This dip was driven by Australia, particularly the finance and automotive sectors, which Kevin Tan, CEO at Eyeota, said likely coincided with the end of the financial year for companies at the end of Q2.
The two sectors still remained in the top spending sectors throughout the year, and budgeting for the new financial year is well underway.
While Australia declined in spend, the Southeast Asian market grew by 42 percent in Q3, on the back of a massive increase of 256 percent last quarter.
“This is very promising as it shows how programmatic is just starting to take off,” said Tan. “The continued growth in the region illustrates how brands are becoming savvier in using audience data for more effective targeting.”
In addition, there were still signs of growth in the region from new markets such as Vietnam, Japan and Korea, with spend from the Philippines doubling this quarter.
Similar to global trends, the electronics & computers sector was also one of the biggest spenders in audience data, and one of the top growing sectors in Asia-Pacific.
Electronics & computers advertisers invested in B2B data, with software providers looking for businesses of specific sizes, and for tech professionals in Australia and Singapore.
The most popular segment categories were sociodemographic (53 percent) and B2B (20 percent).
Sociodemographic remains a steadfast investment for many brands worldwide, as it provides broader information of user profiles such as age, gender and income levels for more effective targeting.
The multimedia, food & beverage and home & garden sectors spent the most on sociodemographic data.
The Eyeota Index comprises three indexes measuring growth, spend and price. It tracks thousands of campaigns executed by hundreds of agencies across 60 countries to identify global trends in audience data usage.