This is a very brief look at the development of advertising industry in Asia since 1958 when the first Asian Advertising Conference was held in Tokyo, Japan.
In late 1950s, International Advertising Association (IAA) launched an ambitious project, a survey of world advertising expenditures. As it turned out, Japan was the only country where advertising expenditures data were available in the whole of Asia, then. It was 106.5 billion yen or around $296 million in 1958.
Although IAA continued its survey on the world's advertising expenditures, it was not until 1968 that findings on 64 countries were published in US dollars in a 38-page brochure. It was now possible to compare ad outlays in different countries.
East Asia, as the region was called at that time, included 11 countries. Australia and New Zealand were listed under a separate region. The total advertising expenditures for the 11 stood at around US $1.7 billion or 6% of the world's total of $30.9 billion.
Some 40 years later in 2007, the estimated advertising expenditures for Asia Pacific were reported to be $88.8 billion according to Advertising Expenditure Forecasts (March 2006), a survey by ZenithOptimedia, a media agency under the Publicis Groupe of France.
Put it another way, Asia Pacific advertising recorded some 40 times growth in the four-decade period while the world's total ad expenditures increased to $428 billion from $30.9 billion, or 14 times growth between 1968 and 2006. The ZenithOptimedia data include only seven media: newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor, cinema and the Internet. Therefore, actual expenditures for all media should be higher than the above figure. A couple of significant developments during the past 50 years may be worth mentioning.
The first is the emergence of NICS (Newly Industrialised Countries) or Four Dragons in the 1970s: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, as they were so called then.
Total advertising expenditures for the four countries in 1970 stood at around $126 million which increased to $1,036 million by 1980 reaching eventually $5,572 million by 1990 according to IAA data, or 4,422% growth in a 20-year-period!
Another equally eye-opening development was the emergence of China. Its advertising expenditures in 1981, the first year when such data became available, were 118 million yuan or US $40 million and 0.024% of GDP, probably the lowest in the world. That figure truly galloped to US $17 billion in 2005 and close to 1% of GDP making China probably the fifth largest advertising market in the world after US, Japan, Germany and United Kingdom. Less striking in number but still impressive is India, catching up fast on its advertising growth. Advertising started to thrive in Vietnam, too.
According to the survey published in March 2006 by ZenithOptimedia, world's total in 2008 is estimated to be around $478 billion for 7 major media, newspaper, magazine, radio, television, cinema, outdoor and internet. Breakdown by region shows 41.4% for North America, 25.8% for Europe, 21.4% for Asia Pacific and 11.5% for Latin America and the rest of the world. As mentioned earlier, the share of East Asia (Asia) in 1968 was 6% and Australia/New Zealand, 1%, or 7% for Asia Pacific. Growth of Asia Pacific is indeed striking. In short, Asia Pacific is expected to triple in its share of the world advertising outlay in four decades between 1968 and 2008.
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