Asia Pacific Regional Overview

This year multichannel television achieved 56.6% penetration across Asia, a tipping point that signals massive growth in ad revenues over the next five years.

For the first time, more than half of all TV homes in Asia Pacific can receive multichannel TV. Covering 446m households today, pay TV now reaches over 1bn affluent viewers. And while China and India are largely driving expansion, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam are proving significant growth contributors too.

More impressive still, share of viewing by pay TV channels versus traditional media is growing even faster

Of all TV viewers, subscription TV viewers are more affluent and more likely to respond to advertising messages: they choose to pay for increased viewing choice, and the more sophisticated the pay audience becomes, the more quality they demand, both in programming and products and services.

As technology, leisure time – and demand for more choice – increases, so too does demand for subscription and multi-platform TV solutions. Thus, pay channels have become a growing source of advanced interactive services and applications to meet consumer needs at home and outside the home.

Because subscription TV delivers innovative content to keep pace with the demands of its audience, pay-TV viewers are more often than not the first to buy market fresh premium-priced products and gadgets; this is consistently reflected in the higher rates of ownership of HD TVs, 4G mobile phones and multimedia devices shown in audience surveys.

With the ability of network broadcasters and platform operators to deliver niche channels to niche audiences advertisers, in turn, get a widening array of cost-effective marketing solutions.

Digital TV, OTT services and mobile TV add new complexities to audience measurement -- and more opportunities for multichannel television. The challenge is generating reliable audience information that shows just how enormous the advertising opportunities are across this widening array of programmes and platforms.