Five things you need to know about media habits in Vietnam

The findings are the result of Project Gamma, the first and only local provincial media habits survey across 30 provinces in Vietnam from December 2010 to January 2011. 

1. Unsurprisingly, TV is the king of media in local provinces, same as in the six key cities where TKL conduct regular media habits tracking. Around 85 per cent of the respondents claimed to watch TV daily, watching mostly news, series and then films. TV channels with local relevant contents are favoured. VTV is very influential in the North (60 per cent) and Central (51 per cent), HTV holds a large share in the South East (43 per cent), while Vinh Long commands leading channel share in the Mekong Delta (29 per cent) region.

2. The penetration of cable channels is gradually rising, especially in South East provinces via cable (49 per cent) and in Northern provinces via a combination of cable and digital distribution (54 per cent). This provides an opportunity to explore using cable channels in South East/ North provinces only, as their ratings tend to pick up in line with penetration, as observed in key cities.

3. VTV ad cut is prevalent in most of the Northern provinces and in two provinces from the Central region, while the other provinces’ Vietnamese consumers claimed they can see the VTV ads. TKL stress the need to have local provincial TV channels in the plan to reach Northern Provincial consumers

4. Drawing most attention is usage growth of the internet, the emerging medium, in these provinces. Project Gamma findings break the common myth that internet is a key cities trend. 30 to 49 per cent of Vietnamese consumers across the provinces in the four regions (urban areas) are reported to access the internet on a daily basis, reading news, searching information, listening to music and emailing as the top activities, very similar to their counterparts from the key cities. Thus there is an opportunity to leverage internet as a national medium, the second highest penetrated medium in the provinces, next to TV

5. Print, with 54 per cent claimed reach in past week, continues to attract high levels of interest to the ads placed on them. More than two-thirds of the readers claimed to browse and read the ads placed on the newspaper ad-supplements that are popular in South East, Mekong Delta and Central provinces. Last but not the least, the hypothesis of radio’s low reach in provinces, similar to that in key cities, is proven true. Only 21 per cent of the respondents claimed to tune into radio in the past week in the provinces versus 22 per cent in six key cities. The lack of quality programmes is the main reason driving audiences away from radio.

Media habits in local provinces are similar in many ways to the six key cities, as the majority of industry watchers used to envision. As observed from key cities' regular media habits surveys, TKL Media expects local provincial media habits to change and evolve in line with the fast paced economic development in the country.