Eileen Ooi, Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) president
THE prospects for digital advertising next year looks bright as the digital economy gains momentum.
Digital ad spends are anticipated to rise in 2025 amid headwinds and the emergence of some positive significant trends in digital advertising.
The Malaysian Digital Association president Eileen Ooi met up with StarBiz and spoke on some of these pertinent aspects. Below are excerpts of the interview.
StarBiz: On the whole, how do you perceive the outlook of the Malaysian digital ad industry for 2025? Will it be better than 2024? And what will be the growth drivers for the local digital advertising space for next year?
Ooi: Malaysia’s digital economy will continue to grow.
In fact, the recent “e-conomy SEA Report” from Google, Temasek and Bain & Co predicts that the digital economy will reach US$236bil in gross merchandise value (GMV), a 15% increase from a year ago.
Although digital ad spends are not rising at such a fast pace, we are still seeing healthy growth of 4% to 5% in 2024.
I anticipate this growth trend to continue into 2025 in ad spends.
With increased foreign direct investment from large corporations like Google and Microsoft in Malaysia, we do anticipate continued rapid growth in the space of artificial intelligence (AI), data science and engineering, tech development and more.
Any digital ad growth projections for 2024 and 2025?I anticipate digital ad growth to continue to grow into 2025, with forecasted single- digit growth of around 4% to 5%.
Besides the growth drivers, what would be the headwinds or challenges for the digital advertising industry for 2025?The headwinds in 2025 are primarily around economic impact, given the slowdown in economy across regions and with ongoing geopolitical tensions is putting strain on business operations and business growth.
Additionally, proliferation of digital advertising solutions would see cannibalisation across players vying for the same digital spends.
Any trends you foresee for 2025? For Malaysia and from the international perspective?
The biggest trend impacting us today is what I would like to term as “Codification Intelligence Era”.
Every channel, every item is getting codified with a form of intelligence today, being connected to the digital world.
With that, the rise of more walled gardens, as consumers live in their own “walled garden of content” that they consume, makes it even harder for marketers to fight and win attention.
In an era with multitude of options from products to services, this makes relevant and meaningful marketing more critical than ever, in order to engage and win each consumer and each transaction.
In this era where every medium is being codified, powered with AI and data, marketers today need to ensure advertising is backed by data-led decisions without hampering creativity and innovation.
