TV Ads Now Measured by Sales, Not Just Viewers, Across APAC

Purchase data is reshaping how television advertising is measured across Asia-Pacific, as a shift from counting viewers to tracking actual sales gains momentum in one of the world's fastest-growing ad markets.

A campaign run by data company Circana and streaming platform Roku has provided the clearest evidence yet of this shift. Using past buying behavior to target a snack brand's ads on connected TV (CTV), the campaign delivered 35% more incremental sales than the previous campaign while using fewer than half the impressions. The result signals that TV advertising can now be held to the same sales accountability standard as digital channels.

APAC's Infrastructure Is Reaching the Scale Needed for This Shift

The conditions for purchase-linked TV measurement to become mainstream across Asia-Pacific are converging rapidly.

CTV ad spending in APAC is projected to exceed US$15 billion by 2026, with CTV growing at a 13% annual rate to reach 360 million homes by 2030. India is leading that expansion at 32.5% growth, with Australia close behind at 24.8%. Retail media ad spend in the region reached US$97.8 billion, growing 13.5%, as retailers bring first-party transaction data into TV attribution models. Programmatic advertising in APAC is expanding at 24% in 2025, creating the technical infrastructure on which purchase-data signals can run.

"TV can be used to support the full marketing funnel and not just brand awareness," said Peter Topol, VP of Advanced TV Partnerships at Circana.

China Sets the Benchmark, Southeast Asia Lags on Infrastructure

China represents the most advanced model of purchase-attribution TV measurement in the world. Live commerce generated nearly US$350 billion in sales in 2024, with viewers averaging 36-minute engagement sessions. Food category penetration in live commerce reached 30%, compared to just 4.5% to 10% in South Korea and India, illustrating how far most APAC markets still need to travel.

Southeast Asia presents a different picture. Audiences are highly responsive to advertising, with over 55% of Southeast Asians reporting that ads influence their next purchase, rising to 66% in Thailand and 60% in Indonesia. Some 48% of Southeast Asian streamers use a second screen to shop while watching TV, and 81% are more likely to act on ads shown across devices. Yet the data infrastructure to connect ad exposure to purchase outcomes remains underdeveloped across most of the region.

Budget Reallocation Is Already Underway

Market-level signals confirm that CMOs are moving budgets toward channels where outcomes can be measured. Thailand crossed a critical threshold in 2024 when digital ad spend surpassed TV, capturing 45% versus 35% of total spending. Netflix's ad-supported tier reached 12.8 million subscribers in Southeast Asia as of Q2 2025, adding a significant new pool of premium inventory where purchase-data targeting can be applied.

Global TV ad revenue faces a projected US$8 billion decline by 2029, while online video is set to grow by US$25 billion over the same period. That commercial pressure is pushing broadcasters across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to adopt purchase-linked measurement models or risk losing advertiser budgets entirely.

Southeast Asia's total advertising market is valued at US$32.46 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach US$63.89 billion by 2031 at a 14.52% annual growth rate. That scale justifies significant investment in purchase-data TV infrastructure by platforms and broadcasters operating in the region.