Chasing the organic growth of digital media consumption in the APAC region and the gradual rise of expenditure directed at digital advertising mediums, native ad company MGID opened direct and representative offices across Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Thailand from Q1 2018 to Q3 2019.
“In 2017, we seized the opportunity to expand into the Asia-Pacific region and started to build our regional development strategy because of the fast development in digital marketing and the rapid increase in online ad budget allocation,” said Nickolas Rekeda, CMO at MGID on their APAC expansion.
Rekeda said that while digital advertising was gaining traction and digital media consumption accelerated, the lack of adoption for native advertising formats in the region represented a business opportunity for MGID. He said the native advertising challenger was motivated more so by the seeming absence of a monopoly by Facebook and Google, unlike the ecosystem encountered in the EMEA and North American markets.
“We opened our first APAC office in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam in March 2018, and now have five offices across APAC in Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Thailand,” he said.
“Based on our research, we launched MGID in Vietnam first as it was a large emerging market that had just begun opening its economy to global businesses. Our representative office in New Delhi, India, opened in September 2018. The Indian market was less saturated than English speaking markets, yet very lucrative with sizeable demand for digital marketing tools.”
MGID differentiated itself by offering advertising technology companies with technological solutions and global expertise, a proposition which resulted in an additional office in India, which was shortly followed by the launch of an office in Indonesia, following research that showed ad spends were increasing dramatically. Rekeda saw that most advertisers were not adopting cross channel marketing, which was also viewed as a business opportunity for the native advertising solution provided by MGID.
“Throughout our expansion, we have acquired many high profiles APAC clients, both advertisers, and publishers; Tokopedia, Dominos, Qatar Airways, Coverfox, Zaful, Medlife, Airbnb, OYO Rooms, Autoportal, investing.com, News18, Jagran New Media, vietnamnet.vn, and tribunnews.com,” shared Rekeda. “In addition, we held an APAC roadshow in March 2019, partnering with the biggest regional agencies and media holdings. We have 35 employees across APAC and are still hiring to grow our team even further.”
He said that in the four months following the APAC launch, MGID reached over a billion daily active impressions through its network on both the native acquisition for advertisers and native monetization for publishers. He claims that this has grown by a multiple of seven ever since.
“Additionally, we have launched more than 14,000 campaigns this year alone, including 300+ branded campaigns,” he said. “We have localized our platform into 17 languages (including nine languages in India), and we have developed a customized sales funnel and creative suite for our APAC clients.”
He credits the roadshow held in Q1 2019, held in partnership with large regional and global media agencies, as playing a key role in helping MGID draw in interest for representative offices across the region, a channel partnership strategy that has been key for regional growth.
