As hundreds of millions of Southeast Asians come online, the region is well on track to realizing a $200 billion internet economy by 2025. Indeed, a Google blog post noted that Southeast Asia’s internet economy growth has exceeded previous growth expectations and is on its way to outpace it by 35%.
The post reiterated some of the findings from the “e-Conomy Southeast Asia Spotlight 2017” report, some of which will be of interest to marketers. For a start, the number of internet users in the region as of end-2017 is expected to cross 330 million.
The region’s internet economy is set to attain $50 billion in 2017, writes Rajan Anandan, the VP of Southeast Asia and India at Google, and Rohit Sipahimalani, the joint head of the Portfolio Strategy and Risk Group at Temasek.
And with more than 70 million new internet users since 2015, Southeast Asia now has the third largest number of internet users in the world. This is bigger than the whole population of the United States, notes the duo.
Notably, Southeast Asians spend almost twice as much time as Americans in e-commerce marketplaces. This works out to 140 minutes shopping online every month, yielding an e-commerce market that is projected to tip $88.1 billion by 2025.
Finally, Southeast Asians are also incredibly engaged, spending more time on the mobile internet than anyone else on the planet. This works out to be 3.6 hours on the mobile Internet every day, compared to just 2 hours per day for users in the United States, 1.8 hours per day in the United Kingdom, and 1 hour per day in Japan.
For organizations seeking to target these users, it is worth noting that Thailand is top of the list with 4.2 hours per day, while Indonesia comes in a close second at 3.9 hours per day.
This article first appeared on CMO Innovation