers of this sector are still bullish on its growth in this region and the survey of eMarketer has predicted that at the end of their forecast period, 16.1% of digital dollars in the Asia Pacific region would go towards social network which is approximately $8.6 billion.
