Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines

Local publishers still win auctions global buyers think they should win

Southeast Asia is one of the few regions left where a well-connected local publisher can consistently out-buy a global operator on the same inventory, and budget size has little to do with it. Vietnam is the clearest case; Indonesia and the Philippines behave the same way. Local publishers there tend to hold direct relationships with regional ad networks and local payment providers that a global media buying desk simply doesn't have, and they can price and pace campaigns against a far more granular read of local device and network conditions than a global team working from continent-level benchmarks. Better information wins auctions. A Western studio entering the region without a local partner isn't merely short on local knowledge; it's bidding at a structural disadvantage against a counterparty that knows the inventory better.

Global buying can still work here. The bar for going it alone is simply higher than in the UK or Germany, and the studios that clear it without a local partner are the ones that invested heavily in region-specific creative testing and device-tier segmentation, rather than running one Southeast Asia campaign off global creative and hoping regional targeting closes the gap on its own.

Low-end Android and the cost of data

The device and network picture skews further toward the low end than Brazil or India. A large share of the addressable install base runs on devices with limited memory and storage, and in Indonesia and the Philippines especially, mobile data remains a real cost for a meaningful share of players, not merely a speed variable. So file size becomes an acquisition variable in its own right. A playable ad or an app that assumes a large download loses players before they reach a first session, and studios that trimmed their initial download report meaningfully better completion through install in these markets than studios shipping an unmodified global build.

Creative that looks impressive on a flagship test device can also perform badly in the field, because a large share of real impressions render on lower-spec hardware than anything the creative team tested on. Checking file size isn't enough. Running the build on a deliberately low-spec device before launch catches what a spec sheet misses: frame drops, slow load, UI elements that render wrong on a smaller or lower-resolution screen.

E-wallets over cards, and what that means for purchase flow

Card penetration across much of the region remains lower than payment habits in mature Western markets would suggest is normal. E-wallets carry much of the purchase volume a card-first flow would miss entirely; GoPay and OVO in Indonesia and GCash in the Philippines are among the most visible. A store or purchase flow built around cards simply won't convert a meaningful share of the region's willing spenders, whatever the creative or the offer looks like. Studios that have already integrated regional payment options solved this long ago, but it remains a common gap for a global studio entering fresh, and it's worth checking before assuming a regional launch's monetisation shortfall is a UA problem rather than a payments one.

Genre preferences differ enough to matter

Genre performance across the three markets isn't uniform. Casual and hyper-casual formats have historically travelled further in the region than heavier strategy or RPG formats do relative to their showing in East Asian or Western markets, though this varies by country and is shifting as local publishers build more mid-core titles for local tastes. The practical implication for a UA test plan is the same one that applies to payments and device profile: test at the country level rather than at the Southeast Asia level. Vietnam doesn't reward the same genre and creative choices as Indonesia, and neither behaves like the Philippines, even where their device and payment profiles look superficially similar.

The broader Q1 consolidation activity reported across the games industry this spring is a reminder that regional publishing capacity in fast-growing markets like these is itself becoming an acquisition target for larger platforms and publishers. Studios relying on a local partner whose ownership could change should keep an eye on it.

Related archive reading

• OEM and preload channels on Android
• Japan: what Western studios miss