Having gone through a tumultuous past few months with cuts in technology spending globally and in APAC, what will be the outlook like in the region for the rest of 2023?
How resilient are companies in their quest to continue innovating and modernizing their business and what are the new tech opportunities that are emerging?
In the first of three interviews with key players across Asia to tap the industry pulse, we speak with Aditi Kohli, Senior Vice President, APAC, GWI, to find out about her perspective on the challenges Ad and Martech companies are facing, and the strategies they can adopt to remain competitive.
With big tech companies cutting costs and fears of a slowdown in 2023, what do you see as the impact on the APAC digital advertising outlook for the year? How are your customer budgets being impacted?
There’s undoubtedly increased pressure on budgets. A recent study by the World Federation of Advertisers found just under a third plan to decrease spend in 2023 – for APAC specifically, this is 15%. Ultimately, it isn’t as simple as cost cutting – brands are looking at how to maximise and allocate the budget they do have. With this in mind, it’s more important than ever to have a thorough understanding of consumers – this will allow businesses and marketers to sharpen their focus and navigate changing consumer needs.
At GWI, this starts from understanding what platforms their consumers are active on and the types of content they engage with – when we look at the data, what consumers are thinking and feeling isn’t always what you might expect, and the ability to make informed, data-driven decisions will allow brands to react to changing needs at any given time. By leaning on the data, brands can act more fluidly, and adapt their actions to secure the maximum return on their investment.
What is GWI doing to navigate this uncertain climate?
Our customers use GWI to gain a deep understanding of their audiences at speed. Our focus is on making these all-important insights accessible and affordable with technology that makes it possible for anyone, expert researcher or not, to get their hands on insights rather than having to conduct lengthy and expensive market research.
Our focus is always on the customer – assessing what they need to stay competitive. The evolution of our tech never stops. In a rapidly evolving market, we’re constantly investing in tech that helps our customers get even faster, better and easier access to great insights. One thing we’re always working on is reducing our users’ time to insights. The result is a moat of data that covers a broad range of topics, themes, markets, etc. and we’re always enriching it to get our customers what they need to get ahead.
What do you see as the opportunities driving growth this year? What do you see as the innovation or marketing trends that are changing how we use technology in 2023?
The world is on the cusp of an AI revolution. According to GWI’s research, 23% in APAC are using AI tools in the workplace at least once a day, in industries such as IT, telecoms and engineering, and 72% are interested in using ChatGPT. The popularity and uptake of these tools will only increase over time.
Data will be key to our ability to embrace this new technology. AI needs accurate, deep data if it’s to provide definitive answers and GWI couldn’t be better placed –whether it’s transforming how users can get to insights even faster in our platform, or making popular AI tools connect to our API to create new distribution channels for GWI data.
This will benefit businesses and marketers who want fast and fresh insights that are meaningful and undeniably accurate, and will be a game changer in the Martech world.
How is GWI working with customers to ensure data privacy and proper governance in your collaboration with the industry?
Two big challenges for the customers we work with and for the advertising and marketing industry as a whole are data privacy and the death of third-party cookies. There’s an understandable concern over privacy and ethics when it comes to working with consumer data and many companies are quite rightly being held to account. This isn’t an issue for GWI, as we use third-party panel providers that allow us to maximise our reach in different markets using strategic partners. It also means we can keep GWI data completely separate from the consumer’s personally identifiable data, and still continue to offer industry-leading audience insights without the privacy risks.
GWI’s survey-led data also doesn’t rely on cookies and we use them in a very limited way. 99% of our customers aren’t using cookies with us to understand their audiences and are instead using anonymised survey data through our platform.
What strategies should marketers adopt to stay competitive this year? How can they continue to drive traffic and businesses to their platforms?
The key to staying competitive – no matter the industry or business – is having a good grasp on how consumers think, act, and feel. Consumer insights that help marketers know who their audiences are and drill down into granular details around factors like buying behaviours, lifestyles, media consumption and spending habits will put marketers at a huge advantage in building impactful strategies that really reach and resonate with their audiences.
Given that consumer behaviours are constantly shifting, marketers need to make sure they have a true, up to date understanding of their audience. It all comes down to the speed and depth that marketers get to know their consumers – the better and faster they’re able to do this, the more likely they are to win.
