Social media use in Thailand has reached maturity, but engagement is still on the rise with about 7.2 billion messages recorded throughout last year, according to social media pundits.
Social media is seeing more customer insights powered by machine learning, engagement by upcountry users, conversation-based commerce as well as purpose and contextual marketing.
"We see little growth of social media user penetration, which reached 75% of the Thai population in 2019, from 74% in 2018," Kla Tangsuwan, chief executive of Wisesight, a Bangkok-based social media analytics firm. "This reflects the maturity of users locally."
He gave the remarks at a two-day seminar that was part of the Thailand Zocial Awards 2020.
Social media engagement by users continues to thrive as the number of messages grew 36% to 7.2 billion in 2019.
Mr Kla said his company gauged the trend by looking at 1,399 brands, 84% of which published content via at least two social media platforms.
Another trend is the rise of upcountry momentum, he said, as 12 out of the 20 most viewed songs on social media are luktung (folk songs). Luktung songs received 480% more views than other kinds of music on average.
In a tight economy, brands needs to optimise their ad budgets by counting on machine learning technology to get customer insights for research before spending on advertising.
Brands need to learn consumer behaviour and use dynamic pricing and marketing that suits their targeted customers, said Mr Kla.
Top spenders on social media analytics for customer insights are food and quick service restaurants, banks, automotive, telecom and fast moving consumer goods, he said.
Brands need to come up with cross-platform benchmarks for social network metrics as well as influence ratings, said Mr Kla. They need to be agile with dynamic markets and have holistic views while counting on artificial intelligence tech.
"Even amid economic turmoil, Wisesight is projected to grow 50% this year after posting 30% growth in 2019, as brands increase their spending on research and social listening," he said.
Aimme Sitthisenee, country head of Thailand at MediaDonuts, a Belgium-based digital marketing firm, said another trend is purpose marketing, where brands communicate with customers about the value of brands.
Overseas, for example, Apple highlights "empower creative exploration", while Nike focuses on bringing "inspiration and innovation to athletes".
Michael Jittivanich, marketing head for Google Thailand, said marketers need to anticipate what matters for customers and have the ability to predict user targets in advance.
Contextual advertising is also becoming popular, he said, as Google's system can analyse each website to determine its central theme, which is then matched to ads by using keywords and topic selections.