Inbound marketing and sales software company HubSpot has released insights from APAC consumers in its latest report The Effectiveness Of Advertising In Asia Pacific. Ryan Bonnici, Director of Marketing, APAC & Japan, HubSpot, discusses the reports findings and why he believes that native advertising might be the latest buzzword but inbound marketing really should be the focus.
The report found 50 per cent of people in Asia Pacific have installed ad-blockers or they plan to have one in six months. “If that’s not a big enough kick up the butt for advertisers and brands who only use outbound advertising I don’t know what is,” Bonnici told B&T.
Figure seven of the report demonstrates the reason why ad-blockers have become so popular for people. Over 50 per cent of people said they had an ‘extremely negative reaction’ to pop-up online advertisements and 75 per cent of people said they had an ‘extremely negative’ or ‘somewhat negative’ experience with auto-playing video advertisement.
The total opposite can be found for sponsored content (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter), as well as email newsletters. For example, the majority of people have a ‘somewhat positive’ (45 per cent) or ‘extremely positive’ (9 per cent) response to email newsletters.
The report shows that brands marketers need to rethink the way the advertise to people. “It’s all about creating value for the consumer and I feel like brands have forgotten that to be honest. When it comes to advertising it’s about the short term dollars and ‘how many click-through can I get right now’.
“Brands don’t realise all of the people they are losing from auto-play ads, the more you do that the less likely that person is going to come back to your site. The lifetime value of that customer is shrinking, people need to stop focusing on the short term.”
So what’s the alternative? Bonnici believes that inbound marketing is the way of the future. “I think inbound marketing is the solution, creating great blog content, great website content, great social content which creates value for your audience.
“It’s about really knowing your customer, reading the signal that they’re giving you and then giving them what they want in response to that. That’s what inbound marketing is all about and that’s what we’re all shifting towards, we’re shifting towards creating value which pulls and attracts like a magnet people to your brand as opposed to paying to interrupt them with ads.”
HubSpot found there is a clear preference for native advertising amongst digital consumers while ads that interrupt (pop-ups, auto-playing videos, etc.) are the lowest rated. But Bonnici warns that ad-blockers may eventually target native advertising, “I do think though over time ad blockers are only going to get smarter and over time they may start to block native pieces of advertising out.
“I think native advertising has a space for us right now. It’s inbound, it’s not interrupting people but its definitely not the be all and end all. I think creating organic content on your blog and on your site is the most important priority for marketers.”
