Report: Singapore Ad Market To Dip In 2018

According to a new report released by Magna Global, Singapore is the only Asia Pacific market tipped to experience declines this year, with China advertising spending due to increase 10.3%, faster than previous expectations. However, Singapore’s ad market is expected to return to growth next year (1.3% in 2019), although this will be just recovering some of the lost spend in 2018.

According to the ASN Index, investment in Branded Content (linear TV) in Singapore has also plummeted in the first half of 2018—performing below the quarterly average of ~US$4.8m since Q15, e.g. Q18 saw brands spending just slightly over US$1.5m.

The Magna Global report also found advertising sales will grow by almost 7% (6.9%) in 2018 to reach US$165b in the Asia Pacific market. In addition, APAC remains the second largest region for advertising spend, behind North America’s US$218b, which represents accelerating growth compared to 5.7% in 2017.

According to the report, digital continues to hold the top spot for advertising spend in APAC and will increase by almost 17% in 2018 to reach US$70b, from 18% in 2017. TV remains second, with ad sales set to increase by 2.4% this year in the region.

Digital formats will command 42.5% of total advertising budgets this year, ahead of television’s 36% share as mobile continues to dominate within digital and will increase by 29% this year to reach two thirds of total digital advertising spend and search spending growing by 15% this year, accounting for just over half of total budgets.

It is bad news for print as newspaper spend will decline by 7.5% in 2018, and magazines will shrink by 12%. The report noted that while these are negative growth rates, they represent stronger growth than in 2017.

“Overall 2018 looks more promising in terms of ad spend growth in APAC compared to 2017. There is a clear spectrum of ad spend trends across APAC. For markets like China, Australia, Korea and Taiwan, digital is the key driver of growth,” said Gurpreet Singh, managing director at for APAC at Magna.

“In South Asian markets (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and big Southeast Asian markets (Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam) TV still dominates ad spend; digital is growing very fast – but from a low base. Markets like Japan, HK, Malaysia and Singapore are rapidly closing the gap between TV and digital spends. In the next five years, we will see spends further consolidate between TV and digital leaving a small single digit share for other media.”