ASIA-PACIFIC: Mobile has yet to reach its effectiveness potential in Asia-Pacific according to a new WARC report which also highlights the role of mobile payments in driving marketing change in the region.

The State of the Industry: Mobile Marketing in APAC 2018, produced in association with the Mobile Marketing Association, is based on responses from 445 marketing professionals across a range of industries in 22 markets across Asia-Pacific.

Nearly all of these (93%) expected that mobile was having or would have a significant disruptive impact, changing the way their industries worked and how they connect with consumers.

The area with the most significance for the marketing discipline in terms of changing consumer behaviour is around mobile payments, cited by 50% of respondents.

Apps such as WeChat and Alipay have integrated payment technology into everyday life for Asian consumers, and the popularity of e-commerce sites like Alibaba and Tencent has driven usage.

M-commerce, cited by 45%, and watching video (43%) also emerged as behaviours that will challenge marketers.

Concerns about multi-screening (30%) and showrooming (20%) appear to be lessening, while relatively few respondents expected things like playing games (16%), photo-sharing (15%), mobile loyalty (14%) and webrooming (14%) to have much effect in the future.

The speed of change in mobile means that marketers are in danger of always having to play catch-up – one reason, perhaps, that a majority of respondents said they find mobile only a “quite effective” marketing channel (60%), indicating that there is still some way to go in optimising marketing effectiveness via mobile.

But almost one third (31%) reported that in their experience mobile was a “very effective” channel.

That gap is likely to narrow as more than half of brands (58%) have formal mobile strategies and most of them (81%) have integrated it closely with their other marketing activities.

And with four fifths (86%) of respondents expecting their mobile budgets will increase over the next year, they will be under pressure to show a return on their increased investment.

Sourced from WARC