With a high growth rate, 12.7 percent per annum on average, the Vietnamese online ad market is considered a fertile land for the ad industry. But it has been controlled by foreign platforms.

An online ad expert in Vietnam said foreign ads hold 70-75 percent of domestic ad market share.

A senior executive of another large ad network in Vietnam agreed that cross-border ad platforms have the biggest piece of the advertising cake. He was even more pessimistic when affirming that market share of foreign networks is not 70 percent, but actually 90 percent.

He said foreign networks such as Facebook, Google and TikTok can control the Vietnamese market thanks to their advanced technologies.

“Foreign platforms have high technologies and a high numbers of loyal users. Google’s YouTube is the most prominent,” he said.

“Vietnamese firms mostly work with traditional ‘publishers’, such as newspapers, magazines and electronic news webs. But the traffic on the channel is modest,” he explained.

Can Vietnamese ad networks replace Facebook, Google?

Experts say no, and that it would be very difficult for domestic ad networks to replace foreign platforms such as Facebook and Google.

An ad expert told VietNamNet that Vietnamese networks have few opportunities to replace foreign platforms.

Even developed markets such as Japan, South Korea and India are controlled by cross-border platforms such as Google and Facebook, let alone Vietnamese networks.

However, the expert said that it doesn’t matter if foreign platforms hold the biggest market share. It is a problem only if Vietnamese businesses cannot take full advantage of Facebook and Google to compete internationally.

“We have to integrate with the world and join the competition. Ad platforms are just a tool which domestic companies can use to compete in their home market. The thing they need to do is use the tool effectively,” he said.

Major electronic publishers in Vietnam are newspapers and news websites, not tech firms, which explains why Vietnamese publishers cannot compete with foreign ad networks.

The problem can only be solved by accelerating the development of Vietnam’s digital platforms which maintain many regular users, so as to create a specific ad domains. Zalo is an example.

Once domestic ad networks can gather high-quality users, they will be able to attract businesses and brands that will place ads.

Trong Dat