In late 2021, Quantcast set out to understand what challenges would face marketers, agencies, and publishers alike in the year ahead, and where opportunities to succeed can be found. Following a comprehensive survey of almost 600 marketers and media professionals in the region, a few clear trends around what the industry expects to navigate in 2022 emerged.

Australia and New Zealand: Attribution, a lack of skills, and navigating the cookieless world are key challenges to address. But opportunities lie in strengthening the foundations.

Three key themes emerged across ANZ respondents, when asked what they foresee as their biggest challenges in 2022:

1. Measurement: Along with a plethora of media platforms and channels now available to use in modern advertising, attribution models are becoming more complex, and multiple measures are often needed to track success across campaigns.
2. Skill shortages: As the media landscape recovers, marketers, media agencies, and publishers are facing pressure to develop their workforces for a new era in marketing, one where digital know-how adds more value than ever.
3. The cookieless world: With third-party cookies exiting the digital ecosystem in 2023, the media industry is pressed to find new ways to understand audiences, particularly as consumer behaviour is rapidly evolving.

These challenges facing the media industry are not new, and in the midst of change, advertisers and publishers in the region see three key opportunity areas to embark on in 2022, and are going back to basics to do so: understanding the customer, gaining industry knowledge, and working on brand awareness.

• Getting first-party data right: In 2022, the real work with first-party data begins as advertisers and publishers invest more into digital channels or platforms, and look to capitalise on deeper audience insights by expanding their access to first-party data.
• Learning and upskilling: With critical skills gaps to fill, marketers and agencies are looking to develop their teams’ and get more done with less. Gaining knowledge within teams helps businesses future-proof themselves for increased digital consumption.
• Building brand: As the industry carries out plans to launch new products and services,  advertisers and publishers anticipate upticks in demand over the next 12 months. Brand-building activity is therefore crucial for businesses that want to continue staying top-of-mind as consumer spend increases.

Asia: Consumer behavioural change is shifting business strategies, but digital shifts are creating opportunities to build brand and fill skills gaps

These key themes are what respondents from Asia saw as their biggest challenges in 2022:

1. Consumer change: Deriving deeper and more accurate audience insights will drive businesses to develop first-party data strategies that can help them better measure ad effectiveness from digital marketing tactics.
2. Driving revenue: As brands recover from a pandemic-driven standstill, marketers are challenged to drive revenue for their businesses. Media agencies are therefore facing increased scrutiny to demonstrate marketing return on investment (ROI), while publishers are challenged to understand more about their readers in order to strengthen their inventories and meet advertiser demands.
3. Digital transformation: Rapid digitalisation in Asia will influence hiring and resourcing within organisations as brands, agencies, and publishers look to fill critical skills gaps.

As the media landscape in Asia continues to evolve, advertisers and publishers in the region see opportunities to focus on brand awareness, explore more digital tactics, and fill skill gaps.

• Building brand: With plans to improve their product or service offerings, potentially expanding into new markets over the next 12 months, advertisers and publishers are looking to invest in brand-building activity and gain traction, particularly in previously unexplored markets.
• Investing in digital: Digital advertising is the way forward, with advertisers prepared to invest in digital channels and platforms, and leveraging AI and ML technology to derive deeper audience insights in 2022.
• Learning and upskilling: With the increasing dominance of digital, advertisers and publishers alike see the opportunity to learn and upskill their teams to fill key knowledge gaps, particularly as digital media takes on greater importance within marketing strategies.

Download the full 2022 APAC Advertising State-of-Play Report to get more insights now.

This article was contributed by Quantcast.