Era Of Influencers? Influencers To Disrupt Southeast Asian And Global Advertising Market

The digital age has caused a paradigm shift in the way things are done today. Apart from putting more power in the hands of people, the internet revolution has reformed how businesses interface with and sell products and services to consumers.

For years, businesses coughed up considerable budgets to advertise their products or services on billboards, radio and TV to attract customers. 

In a market choked with many similar products, companies sometimes outbidded one another with top-dollar budgets to get the best advertising spot to attract the most eyeballs and ears.

This competition also meant big-spending companies stayed on top in advertising, sometimes whaling over small or new companies. An example could be Coca-Cola Co. KO and PepsiCo Inc. PEP, which constantly outclassed other fizzy drink industry players.

Over the last seven years, Coca-Cola has spent an average of $4 billion a year on advertising worldwide. Spending in the United States accounted for over 20% of that cost, totaling $913 million in 2018. Not many companies can match that budget.

But things may have changed, and a new advertising model — influencer advertising or marketing — has emerged to potentially disrupt the industry.

Today, influencer marketing is a nearly mainstream form of marketing and is creating more buzz than ever before.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

There is a school of thought that influencer marketing is a new take on the old technique of asking for celebrity endorsements, but there could be more.

Influencer marketing is a way companies and brands promote their products and services to consumers through endorsements from influencers. It usually includes content creation or promotion of the brand by the influencer to their followers.

On many metrics, influencer marketing has been more effective than traditional forms of advertising. It has helped businesses increase brand awareness, penetrate markets and reach new audiences with less budget, especially as ads on Google — Alphabet Inc. GOOGL or other social media platforms are getting more expensive.

Using Influencers To Enhance Marketing

A Southeast Asian regional technology-enabled digital media company founded in 2010 has built a business on this influencer advertising model.

Society Pass Inc wholly-owned subsidiary, Thoughtful Media, identifies opportunities in growing global markets and provides solutions powered by social media and social commerce.

What Does Thoughtful Media Say Are Its Selling Points?

• Leaders of media and content solutions, having executed millions of dollars in advertiser-branded content
• Innovators in the multi-platform network (MPN) industry, deploying thousands of videos that have generated billions of views across the most popular social media video platforms like YouTube, Dailymotion and Facebook — Meta Platforms Inc. META
• Experienced Asian content producers, digital media and product developers.
• Expanding and launching brands into valuable Southeast Asia, Chinese and American markets.
• A leading broad-based powerhouse in the U.S., Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines.

By tapping into the best and brightest social creators and influencers available, Thoughtful provides brands with unique opportunities to make authentic connections that are genuine and effective.

The company boasts of breaking with the norms of standard advertising by connecting consumers with people they like, relate to and trust while elevating brands in the minds of consumers everywhere in a way that goes well beyond just the message.

As part of its efforts to build the next generation digital ecosystem in Southeast Asia, Society Pass Inc. SOPA acquired Thoughtful Media earlier this month to look to build a premier digital advertising platform for Asia.

The partnership is another step in SoPa’s quest to expand into more than 10 subsidiaries by the end of 2022 and hopefully cement its place as a Southeast Asian acquisitions-focused e-commerce power player after recently acquiring Gorilla Networks.

The company operates in seven distinct verticals — loyalty, merchant software, lifestyle, food and beverage, telecoms, digital advertising, and travel.

SoPa currently provides merchants with #HOTTAB Biz, lifestyle e-commerce through Leflair.com, online restaurant delivery service through Handycart.vn, grocery delivery through Pushkart.ph and Gorilla Networks, a Singapore-based, blockchain/web3-enabled mobile virtual network operator.

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.

Featured Photo by Thoughtful Media.