Not just an app — why global brands feast on OTT Messaging in Asia
Examining brand-user engagement on the leading messaging apps in Asia
In this post, we explore the over-the-top (OTT) messaging market in Asia and the various services offered by each of the dominant platforms. Before diving into the individual apps, however, we need to first understand why OTT messaging apps are the central part of the social landscape in Asia.
Why Asia is such a critical region
Global social penetration:
The chart above details the state of social media usage worldwide, and illustrates the power of the Asian market. East Asia and Southeast Asia are the #1 and #2 social markets worldwide, with 1B people on social media across both regions. While social penetration in East Asia is fairly high at 48%, Southeast Asia lags the global leaders with only 37% social penetration. Despite the lower penetration in Southeast Asia, the region still features the global leader in social penetration, Taiwan, with 77%. By comparison, the USA only has 59%.
Where are these 1B+ social media users in Asia spending their time?
Top social apps in the most populated Asian countries:
There are a few lessons we can take from all of this data. First of all, it’s the utility of messaging; in six of these eight countries, two of the top three social apps are messaging-first platforms. The two countries where that’s not the case feature a regional monopoly: WeChat in China, and KakaoTalk in Korea. This is even more striking when compared to the USA, where the top three social platforms are Facebook (41%), Facebook Messenger (26%), and Twitter (17%). The next closest messaging app is ranked #8, Snapchat (11%), followed by Skype (9%).
The list here enforces Facebook’s global dominance, as Facebook owns social across the region. Every country on this list features a Facebook property, and all but China (where Facebook is blocked) have at least two Facebook properties. In India, the top three social platforms are all Facebook properties.
The only messaging apps that we see on the list with significant penetration (>20%) across multiple countries, are LINE and Facebook Messenger. Taiwan, not pictured, also has significant LINE usage. Other than Facebook Messenger and LINE, there is some frequent WhatsApp usage, with a bit of Viber and Skype as well.
Taking a look at the top messaging apps worldwide, we can see that the four leading messaging apps in Asia (WeChat, LINE, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger) represent over 2.5B users globally. While WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are significantly used worldwide, WeChat and LINE are primarily Asia focused.
Top messaging apps worldwide:
What this means for brands
Given that most users in the region are on WeChat, LINE, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp, brands should focus their engagement efforts on these channels. However, user-brand engagement is different on each of these platforms.
To start with, WhatsApp does not enable brand communications — they have recently announced that they will allow brand communications on the platform, but this is still some time away. Further, given the Western/USA base of the company, we can expect this to be restricted to Western deployments, at least initially.
So that leaves brands with WeChat, LINE, and Facebook Messenger as the primary messaging engagement channels for users across Asia. Each of these three platforms enables brand communications and value added services in different ways. The common theme among all of them, however, is that they have positioned themselves as centralized platforms that enable users to access a variety of services, not just messaging. These platforms are moving the branded app and browser functionality into the messaging app itself, integrating themselves into every aspect of consumers’ daily lives.
WeChat: The industry Pioneer
With 650M+ users, mostly in China, WeChat is the clear social media leader in China. Like the other messaging apps, WeChat started as a simple messaging app, and added services as it evolved. By doing so, WeChat has pioneered the model of the messaging app as a gateway to all consumer services. , a partner at Venture Capital firm , wrote a great blog post detailing how WeChat sits at the center of how Chinese consumers access services, emphasizing the importance of WeChat’s payments and commerce services.
We see above everything that WeChat offers — movie tickets, transportation (air, rail, taxi), and money transfer, among other services. In addition to these utility services, they’ve made it possible for brands to create accounts on the platform and engage users directly, via ‘Official Accounts.’
WeChat Official Accounts
These Official Accounts enable brands to offer followers a mobile app/browser-like experience within the WeChat platform. Adding a brand account is like adding a friend — you either search for the brand manually or scan the brand’s barcode to add it to your contacts list.
This interaction reveals a key difference between how consumers in China are comfortable interacting with brands vs. those in North America/Europe. For WeChat users in China, it’s normal to have a business in your Chats list, and to receive messages from them — if you’re not interested, you just ignore the messages.
The rest of the world isn’t there yet. A recent The Information article (subscription required) exploring Facebook Messenger’s push into business services discussed brands’ concerns about intruding on customers’ “private space:”
“Let’s imagine that Everlane message you got. You’re not thinking of Everlane at all. You’re talking to your friends. That means Everlane is interrupting you in some senses.” (emphasis added)
- , former Global Head of Facebook Brand Design
On WeChat, these businesses aren’t “interrupting” you — having businesses in your Chats list is a part of life and adds significant value. Now, even though businesses appear in your Chats list like a friend, their accounts are anything but a simple chat window.
Let’s first take a look at social care innovator KLM Airlines’ WeChat account:
When we first access the KLM account, we are greeted by a message giving us several options to quickly access KLM’s services. But it’s not that simple; the customizable WeChat keyboard at the bottom of the screen gives us other ways to engage with KLM:
We can also chat directly with a KLM service agent directly in the chat window (as if we were chatting with a friend) to resolve a customer service issue:
All within the KLM WeChat account, we can access the full lifecycle of services from the airline, from flight booking to customer service. For a transportation provider like KLM, these utility services are extremely important, and they’ve built their WeChat presence accordingly.
For an international sports brand like the NBA, other things are important — things like news, team standings, and Steve Ballmer’s celebrations. With this in mind, the NBA built their WeChat account so followers can easily access their preferred information:
Of course, no matter how much you love a business, nobody wants to get inundated by frequent promotions and messages from their favorite store (which is why services like Guerilla Mail exist). To guard against spamming and alienating users, WeChat limits how frequently Official Account holders can broadcast unprompted messages to followers, to four times per month. However, if a user interacts with a brand account (which can be as simple as accessing the account and clicking on something), then the brand can message the user an unlimited amount of times over the next 48 hours.
But what about businesses, like news media, where the value is frequently broadcasted, fresh content? To satisfy these businesses’ needs for frequent customer interaction, WeChat provides Subscription Accounts. The previous NBA and KLM Airlines account examples we showed, that sit in users’ Chats list, are WeChat Service Accounts. Unlike Service Accounts, Subscription Accounts are not individually included in users’ Chats list; rather, they are all bundled in a “Subscriptions” folder:
These accounts lack a lot of the full fledged functionality of the Service Accounts, but are ideal for brands that simply want to distribute content frequently. For example, below we see fresh motivational messages from Lebron James and daily news from the Wall Street Journal:
Unlike Service Accounts, Subscription Accounts can send one broadcast message per day; like Service Accounts, the restriction is lifted when a user interacts with the account.
Within these branded accounts, you can access all of the content and services from a business that you need — why use the mobile browser or branded app?
Though we’ve shown examples from some blue-chip brands, WeChat Official Accounts aren’t only for large multinationals; small laundromats and restaurants in China also have Official Accounts. If you’re a brand in China, big or small, you need to be on WeChat if you want to engage your customers.
LINE Messenger: Unbundled services via the LINE Family
LINE is the leading messaging app in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, with 200M+ users worldwide. Launched in 2011 by NHN Japan, the Japanese arm of Naver (the Korean Internet giant), the platform has many similarities to WeChat —e.g. users can add friends via barcodes, payment services, and brands can create accounts to interact with users.
LINE’s main difference from WeChat is that it provides key value added services via unbundled apps (50+ apps in the “LINE Family”). Apps in the LINE Family include LINE Shop to find the best shopping deals, and LINE TV to watch videos on mobile.
Although LINE and WeChat both offer accounts for businesses, they take different approaches. LINE charges businesses substantially for its Official Accounts, while WeChat doesn’t. Furthermore, LINE created the LINE@ app for smaller businesses to communicate with users, and LINE@ Accounts are also significantly cheaper than LINE Official Accounts.
Brand engagement on LINE
Below are images of how users engage with brands on LINE. As we can see, just like on WeChat, a user can follow a brand’s LINE account to access the latest content/services relating to that particular brand. One unique example is brokerage SBI Securities, which lets LINE users buy stock by texting back and forth with a stock trader:
Brand engagement on LINE goes beyond the branded account. LINE distinguished itself and rose in popularity by offering users rich, animated stickers depicting LINE’s two main mascots, Cony (bunny) and Brown (bear). Below are a few stickers featuring Cony and Brown and a couple of other LINE mascots:
LINE users love these stickers, and LINE lets brands create and offer stickers for sale (featuring the LINE mascots) via the LINE Creators Market. Brands like Disney, Burberry, and UNIQLO sell these stickers on LINE, driving brand affinity and increasing revenue.
Media personalities including Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, and Maroon 5 have also extended their brands using LINE stickers:
Fueled by the popularity of their mascots and stickers, LINE has become a cultural phenomenon. LINE Stores and LINE Cafes throughout Southeast Asia offer consumers LINE merchandise and food, and LINE Games and TV Shows featuring Cony and Brown are popular throughout the region.
KakaoTalk: The leader in Korea
The only WeChat-like dominance we see elsewhere in the region is from KakaoTalk in South Korea. KakaoTalk has 41% penetration in South Korea, while Facebook Messenger, the next closest messaging app, has only 12% penetration. As we can see from the data, KakaoTalk isn’t really used anywhere besides Korea.
Like WeChat and LINE, users can interact with brands on KakaoTalk using Plus Friend:
Although they are dominant in Korea, that represents ~50M active users, compared to the 650M on WeChat and 212M on LINE. For now, KakaoTalk is most relevant for brands for whom South Korea is a highly strategic market.
Facebook Messenger: The global leader takes a cue from Asia
Facebook has been a key platform for social customer service and engagement for many years, with brand ‘Pages’ serving as the center of all customer engagement on Facebook. In 2014, Facebook disabled the Messenger feature in the mobile app, forcing users to download the standalone Messenger app. The unbundling of Messenger was the first step in establishing Messenger as a platform (like WeChat).
Facebook took another big step In March 2015, when they announced Business on Messenger, a set of new functionalities enabling deeper customer engagement and integration into existing enterprise platforms (CRMs, etc.).
The images below show the retailer Everlane engaging with a customer across the customer lifecycle, sending a receipt, a shipping update, and processing an additional order, all within the Messenger window:
Facebook also announced a variety of value added services for Messenger, including Facebook M (Virtual Assistant), a partnership with Uber for enabling in-Messenger taxi booking, and developer integrations (Giphy, Dubsmash, etc.) for richer customer communications.
Facebook has acknowledged WeChat’s influence on their Messenger buildout, saying,
“Messaging is really, truly the next frontier…The Asian paradigm has shown there’s a there there.”
- , VP, Messaging Products, Facebook
Conclusion
The social media landscape in Asia is dominated by messaging apps. WeChat and LINE have enforced their dominance by providing access to various consumer services through their platforms. Although Facebook Messenger doesn’t yet do this significantly in the region, it has risen to the top of several markets in Asia on the back of the Facebook Social Network. As Facebook expands the Business on Messenger functionality and value added services globally, it is ideally positioned to rise to the top in Asian markets where there is no dominant platform.
Brands evaluating their customer engagement strategies and channels in Asia must understand the unique social media/messaging dynamic in the region and the distinct capabilities of each platform.
Special thanks to for helping to put this story together ( needs to include option to add co-authors).
This blog post appeared in an edited form here.
