Is Vietnam behaving the same as the rest of the world? Simple answer, NO! TV ad spend is still triple the size of on-line spend, compared to the rest of the world.

1. Maximizing your Return on Investment for digital advertising
At present there are two major players in Vietnam with respect to digital advertising spend.
The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey
Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. On September 1997 they
registered the domain name google.com
Facebook was launched on by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin on February 2004, while both were
students at the University of Harvard.
Today, these two giants capture 25% of the global advertising spend and 61% share of global online
advertising, and even more in Vietnam. By 2018, according to media agency Magna, forecasts that
digital media will take 44 percent of all ad money spent globally in 2018 reaching 50 percent by 2020.
Source: Statista

2. IS VIETNAM FOLLOWING THE GLOBAL TREND?
Is Vietnam behaving the same as the rest of the world? Simple answer, NO! TV ad spend is still triple
the size of on-line spend, compared to the rest of the world.
TODAY’S VIETNAM DIGITAL BEHAVIOR
In many respects Vietnam mimics the rest of the world in-terms of on-line behavior, as highlighted
below….
▪ 2.5 hours / day spent on mobile phones
▪ 70% of the mobile phones are smart phones
▪ 67% internet penetrations
▪ 85% of internet users used mobile to go online
▪ 60% plus of the smartphones are in rural areas
▪ 7th
largest number of active Facebook users globally
▪ 5th
highest usage of Youtube globally
As seen above, the issue is definitely not reach, as Vietnamese are on-line / on mobile and often. So,
what is driving the disparity between on-line audiences and Advertising spend?
A simple search for the answer is to look at Vietnam’s neighbor to the North, China, today the world’s
biggest consumer of digital everything.
THE EVOLUTION OF CHINA’S DIGITAL AD BOOM 2004-2012
Back in 2004 China was a mirror image of Vietnam in terms of advertising spend. TV advertising was
beginning to loose audiences due to channel fragmentation and the increase of on-line activities.
However, TV had a true and trusted measurements system proving advertisers with reach & frequency
(GRP), thus allowing advertisers to better understands their return on investment, which Digital did not.
Hence investment was limited on Digital because there was no way to understand how impactful this
651
832
1,259
1,511
1,722
1,840 1,865
16 23 31 87
199
376
601
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017f
TV
Radio
Newspapers
Magazines
Outdoor
Internet
Source: Group M – This Year Next Year Report (Vietnam – Sep 2017)

3. new format of advertising was, making advertisers weary of investing in digital advertising, driving the
continued spend on TV, even though audience viewership was in decline.
THE BREAKTHROUGH SOLUTION
In 2009, Miaozhen (China’s Digital Ad Monitoring Currency) suggested a more complete & practical way
to understand digital advertising, by developing a consistent measurable system between TV and Digital
advertising, using scientific planning, which was based on two key points.
• We cannot ignore the fact that like TV, when an online ad is exposed, people get some
impressions of a brand
• Because only so few will click, we cannot ignore non-clickers
After massive data collaboration, Miaozhen, Millward Brown and Lightspeed, the concept of IGRP was
born in China, ahead of the rest of the world. Today, due to Miaozhens’s digital systems, the China
Market digital spend now out weighs TV and has the largest digital ad spend globally.
GOOD NEWS FOR VIETNAM
In Vietnam, we are now able to provide advertisers with the same advantages China experienced to
drive digital growth…
▪ Optimization and planning software (X-Reach) to maximize campaign reach / frequency while
minimizing campaign spend
▪ Provide you with in and out of target result by publisher / channel, driving publishers to become
more transparent and effective on their placement
▪ Provide data norms to compare your campaign versus the market
▪ Maximize your marketing mix between TV and digital to optimize your overall campaign spend
and reach
▪ The only holistic solutions covering all digital devices including Mobile

4. BUDGET ALLOCATION
Budget allocation should be placed based on your media objectives, either to gain higher reach or a
higher frequency. X-Reach software allows you to plot and simulate your desired impact to optimize
your overall campaign strategy before you spend any money, by either achieving fixed reach with lower
budget or Achieving the Max reach within a fixed budget
Example
This new campaign should reach 50% of females from 20 to 44 years with a frequency of 3+ times.
The next step for your media agency would be to go the planning tool and come back with an exercise
similar to what we see below
Source: Miaozhen Systems
CAMPAIGN RESULTS
• There are 4 options to have a 50% reach with a 3+ frequency
• We can see different options in terms of investment in GRP’s
• Next Step is to input the Scorecards and understand the best option
Source: Miaozhen Systems

5. As witnessed above, Option 4, with a mix of 300 GRP’s on TV and 140 iGRP, can achieve the 50% reach
required.
Even there is a duplication of 8% meaning you would reach them in both platforms it gives us the best
budget. After understanding how to allocate the money the next step would be to track and understand
the performance of your campaign.
This chart can help you understand if your objectives were achieved or not, is the reach curve of your
campaign vs initial plan or vs industry, it should look similar to this
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNT
*) The campaign did not achieve the objectives as planned
*) The performance of the campaign was below market norms
*) The campaign only reaches 30% of the population with 3+
THE FINAL SOLUTIUON
So, why is Vietnam behaving so differently than the rest of the world, when it comes to digital media
spend vs actual audience behavior.
The simple answer is that before 2018 most advertisers had no idea that all they require to maximize
their digital spend, is already available in Vietnam today via Infocus Mekong Research and the Miaozhen
adMonitorng and Planning solutions.
By identifying your RoI on digital ad spend, like China, 10 years ago, the market will change and join the
rest of the world soon, where 50% of ad spend is Digital.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
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60%
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80%
1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6+ 7+ 8+ 9+ 10+
Reach% Brand X Market Norm

6. Ricardo Glenn
Digital Media Director
IFM / Miaozhen Systems
Ricardo.glenn@infocusmekong.com
KEY QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER THE BEST TOOL TO TRACK YOUR CAMPAIGN
Q1. Is there a Third-party bias free measurement system available in Vietnam. (as this is by far the safest
and most cost-effective means to understanding your digital ROI, the same way today the industry uses
a third-party measurement TV Audience Measurement)
Q.2 Which company covers all potential devices (PC, Mobile, Web and App), especially mobile as Mobile
is the future of Digital?
Q3. What Data norms exist to compare my performance?

7. Q4. What company has the largest reach in terms of covering multiple media channels? (Example Local
and international Ad Networks, GDN, Youtube, Facebook. Unfortunately, nobody can track Facebook
nowadays in Vietnam.
Q5. Which clients to these companies work with? Experience counts
Q6. Ask for some sample reports of what they have done.
ANSWER: IFM / MIAOZHEN SYSTEMS