Google contextual advertising in Malaysia

Malaysia is located in Southeast Asia. Its population is considered small by the standards of the region – almost 33 million people. But more than 85% of them actively use the Internet.

The contextual advertising market in Malaysia is showing rapid growth. The cost of promoting goods and services through search ads is increasing by a quarter annually.

Information! According to forecasts, the share of spending on online advertising will reach 80% by 2025.

This development suggests that the redistribution of the marketing budget in favor of contextual advertising in Malaysia is promising. Such an investment can become a point of growth for a business.

Peculiarities of setting contextual advertising in Malaysia

Features of local culture and traditions must be taken into account when setting up contextual advertising in Malaysia. This is important to do not only when creating creatives, but also in the process of determining targeting.

Let’s focus on the most important aspects:

Language targeting

Almost two-thirds of Malaysians speak the official Malay language. Approximately the same number of people in the country use English in everyday life. This is due to the colonial past of Malaysia. A combination of Malay and English has also become widespread. This hybrid is called Manglish. Malaysian Chinese, who make up almost a quarter of the population, speak Southern Chinese dialects.

The solvent segment is concentrated, as a rule, in large cities (Georgetown, Ipoh, Subang Jaya and, of course, the capital – Kuala Lumpur). It includes both Malays and foreign hired specialists living in the country.

They all use English extensively. At the same time, English-language queries in the Malay segment account for only about 30% of traffic. Therefore, it is necessary to run Google Ads in Malaysia in two languages at once – English and Malay.

Advice! To form a semantic core in Malay, ask a native speaker for help. If you use an online translator, you run the risk of including language in your ad that is almost never used by locals.

Requests in different languages should be grouped into separate campaigns, for which, in turn, you need to create two versions of the site – English and Malay.

Setting up and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns in two languages is comparable in terms of labor costs to maintaining two separate projects. This means that additional costs should be budgeted for such work.

Discounts

It won’t be an exaggeration to say that Malaysians simply love discounts and special offers. Strategies based on promotion through bonuses and promotions show much greater efficiency here than in European markets. Moreover, they work equally well both to win a new audience and to increase the level of loyalty of regular customers.

Advice! Bring information about bonuses and discounts to your target audience in Malaysia using contextual advertising. In addition, focus on them on landing pages.

Which advertising tools to use?

1. Video ads. Users from Malaysia watch video content more often than residents of other countries in the region. YouTube is leading the list of the most popular online resources – more than 93% of Internet users watch videos every day. The average Malaysian spends 7 hours and 12 minutes per week on this content. These facts cannot be overlooked when setting up Google Ads in Malaysia.
2. Blogger advertising. Traditionally, the inhabitants of the country tend to listen to the opinion of authoritative people. And even the fact that an influencer receives money for promotion is often not decisive for an audience that really trusts him. Therefore, interaction with bloggers is one of the important promotion channels in Malaysia.
3. Shopping ads. When choosing products, Malaysians like to compare different models online and quite often purchase them in online stores and marketplaces. Therefore, Google Shopping ads, which allow you to show a photo and the cost of a product item already in the search results, perform much better than text ads in Malaysia.

User portrait

The country’s Internet audience is quite mature, highly prone to online shopping. The level of solvency is average.

Information! In Malaysia, there is a significant predominance of the male audience (71%). This is not surprising for the Muslim population. But in mobile traffic, the bias is less significant – only 63% of men.

The Internet is in demand by all age groups up to 55 years old. Most of the users are among those who are over 25 and under 35 years old. But it should be borne in mind that the solvency and independence of this group is higher here than in the Middle East or African countries.

E-commerce marketplace

Malaysians love online shopping, so there are a lot of online stores and marketplaces in the country. Trust in the latter is higher – most believe that this type of e-commerce is safer than others.

The total turnover of online commerce is 3.6 billion ringit, which is equivalent to 1 billion US dollars. This indicator allows Malaysia to take the seventh place in the international ranking of the most promising markets for e-commerce.

Of the additional advantages, a well-developed logistics system should be noted. This has a positive effect on the level of loyalty of the population to online stores, and, combined with high solvency, attracts online stores from the United States, China, Hong Kong and Singapore to the regional market.

What devices are used to access the Internet in Malaysia?

Only one in four Malaysians do not use the Internet to purchase goods or services. Everyone else is quite active when it comes to online shopping. At the same time, mobile Internet is much more popular here than stationary, which corresponds to the trend that is recorded in many countries of Southeast Asia. Across the region, wired traffic has not kept pace with the amount of data transferred over the mobile network.

What can’t be used in ads?

The vast majority of Malaysians are Muslims. Religious traditions in the country have a significant impact on all spheres of life. Even Sharia courts still work here. That is why there are certain taboos in the advertising market that should not be broken.

When launching an advertising campaign in Malaysia, remember that it should not:

• mention the numbers 4 or 13;
• depict dogs or pigs;
• dress heroes in yellow clothes;
• show the index or thumb of the right hand;
• use female images in revealing or overly tight clothing;
• show half-dressed people.

Google Ads contextual advertising cost in Malaysia

The price of Google Ads in Malaysia is affected by the cost of the PPC specialist who will run the campaign, as well as the budget for clicks in Google AdWords.

The following is the cost of Google Ads traffic for popular niches in Malaysia:

• washing machine repair – $0.32;
• ventilation cleaning – $0.55;
• Plumbing services – $1.00;
• beauty salons (manicure) – $0.52;
• carpet cleaning – $0.80;
• permanent makeup – $0.45;
• dentist – $0.60;
• refrigerators – $0.55;
• Korean cosmetics – $0.43;
• shelves for cats – $0.45;
• dog food – $1.24;
• flower fertilizer – $0.09.

As you can see from the statistics, the cost of going to a site through contextual advertising in Malaysia is quite high. This is due to the fact that a stable online trading market has formed in the country, and there is fierce competition among advertisers for a solvent audience. In addition, the Malaysian E-commerce market is actively developing from year to year.

Google share among search engines in Malaysia

The world’s most popular search engine occupies a leading position in Malaysia. Here, 98.88% of the local audience uses it to search the Internet. It can be said that Google has a monopoly among Malaysians, because the second most popular Bing receives only 0.36% of search queries, while other search engines receive less.

That’s why setting up Google Ads for Malaysia is so promising, by launching a search campaign on this system you reach almost 100% of the local audience.