This article is also available in Vietnamese.


YouGov Vietnam conducted a survey on consumers’ media behavior in December 2021. The survey integrated the opinions of 2429 Vietnamese consumers from a nationally representative pool. The results are clear: Vietnamese consumers are tired of online ads.


With a 21.5% year-over-year growth rate from 2020-2025 (digitalreport.vn), digital advertising in Vietnam is a booming business. Advertisers are expected to spend up to $934 million on digital advertising in 2022 (Statista), which leads to the near ubiquity of advertising on online media.


That said, according to the survey, Vietnamese consumers aren’t a big fan of digital ads. 43% of Vietnamese consumers find online ads “annoying.” On the contrary, few consumers agreed that online advertising is interesting (25%) or creative (30%). What do these figures mean for consumer actions? Close to half (47%) of consumers said that they always skip or want to skip online ads.


The popularity of online advertising can be a double edged sword. Businesses may utilize paid ads to reach more consumers; yet, too much online advertising can drown out quality content. As such, online ads need to be exceptionally creative to stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of consumers.


Thue Quist Thomasen, CEO of YouGov Vietnam, says: “Besides the above results, our survey also shows that even though most people remember seeing online ads, they are significantly less likely to recall clicking on ads or buying products after seeing ads. In my views, the online marketing industry in Vietnam is largely, and fairly, preoccupied with tracking ad frauds and viewability. But marketers often pay insufficient attention to the metrics that truly matter, such as impact and quality, which are the key elements that drive advertising success. Why make sure people can view an ad, if the ads are boring and annoying?”



The survey’s results confirm what I have been thinking about digital advertising in Vietnam: There are so many ads nowadays that it’s hard for scattered branded banners to be effective across different websites. What brands want are great campaigns that win the hearts and minds of consumers. Tiny banners and seemingly haphazard 5-second videos just won’t be enough for brands to get what they want. I think that advertising in Vietnam needs better tools and technology to activate the efforts and creativity, which many people, including those at Ogilvy, have spent on ad campaigns.” Soames Hines, CEO of Ogilvy Vietnam, one of Vietnam’s largest creative agencies, shares.


The antidote to boring ads is high impact advertising, which refers to a diverse family of attention-grabbing online ads formats. High impact ads may exist in different formats, such as skins, top- and midscrolls, scrollable cubes, and more. These ad formats are usually larger and more engaging than standard display ads and responsive on both PC and mobile. According to Lumen Research, high impact ads typically deliver 9x more user attention and 10x more CTR (click-through rate) compared to standard display ads under the same viewability.


An example of high impact video skin (desktop) by Adnami


“Advertisers are often too focused on delivering ads as efficiently as possible, while forgetting about the creative aspect of digital advertising,” Carl Söderblom, Vice President of Operations & Business Development at Adnami, says, “[...] this, in turns, results in low impact, ineffective ads, which defeat the purpose of efficiency in the first place. With high impact ads, advertisers can make the most out of efficiently run ads, by ensuring that these ads are effective at driving results as well.”


Source: YouGov