• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, January 12, 2015

Three out of four advertisers in Asia-Pacific (APAC) plan to increase spend on data-driven marketing in 2015, and 96% view audience targeting as an effective marketing strategy.

The insight comes from a programmatic and data survey from MediaQuark, a digital ad-targeting firm. The company surveyed 108 digital ad professionals on programmatic and data-driven marketing as it pertained to their 2015 plans.

“The results of this survey show that 2015 will be the year that data, audience and automation take the spotlight in all marketing, especially in APAC,” stated Tom Simpson, CEO of MediaQuark. “Over the past few years, there have been an influx of ad tech players into the region — setting up their infrastructure preparing for the market to mature. 2015 is the year that programmatic marketing will finally attract serious budgets from brands and investments start to pay off.”

In addition to several ad tech firms launching in the APAC region over the past several years, as Simpson noted, many doubled down in 2014 via senior-level hires, including The Trade Desk, Rocket Fuel, Xaxis, PubMatic, Rubicon Project, AppNexus and others.

MediaQuark found that nearly two-thirds (65%) of APAC advertisers are already using programmatic for digital advertising, with programmatic accounting for less than 25% of digital budgets. A lack of understanding is the biggest barrier between APAC marketers and programmatic, per the survey,followed by a lack of third-party data and the high cost of data services.

“In 2014, 60% of brands looked in-house or to specialists such as DMPs or data providers for data services and only 5% saw their DSP as a primary source for audience data,” stated Simpson. “It is therefore incumbent on programmatic players to educate and simplify the real-time-bidding (RTB) process in order to make it easily accessible to all advertisers and increase data-driven buying.”

The survey also found that 74% of brands and marketers believe a data-driven approach increases campaign ROI. A recent Forbes and Turn report revealed that marketers heavily invested in data-driven marketing have similar sentiments. In fact, 74% of the "data-driven marketing leaders" surveyed by Forbes and Turn believe they have a "competitive advantage” in customer engagement and loyalty as a result of their investments.

“Site-based planning will remain the dominant approach to digital media buying, but brands are starting to see the value in data-driven audience targeting, with 74% believing that it increases campaign ROI,” stated Simpson.