Smartphone users in Asia-Pacific are starkly divided when it comes to smartphone ads. A May 2016 survey by GfK highlighted that 63% of smartphone users in India felt ads provided them with useful information about deals, whereas just 20% of those in Australia felt the same.
Users in the region often were willing to trade off by viewing ads in exchange for content.
About 50% or more of respondents surveyed in four of the six countries surveyed in the region said they were OK with seeing ads as long as, in exchange, they received access to content for free they otherwise wouldn’t. But in Japan and Australia, users were less likely to accept such a deal.
Curiously, in countries like China?and, for that matter, India?users thought ads appeared at inconvenient times, while they still appreciated their usefulness, which suggests that smartphone advertisers ought to keep targeting users?but time their ads better.
A June 2016 report from Ericsson forecast over 2 billion smartphone connections throughout Asia-Pacific in 2016, the highest of any region worldwide.
In April 2016 eMarketer estimated there would be a total of 1.14 billion smartphone users in Asia-Pacific by the end of this year, a figure set to rise to 1.29 billion in 2017 for growth of 10.8%.
