Brand building still deprioritised as CMOs eye growth in 2025

CMOs in Asia Pacific are particularly upbeat this year with many of them classifying their local economy as being “in great shape”. This comes as Dentsu’s latest Ad Spend Report projects ad spend to grow 5.8% in 2025 across Asia Pacific region, surpassing both global GDP and ad spend projections.

This marks a slight acceleration from the 5.4% growth rate seen in 2024, reinforcing APAC’s position as the global leader in ad investment, while EMEA and the Americas are expected to see slower growth.

Aligned with this is an expectation of budgets coming back to growth – and 86% of APAC CMOs believe their marketing budgets will increase this year.

However, performance remains critical. Stimulating and capturing new demand is an urgent priority, as CMOs look to acquire their fair share of the growing marketplace.

According to the Dentsu report, 38% of CMOs rank growing demand as their top priority. This likely means that short-termism is here to stay and investment in brand building will remain a lower priority.

On the bright side, this may reflect the growing role and stature of CMOs in the wider organisation - now perceived as an essential growth driver and the key avenue through which growth will be delivered.

To be seen as essential to the company, marketing departments and CMOs must prioritise modernisation and developing new strategies.

Over half of CMOs now say they are using brand new media strategies, developed specifically for contemporary audiences and consumption habits (less than half mentioned using any past strategies at all, and only 3% are using purely past strategies).

Short-form content, social commerce, influencers, and retail media networks will see the greatest budget prioritisation.

Nonetheless, challenges still persist in areas such as data privacy which is seen as the number one challenge for marketing departments, quickly followed by measuring the effectiveness of increasingly connected TV consumption (as compared to linear) and gaining the measurement transparency from walled gardens that’s needed to truly understand the returns on spend.

What’s driving APAC momentum?

The momentum in APAC is largely driven by the expanding digital landscape, with Southeast Asia emerging as a key growth driver. Southeast Asia is expected to outpace other parts of APAC, with ad spend growth forecasted at 6.8%, more than double the growth rate in 2024, said the report.

While India and China are expected to face slower growth in 2025 – 6.5% and 4.5% respectively – key markets such as Philippines and Malaysia (15.4% and 5.1% respectively) are projected to perform particularly well. Australia is positioned for a modest 3.8% increase in ad spend, benefiting from a digital-first market.

Prerna Mehrotra, chief client officer and practice president, Media, dentsu APAC said two engines of growth, the dynamism of China and India, and the unrelenting modernisation of Southeast Asia, are driving the region’s robust advertising investment.

“Amidst diverse market development profiles – one constant stands true: digital dominance. As it barrels towards digital maturity, the APAC region will shape the momentum of connected commerce, retail media and AI-powered programmatic. Brands that master the balance between automation and strategic oversight will be the ones to lead the next wave of innovation,” she added.

Where is disruption emerging from?

The disruption of search and retail media will continue to rise, growing at a 10% CAGR through 2031, driven by e-commerce giants such as Tmall, Shopee, Lazada and Flipkart.

India is experiencing an ad boom, with digital media ad spend set to grow by 20% in 2025, three times higher than the overall ad industry’s growth rate.

In China, spending across the "Big 6" platforms – Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, Douyin/TikTok and Xiaohongshu – will grow by 6.7% year-over-year, with Douyin/TikTok alone seeing an 11% rise in ad investment. These platforms are at the forefront of AI-powered media buying, further cementing their dominance in the market.

Digital ad spend in Australia will see continued growth, with video ad spend projected to rise by 8.7% year-on-year, bolstered by key events such as the 2025 national elections.

Matt Farrington, president, investment & trading, dentsu APAC, said: “We are seeing a rapid transformation of Asia Pacific's advertising landscape and a shift in the platforms advertisers are choosing to invest in.”

This is reflected through growing ad spends year-on-year, with Southeast Asia emerging a sub-regional powerhouse, outpacing other parts of the region.

He added that the greatest growth is coming through continued spend migration into digital and connected media, which now accounts for 70% of the total spend across Asia Pacific.

“Brands are increasingly turning to mega-app environments – think Douyin/TikTok, Xiahongshu and the Meta family of apps – that cater for all moments of the customer journey and which are completely reshaping how customer discover, search and purchase,” he said.

Additionally, brands are seeing more opportunity in retail media to unlock new, commerce-driven solutions. This is particularly prevalent in the largest and fastest growing markets such as India, China and Southeast Asia, where there is a proliferation of retailers becoming ad networks in their own right.

"Australia is facing slower growth relative to its regional peers but is still positioned for a modest 3.7% increase in spend, driven by the accelerated digitisation of channels such as TV, OOH and audio," added Farrington.