Malaysia performs poorly for digital brand safety!

The data was collected from impressions analysed in the second half of 2016 in six countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. 

Niall Hogan, Managing Director of Integral Ad Science, Southeast Asia says “For digital video advertisements, the global average for brand safety recently decreased from 11.2% in the first six months of 2016 to 8.9% in the latter half of 2016. However, with the advent of fake news and the increase in violent and extremist content, brand safety remains a critical issue for advertisers, underscoring the need for a solution to protect brand reputations.” 

In the region, Thailand has the highest rate of viewable ads with 61.7% of display ads and 63.3% video ads being viewable. The figures were higher than the global average of 53% of display and 58.2% of video ads being viewable as mandated by the MRC*. 

 

•Malaysia’s brand safety risk was the highest for display ads at 6.7%; brand safety risk for its video ads were also relatively high at 7.1%
 

•Thailand’s online environment posed the lowest threat to brand safety risk in Southeast Asia with only 1.6% of display and 2.2% of video ad impressions flagged for appearing on unsafe websites. 

•Singapore had the second safest online environment after Thailand with only 2.7% of its display ads and 4.6% of its video ads featuring in unsafe environments

•Indonesia’s video ads were at the highest risk with 15.3% ad impressions flagged for appearing alongside content deemed unsafe; its display ad risk at 5%, was second highest in the region after Malaysia

•Following closely behind Indonesia for video brand safety risk was Vietnam; some 13.2% of its video ads were flagged as a risk to the brand safety; its display ad risk was relatively low at 4.2%

•In the Philippines’ too, video ad environment posed a high risk to brand safety with 8.6% of ad inventories featuring against unsafe content; risk to display ads was at 4.4%

 

•Thailand has the highest rate of viewable ads across both categories with 61.7% of display ads and 63.3% video ads being viewable

•Singapore has the region’s worst video viewability at only 37.6%; conversely, its display viewability is above global average at 56.3%

•The higest video viewability rate was for Vietnam at 75.2%; yet its display viewability was the poorest in the region at just 46.3%

•Interestingly, viewability for video and display ads in Indonesia were above global average at 55.3% and 58.7% respectively

•Malaysia was the only country lower than global average for both display and video ad viewability at 51.8% and 45.2%

•In the Philippines, display ad viewability was high at 60.9% while video ad viewability performed poorly at 41.4% 

For Malaysia, the total media ad spending is projected to hit $1.30 billion in 2017, making it the second smallest ad market covered in the report. 

* Viewability is determined as 50% of the ad unit in view for one continuous second, large formats as 30% of the ad unit in view for one continuous second and video formats as 50% of the ad unit in view for two continuous seconds as per MRC standard.