Audio has a ‘sweet and sour’ story in APAC. Sweet because it’s still a channel that delivers high attentive reach at one of the lowest attention costs, and sour because it is projected to decline by 3.5% from 2023.
The ‘Ear Entertainment Economy’ is transforming with ASMR, audio books, and calm audio apps. TikTok has become the social jukebox where GenZ and Millennials are discovering new music, remixing it with their posts, and resharing it.
Despite massive digitalization, paid audio is still a market-and-talent-based and content-driven platform. Three key trends that drive its destiny:
Linear radio moving to addressable:
Across markets, addressable has not scaled at the pace it had the potential to, due to a variety of factors, key among them being the slow transition of the big radio players to migrate to a data-driven audience buying model and commercially operationalize it.
Streaming’s explosive adoption is tapering off:
Due to the vast cultural, linguistic, and economic differences across APAC, streaming has hit the adoption ceiling in mature markets like Australia and Singapore, while there is significant growth potential in markets like India and China.
Spotify and YouTube Music continue to maintain their lead across APAC, with 48% and 22% listener penetration, respectively.
Podcasts have not gained critical mass yet:
Penetration among 16+ audience has started to plateau at about 60% across all markets except for South Korea, where it is much lower at 43%. But the effectiveness of podcasts remains undisputed, with 37% of APAC respondents revealing that they visited a brand’s website and 22% checked a brand’s social media page after encountering ads on a podcast.
Amidst all this change, audio media investments are still mainly delegated to a complimentary media role rather than a primary one –
‘Always a bridesmaid, never a bride!’