Asia Pacific advertising hits $276bn as retail media eats linear TV’s lunch

Singapore: Forget the old fight between print and television. The real battle for Asia Pacific’s advertising dollars is being won by the checkout button. A new report from Media Partners Asia (MPA), published on September 2nd, sizes the region’s net advertising spend at $276.1 billion in 2026, up 5.3 per cent, and the headline number is the least interesting part of it. What has changed is where the money goes once it arrives, and the answer is retail media, now growing so fast it has already overtaken linear television as a medium, region-wide, by a factor of two.

Digital advertising accounts for 75 per cent of all spend across MPA’s 14 tracked markets in 2026, on its way to 80 per cent by 2031, as the region’s ad economy compounds from $262.2 billion in 2025 to a forecast $335.5 billion by 2031, a 4.0 per cent annual growth rate. Three forces are doing the heavy lifting: rising commerce-media take rates across Southeast Asia, AI-driven ad tech that is quietly lowering the cost of running campaigns, and GDP growth of 5 to 6 per cent or more in India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. None of this is happening without friction. MPA flags currency volatility, elevated input costs squeezing FMCG and beauty budgets, and lingering uncertainty over US tariffs as the headwinds to watch.

The engine room of the growth story is retail media: advertising sold against commerce platforms rather than content. It is forecast to hit $75.5 billion in 2026, 36.7 per cent of all digital spend including China or 20.0 per cent excluding it, and to reach $110 billion by 2031. That already makes it twice the size of linear TV region-wide, one and a half times the size of all online video, and five times premium ad-supported streaming. China remains the format’s undisputed capital, with retail media set to cross half of all digital spend there by 2031. India, though, is the fastest mover, compounding at 16.4 per cent a year as quick commerce accelerates adoption. Japan, Korea and Australia will each see retail media pass a fifth of digital spend by decade’s end, while Shopee and TikTok Shop are turning Southeast Asian commerce into media at a clip of 15 to 36 per cent growth in 2026 alone. Strip China out of the picture and retail media is on course to overtake linear television as the region’s single largest medium by 2028 or 2029. The money funding all this is coming largely out of traditional display and search, now flat or declining in ten of the 14 markets tracked.

Online video tells its own story of fragmentation. The category reaches $51.0 billion in 2026, seven tenths of it user-generated and social content, on its way to $70.7 billion by 2031. Premium ad-supported video on demand is the fastest-scaling line within it, growing from $15.3 billion to $22.6 billion at an 8.1 per cent clip, powered by broadcaster-backed streamers such as TVer, owned by Japan’s commercial networks, and JioHotstar in India, delivering premium inventory straight to the connected television screen. Micro-drama advertising, barely a category a few years ago, is already worth $6.4 billion in 2026, almost entirely in China, and will near $9.9 billion by 2031. Connected TV spend nearly doubles across the ten markets MPA tracks for it, from $10.6 billion to $20.6 billion by 2031, ranging from a third of all video spend in Australia to under a tenth in Japan.

Search advertising is quietly being hollowed out in China specifically, declining 5 per cent a year to 2031 as query volume migrates away from traditional search into feed, vertical and in-app discovery. The money is not lost, merely relocated: the same platforms recapture it through display and commerce inventory instead. Outside China, MPA holds search flat to modest, with any incremental growth assigned to retail media rather than search itself.

Legacy media is not disappearing everywhere at the same pace. Japan’s linear television decline is managed and gentle, a 2.1 per cent annual erosion, while South Korea’s is closer to collapse, down 10.4 per cent in 2026 alone, with Thailand and Vietnam not far behind at 8 to 11 per cent. Out-of-home advertising is, oddly, the one traditional format still growing region-wide, expanding in 11 of 14 markets from $20.0 billion to $25.3 billion by 2031, while premium streaming video will by then out-earn print, radio and cinema combined.

Then there is the concentration story, and it is stark. Meta takes 15.9 per cent of the region’s net ad spend in 2026, ByteDance 14.8 per cent and Google 13.0 per cent, meaning three companies alone capture 44 per cent of Asia Pacific advertising. The top 20 media owners between them take 82 per cent. Nine Chinese platforms combined claim 43.8 per cent, comfortably ahead of the three big American platforms’ 31.5 per cent, while eight regional media and commerce owners, including Naver, LY Corp, Sea, Coupang, JioStar, Rakuten, Flipkart and Kakao, share just 6.4 per cent between them. JioStar is the only television-rooted company left in the top 20; every other broadcaster or publisher in the region sits below 0.3 per cent of spend, a sobering line for anyone still running a newsroom or a channel. MPA is careful to note its methodology here: shares are estimates of net advertising revenue earned across the 14 markets, restated to a net-of-commission basis and attributed to where the ad is actually delivered, with only advertising-comparable revenue counted for commerce platforms.

Among individual markets, China leads at $152.6 billion (up 5.3 per cent), with retail media already 47.7 per cent of its digital spend. Japan, the region’s largest developed ad economy, reaches $54.1 billion after a fourth consecutive record year, though its video transition remains the slowest in the region, leaving unusually long runway for retail media and connected TV growth. India is the standout among big markets, growing 9.3 per cent to $17.5 billion in 2026 and compounding at 8.1 per cent to $25.8 billion by 2031, with digital climbing to 81 per cent of spend. Australia, at $16.4 billion, is the region’s most advanced connected TV market. South Korea, at $14.1 billion, is simultaneously the most advanced commerce-media market outside China and the fastest-collapsing legacy television one. Thailand, smaller at $2.65 billion, still manages 6.9 per cent growth even as its traditional market shrinks, propped up entirely by commerce and creator formats.

vivek couto, chief executive and executive director of MPA, put the shift in blunt terms. Retail media, he said, is now the largest incremental pool of advertising in the region, already twice the size of linear television and one and a half times all of online video, with the money flowing to platforms that can close the loop between content, discovery and purchase. For media owners, he argued, the real question over the next five years is not reach but whether they can convert audiences into measurable outcomes at commerce-platform speed.

The report itself, titled Asia Pacific Advertising Trends 2026, sizes and forecasts net advertising revenue from 2021 through 2031 across all 14 tracked markets: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Each market figure is built from the bottom up using company-reported advertising revenue and platform disclosures, GMV-and-take-rate builds for retail media, and subscriber-and-ARPU builds for streamer ad tiers, reconciled against national benchmarks where they exist and stress-tested through an ongoing programme of interviews with media buyers, agency investment leads and platform commercial teams. Categories covered span linear television, premium and user-generated online video, micro-drama, connected TV, retail media, traditional display and search, out-of-home, print, radio and cinema, alongside a normalised ranking of the top 20 media owners by regional spend share. It is delivered as an interactive online report with a downloadable PDF and Excel database, available to MPA clients.

MPA describes itself as an insights and influence platform rooted in Asia, combining proprietary consumer data and technology with a research, advisory and executive forum network. The firm supports business planning across 15 APAC markets in connectivity, entertainment and technology, has advised on numerous M&A transactions across the region, and has acted as independent consultant on IPOs for leading media and telecoms companies. It also operates ampd, an APAC data and analytics platform, and hosts APOS, its flagship industry forum running since 2010, alongside AETHER and APOS Sports Edge.