Social media has reached the saturation point in Thailand this year, but user engagement is increasing along with more sophisticated social media analytics, says Wisesight, a Bangkok-based social media analytics firm.
Kla Tangsuwan, chief executive of Wisesight Thailand, said social media users in the country became more stable, with minimal growth in some platforms because of faster growth in previous years.
For this year, the company predicts Facebook users increased 4% to 51 million as the company starting using artificial intelligence to remove fake accounts.
Twitter users increased 34% to 16.1 million in Thailand, but only 7 million are active users.
Instagram declined by 1.5% to 13.4 million, as online merchants moved to sell via the Facebook Live platform.
The number of online messages increased from 3.6 billion in 2017 to 5.3 billion this year, 43% growth, said Wisesight.
"Thais have very high engagement rates on social media, in particular entertainment, celebrities, and social matters. There are 10,000 messages sent per minute online," he said.
Mr Kla said brands and businesses need to analyse the data by listening more to customers' feelings, requirements, and sentiments.
"The use of social media is changing with user behaviour and brands should adapt to those changes," he said.
Social media analytics have been used in the property, automation, banks/non-bank, e-commerce and retail sectors, which happen to be the top-spending sectors studied by Digital Advertising Association of Thailand, said Mr Kla.
He said streaming platforms will change the social media landscape as people use it to reach their audiences and attract online spending, including from digital TV. Some streaming platforms have combined movie and series content.
Subscription streaming players plan to increase original content, using less advertising or sponsorship.
"More brands will move to in-video ads on major platforms," said Mr Kla.
The company plans to organise the 7th Thailand Zocial Awards in February 2019 at Siam Square One under the theme "PLAY: Rolling your data".
The event will feature 60 awards sorted into five categories: best brand performance on social media by category; best brand performance by social media platform on Facebook, Line, Pantip, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube; best entertainment social media; best social media influence; and best social media campaign.