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Kaymun Amin, CEO and Founder of MEF Member VuMobile takes a deep dive into the Bangladesh market, with a wealth of data explaining why it presents such an exciting opportunity for advertisers, and how to maximise a mobile campaign’s effectiveness.

1) Bangladesh’s has a mobile internet base of 50million and 1.5billion impressions per month traffic.

The total number of Mobile Internet subscribers has reached 52.331 million at the end of October, 2015 based on Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s Internet Subscribers in Bangladesh report. It increased 18.71% from last year.

Addressable mobile inventory of Bangladesh is monthly around 1.9 billion – 57% generating from Dhaka, 29% from Chittagong and rest percentage from other areas.

2) Smartphone traffic is 72% of all mobile internet traffic

The below graph illustrates smartphone’s extraordinary gains over feature phone’s mobile internet traffic for the past few years.

In 2012, smartphone had a 23.6% share of the total ad impressions generated, way behind feature phone’s 49.1% share. The smartphone vs feature phone tipping point was reached in 2014, when smartphone really began to gain traction, taking 47% of the ad impressions.  Smartphone now takes a little over 72% of the total mobile ad impressions.

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3) What is driving the mobile traffic growth?

vu2The key driver of data growth in Bangladesh are social networking & chat apps such as Facebook, what’sapp, viber etc. and video content is driving mobile internet traffic usage growth.

Faster data connectivity offered by the network operators, cheap data plans and affordable smartphones is also helping to increase mobile internet usage in Bangladesh.

4) Mobile advertising spend less than 1% of the total advertising spend.

Based on a survey conducted by the AdPlay team, only 18% of the brands present on traditional media (print, radio, TV) is present in the online marketing space. These companies on average allocate 1.5% of their annual budget for online advertising.   45% of the online budget is being allocated for mobile with 55% being allocated for desktop.  However, the brands have also mentioned that they are likely to increase their budget for mobile advertising given the larger audience and more specific targeting options available.

5)  What % in Google, Facebook VS other networks?

95% of agency respondents to the AdPlay survey conducted used Google AdWords primarily for their mobile advertising in their marketing plan this year. The top factors leading advertisers choosing Google as their mobile advertising platform are performance or ROI (38%), ad visibility (27%) audience targeting – demographic (17%), price (11%) and remarketing (7%).

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According to agency perceptions, there are several gaps in network capabilities of Google and Facebook such as operator targeting, engaging call-to-actions, incentivized campaigns, language support, and somewhat complicated advertising policies are driving them to seek alternate ad networks. The media allocation percentage on the alternate networks are increasing rapidly.

6) What are the popular ad formats in Bangladesh?

In consideration of performance, creation process and personalized user experience, the ranking of current popular ad formats in Bangladesh are as follows:

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7) What types of campaigns are currently popular with Advertisers?

In consideration of campaigns running on AdPlay and agency survey response, following types of campaign are currently popular with advertisers:

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8) The industry is expected to grow at least 75% in 2016

Advertisers in the telecommunication industry will allocate more spending on mobile advertising next year. Following close behind are retailers. Notably, the retailers surpassed content providers in mobile ad spending and reach the No. 2 position for the first time this year. The Mobile advertising industry in Bangladesh is expected grow about 75% in 2016.

9) What targeting features are important for Bangladesh?

To deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time, the precision of the targeting options that are importance considered in context of Bangladesh by the agencies and direct advertisers are according to the following rating:

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10) What role will mobile operators play in the ecosystem?

Mobile Operators in Bangladesh are evaluating how to monetize their internet traffic through mobile advertising. Mobile Operators have a treasure of data about their subscribers such as their location, and browsing habits.  The challenge is how to share this information with third party ad networks in a secure manner enabling to serve more relevant targeted ads while not compromising user security or privacy.

Kaymun Amin

CEO and Founder

VuMobile

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Some operators such as Grameenphone has launched products such as Wowbox where they are becoming publishers as well and building their own native platforms for communication with their target base.

METHODOLOGY

Our shared data and insights are collected from surveys conducted with agencies and ads served via AdPlay and its partnered networks, which represents mobile marketing activity in Bangladesh for more than 70 agencies, 6,000 brand advertisers, and more than 15,000 local and global publishers.

MEF