What media inflation actually looks like in nine APAC markets
The regional average is 5%. Not one of these nine markets is at 5%, and the spread between the cheapest and the dearest is wider than it has been in a decade.
Every regional media forecast published this year quotes one number for Asia-Pacific. It is a useful number for a global finance team and a misleading one for anyone actually buying. Averaging Auckland and Karachi produces a figure that describes neither, and a plan built on it will be over-funded in one market and short in another before the first insertion runs.
We asked each member to report what their own clients are being quoted for the coming year, in their own market, in local currency. The spread is the story.
The gap is not east to west
The intuitive read is that the developed markets are flat and the growth markets are hot. That is not what came back. The steepest quotes are in markets where a single platform has consolidated inventory in the last eighteen months, and those markets are scattered across the region rather than clustered in it.
Where inventory is still fragmented across broadcast, print and three or four digital sellers, buyers still have leverage and rates reflect it. Where it is not, they do not. That is the variable worth planning against, and it is knowable market by market. It is not knowable from a regional average.
What to do with a regional budget
- Set the envelope regionally and the rates locally. A single uplift percentage applied across nine markets guarantees nine wrong numbers.
- Ask who owns the inventory before you ask what it costs. Consolidation is the leading indicator; the rate card is the lagging one.
- Lock the two markets with the steepest quotes first. In a fragmented market late money still buys something. In a consolidated one it does not.
A regional average is a reporting convenience. It has never been a buying instruction, and this year the gap between the two is wide enough to cost real money.
The full market-by-market read sits with each member. If you are planning across more than two of these markets, brief the network and we will put the people who filed these numbers in the room.
