Chasing the Addressable Dream: A new dawn begins with Astro

By Raihan Hadi

The addressable future with brand new beginnings is activated for TV advertisers in Malaysia. Ever since the use of third-party cookies was imposed with limitations that are most likely to cause cookie jars to be emptied worldwide, advertisers on all digital media formats had been itching their heads trying to figure out a way to collect real customer data.

Collecting and using first-party data became a dream that many were chasing.

Thanks to Astro, that dream is a reality today. Leading the way in innovative TV Advertising with its new Addressable Advertising service, the first in Southeast Asia, Astro is successfully ushering in digital-style targeting on TV by leveraging Astro’s first-party data.

No more doubts about privacy violations, data collection methods, or credibility. With Astro’s Addressable Advertising services, advertisers and brands in Malaysia will now be able to showcase different advertisements to different households who are watching the same programme.

The curtains were unveiled on this ginormous new offering by Astro during their Trade Launch event on the 14th of June, with some of the biggest media experts of the region as speakers.

With the spotlight on the people behind bringing Addressable TV to Malaysia, along with some of the Media and Brand specialists from the region, MARKETING WEEKENDER is presenting you with a glimpse of what Astro’s addressable advertising means for Malaysia, and the region as a whole.

Henry Tan, Group Chief Executive Officer of Astro

“Astro is reinventing TV advertising with Addressable Advertising, the next-level TV Advertising that merges the best of TV’s emotional persuasive power with smart data presenting new opportunities for marketers by creating a better, more personal TV experience. With the introduction of Astro Addressable Advertising, advertisers will be able to show different advertisements to different households who are watching the same programme.”

Jamie West, Founding Partner of Innov8TV & Former Deputy Managing Director of Sky Media

“Astro’s ambition to establish the addressable advertising ecosystem supporting the full life cycle of campaigns, aided by enhanced capabilities in planning, reporting, optimisation, and cross platform measurement on ROI and effectiveness means a great deal for the Malaysian market. With Astro’s addressable, TV advertisers will see a lot more innovation and enhancements in the coming years.”

“In addition, what was apparent to me was that the market, agencies, advertisers and of course the team at Astro are ready and excited to embrace this new opportunity.”

“The plans shared led me to believe that the Malaysian market is well set to capitalise on Addressable Advertising, and transform the role of TV in marketing campaigns. Exciting times ahead!”

Astro’s platform-agnostic strategy generates a rich and holistic view of its customers’ video consumption habits across Linear TV, Video-on-Demand and Astro GO.

On Linear TV, Astro has a viewership share of 72%, with average daily viewers of 11.3mil and average daily time spent of 187 minutes

On Video-On-Demand, videos streamed on its connected boxes jumped 2.4 times y-o-y to 530mil while average weekly viewing time increased by 17% y-o-y to 693 minutes

On Astro GO, its monthly active users is at 919K while average weekly viewing time increased by 27% y-o-y to 244 minutes.

Shafiq Abdul Jabbar, Group Chief Financial Officer of Astro

“We are excited to be pioneering addressable advertising in Southeast Asia. Our audience-first, experience-led, and data-supported approach to addressable advertising enables us to place highly relevant advertisements against highly relevant audiences.”

“Astro’s Addressable Advertising unveils a new era of possibilities where clients, agencies and even SMEs are able to present their products against specific audience segments within any geographic location.”

“Early results have been very encouraging with independently commissioned studies demonstrating advertising efficacy, for one client positive shifts in brand consideration by up to 40 percentage points and for another consideration shifts of more than 2.6 times, against target audiences.”

What The Industry Experts Are Saying

Vivek Couto, Executive Director, Co-Founder & Owner, Media Partners Asia

“With most of the developed countries getting great results with the various opportunities from CTV and Addressable Advertising, it goes without saying that these will definitely drive the future of TV.”

Bala Pomaleh, Chief Executive Officer, Mediabrands Malaysia

“Because of addressable TV, you will now start seeing new advertisers who are interested in TV. There are many advertisers out there who don’t really need to advertise nationally, but want to target certain niche audiences, and this gives them a fantastic new opportunity!”

Sheila Shanmugam, Chief Executive Officer, Mindshare Group and m/SIX Malaysia

“Advertisers are always excited to explore new avenues, especially if that serves and delivers a different outcome for the brand, then they will always look up those opportunities. Although it will always be tested and explored at the beginning, eventually it will pick up. So, the formatted way of media planning and buying will be changing, and for that to happen we will need both hands to clap, it has to be the agencies who are putting forward the recommendation, and clients being receptive to the ideas.”

Tai Kam Leong, Head of Brand & Marketing, Maxis

“This development from Astro is very exciting for us, and we are also excited for the SME community and the emerging start-ups in the country. Addressable TV allows us to understand customers better and hopefully have the right fit for the right moment, making this innovation very unique and appealing. Looking forward to working together with Astro.”

Javed Jafri, Media & Digital Hub Lead, Unilever (Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia & Laos)

“This is a perfect time to introduce Addressable Advertising here in Malaysia, especially when video consumption has massively increased during the pandemic. Until now brands didn’t really have the tools to measure the different variables that are needed for better targeting and identification of consumers, along with measuring factors such as cost-per-lead and cost-per-mille etc. Every service improves gradually through experimentation, and with this particular offering I’m very hopeful that it will make advertising on TV better for brands.”

Astro Addressable Advertising service has been rolled out across Video On Demand on Astro GO and Ultra and Ulti Boxes since November 2021; with Linear addressable launching in stages this June 2022 to reach a high value audience of Astro households.

Among the big and emerging brands which were early adopters of Astro Addressable Advertising, some have reported a notable improvement of brand consideration as high as 40% and high brand awareness with strong user conversion ratio at 67%.

To watch the highlights of the Astro Addressable Launch event, click here.

For more information, please contact Astro Media Solutions at [email protected] or visit https://quake.com.my/aaa

“Chasing the Addressable Dream: A new dawn begins with Astro” was the Cover Story for MARKETING WEEKENDER Issue 335