The latest Digital 2025: July Global Statshot report revealed that Southeast Asia accounts for nearly one-quarter of TikTok's global advertising audience, making it the platform's largest ad-viewer base.

Ad-viewer base refers to the number of users who view advertisements. It describes the audience that sees and potentially interacts with ads, often measured as a rate or percentage of active users of the platform.

Thailand has the world's second-highest proportion of monthly active TikTok users, with over 80 percent internet users engaging with the platform each month — well above the global average of just 30 percent.

Naiyen Wang, Southeast Asia managing director at We Are Social, said social media and influencer marketing play a pivotal role in the region, where consumers are highly active across multiple platforms for research and brand engagement.

What truly captures their attention is content that is humorous, entertaining, and has the potential to go viral. For marketers, this means shifting strategies away from hard-selling toward creating content people genuinely enjoy and want to interact with, Wang said.

The data show that internet users in Southeast Asia watch more online video content each week than the global average of 11 hours and 39 minutes. In the Philippines, users watch over 20 hours of video weekly, more than half of which consists of short-form clips.

YouTube remains the largest social media platform globally in terms of advertising audience size, with 2.54 billion monthly active users. Southeast Asians are among its most avid users, with countries from the region occupying half of the global top ten spots for monthly usage share. The Philippines and Vietnam lead the rankings.

More than one in five internet users in the region follow social media influencers and regularly watch influencer videos or vlogs weekly. In the Philippines, 43.5 percent follow influencers, and roughly half watch their content every week.

Humorous, meme-based or viral videos are the second most popular form of online video globally — after music videos — among users aged 16 to 64. TikTok dominates in this category, with almost 80 percent of users engaging with the platform for such content.

Strong influence

Social media plays a crucial role in the consumer journey. Over 80 percent of Vietnamese and Indonesian users research brands on social platforms, while more than 60 percent of Malaysians and Filipinos do the same, highlighting the platforms' strong influence on purchasing decisions.

Instagram, TikTok and Facebook are the top global platforms for brand research, respectively. Facebook remains the leading source of social media-driven web traffic, accounting for over 70 percent of all referrals.

Messaging app use differs by country. Southeast Asia also has the world's highest Messenger ad audience share at 22.7 percent.

Telegram enjoys greater popularity in the region than globally. While only one-third of global internet users access it monthly, the figure approaches two-thirds in Malaysia and Indonesia, showing the diverse communication channels brands must consider when entering the Southeast Asian market.

The Nation, Thailand