The internet, mobile, social media gaming and a new wave of consumers are changing the foundations of businesses. In Vietnam, digital advertising is forecast to double in the next three years. The Saigon Times Daily reports.

Experts believe the trend of using digital advertising including online and mobile advertising will pick up in the near future.

According to Nguyen Tien Dung, manager of the digital section of Maxus Vietnam under GroupM, advertising on social networks has become a popular trend as many brands have deployed their advertising campaigns this way.

There are over 30 million internet users in Vietnam, of which 86 percent are using social networks, he said at a seminar on advertising held by the Leading Business Club in Ho Chi Minh City on November 20, adding that 81 percent of such social network users have the habit of sharing shopping activities with their friends.

Facebook is still the most popular social network in Vietnam with around 14 million users, with 11 million users accessing the network through mobile phones. Users spend an average of 40 minutes browsing this page daily.

Two actions that local Facebook users usually perform are to press the button “Like” and make comments, while in other developed markets, Facebook users often check in, meaning they inform their friends when they visit certain locations and upload pictures, Dung remarked.

However, he noted that it was not easy to make advertising on social networks and digital advertising effective, adding most local enterprises have made inconsiderable investments in digital advertising, which accounts for less than 5 percent of the total budget for marketing.

At the seminar, Phan Quoc Cong, general director of the International Consumer Products Corporation (ICP), said that his firm began paying attention to advertising on the Internet some years ago due to the rising number of Internet users then.

The marketing budget at ICP is divided into the ratios of 70 percent, 20 percent and 10 percent, Cong informed. The 70 percent volume has been carried out on local media, especially television, and has proved its efficiency, while the 20 percent volume is set aside for new channels whose efficiency is measurable and the remainder is used for new campaigns but its efficiency has yet to be measured, he stated.

The fact that an advertising campaign of ICP on television costs 1 million USD is normal, Cong asserted. But he said the cost would be only one-tenth, or around 100,000 USD, if the enterprise launched the campaign on the Internet, with the sum used for many different processes, ranging from creation and production to advertising.

Le Ho My Duyen, who is in charge of the high-end brands of ICP, argued that advertising on social networks should not be separated and that it should be integrated with plenty of other traditional channels, from television, newspapers, selling points to other related activities.

According to the market research company eMarketer, advertising sales on the Internet in Vietnam was about 26 million USD in 2012, making up 2.9 percent of the total sales of the whole market. The firm expects advertising sales on the Internet of the nation to reach roughly 32 million USD this year and 45 million USD in 2015.

Advertising sales on local media in Vietnam posted nearly 11 trillion VND in the first half of this year, with television holding up to 92 percent, Kantar Media Vietnam reports. The figure, however, is exclusive of sales of digital advertising.-VNA