Myanmar Media Landscape in 2019
These are the top 6 source of information that can influence consumer’s purchasing decisions in Myanmar media landscape in 2019 (Reference: Deloitte’s Myanmar Consumer Survey 2019)
- Friends & Relatives
- TV
- BillBoards
- In-Store Promotions
- Social Media
- Events
About Ten years ago, mobile SIM cards in Myanmar were quite expensive but in 2014 after Ooredoo and Telenor got its first service and started the free competition in Myanmar mobile market. The price of SIM cards is now around down to 1500 kyats or $1-1.50 USD. This circumstance led Myanmar people to have access to information faster and brands to reach their audiences in such a short time. The media landscape has changed since social media has quickly grown alongside with the traditional media. With the rapid growth of Social Media, the Traditional media businesses such as newspapers and radio are expanding their own media platforms into online media for maintaining customers and growing more potential audiences. Even though online media grow their popularity among capital cities, there are many people in rural areas who still consume news and entertainment by using offline media too.
The new media has changed Myanmar’s behaviours of entertaining and data consuming in many ways. Hence, understanding the new behaviour and interests could help us to understand our customers better and know how to communicate better too. In this article, we will cover the overview of the media landscape and the trends in Myanmar.
TRADITIONAL MEDIA IN MYANMAR
Top 5 traditional media in Myanmar
- Television (TV)
- Print Media
- Radio
- Billboard & Car Wrap
- Sponsorship: Event sponsorship is a great opportunity for brands to connect with targeted audiences, and that is especially important in Myanmar.
In Myanmar, offline media still has a huge influence over people even though the new media has bloomed. Especially, television, radio and printed media are still covering most of the people in Myanmar.
TV
2 popular TV channels in Myanmar such as MRTV-4 and Skynet.
MRTV-4 is one main channel which presents daily news, entertainments, music, education, health, religion and many other programs. It has branching channels that cover different categories like Reader’s channel, Maharbawdi, 4EDU. Its sub-channels are Channel 7, Channel 9 and 5 Plus with targeted viewers aged over 35.
Skynet is first popular for their live streaming programs. Later, Skynet’s fame is getting bigger with time because of their sports channels and live programs. It has a lot of sub-channels like Skynet sport HD, Skynet movies, Skynet music and many others.
How about a TV show? Here are the top 5 favorite local television shows according to Myanmar Times record 2019:
- Master Chef Myanmar – cooking competition TV show
- The Money Drop – game show
- World of Khit and Thit – variety show follows the lives of two twin
- Myanmar Idol – Myanmar singing contest
- Myanmar’s Got Talent – local adaptation of the reality talent show
For print media, Eleven and 7 days still have no less than 80K readers. Most of the readers of these two newspapers are aged over 50. However, print media industries are adapting their business according to the changing world by creating their websites. So, the young generation and internet users also can read news and entertainment online too. Examples of the print media that now open their website to worldwide 7 Day, Eleven, BBC Burmese, Irrawaddy Burmese, Mizzima Burmese.
Radio
Myanmar radio is one of the essential needs for a group of people in Myanmar taxi and bus drivers since they get to know the updates with news, traffic and music to entertain them. Moreover, radio is also moving to digital platforms and some of them are available on websites now. It is enjoyable for those who are away from home since they can also listen on websites wherever they are.
According to Media Landscapes website, during the junta years, programs transmitted abroad such as Voice of America, BBC and Radio Free Asia were popular and accessible. A handful of commercial radio stations such as Shwe FM and Cherry FM operate alongside Myanmar Radio, state-run under the auspices of MRTV. The others include Irrawaddy FM, Padamyar FM which are becoming very popular in different areas of Myanmar.
ONLINE MEDIA IN MYANMAR
Top 10 website in Myanmar (Base on our editor’s pick base on web traffic and relevance to Myanmar people, some websites have been taken out due to illegal copy write violation by reports from the Myanmar government)
- Google: According to https://trends.google.com, Trending Searches of Myanmar people in 2019 are mostly about entertainment such as movies, online games and celebrities.
- YouTube: YouTube largest audience channels are DVB TVnews with 359,000 Subscribers and Total uploaded video views 283,677,381, AkonThi Media with 337,000 Subscribers and 7day TV with 263,000 Subscribers. Interesting point is that all the following channels are providing news.
- Facebook: Facebook’s fan page with the largest audience according to Socialbakers statistics are 7days News Journal with 24,307,908 total fans, Eleven Media Group and BBC Myanmar and the Fastest-Growing Pages in Myanmar also the pages that provide news.
- The Irrawaddy: This website updates news including both Myanmar and international news which are about politics, business, sports, entertainment and many others. Also it’s a non-profit media organisation seeking funding and grants from private foundations, NGOs, individuals and governments around the world. Irrawaddy Readers are over 30 year olds.
- Channelmyanmar: Channelmyanmar offers people to watch updated movies and series with Myanmar subtitles. Target audience of the website is 18-40 aged. Moreover, Channelmyanmar has its own Facebook page with 69,738 followers.
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Many Myanmar people use it when they need to find some specific information.
- BBC.com: BBC website contains international news coverage, as well as Myanmar political, entertainment, sports, and business news. Many news reports in the BBC website are accompanied by audio and video, while the media in the website are also available to view or listen in Myanmar language. BBC has various types of audiences. Especially two audience segments to target: Worldly achievers and Culturally curious.
- Pornhub.com: It is one of the most popular search engines for the porn industry. It offer people millions of videos that stream quickly and in high quality. The website also provides Burmese porn videos for free. The Pornhub website ensures their content goes viral to a large audience.
- MmTimes.com: This website publishes daily in both English and Myanmar editions, The Myanmar Times website is the online newspaper of choice for decision-makers and business leaders, as well as civil society and a growing consumer market. It self-acclaimed that it is committed to delivering the news truthfully and objectively, without fear or favour and regardless of race or religion.
- Shop.com.mm: The online shopping operations in Myanmar owned by China’s Alibaba Group tend to be a reliable and convenient Online Shopping website in Myanmar. It provides online shopping across a variety of products and promotions such as 12.12 Sale , 11.11 Sale , Black Friday , Flash Sale , Thingyan Sale to customers. The website’s target are young people, working people who don’t have much time.
In the Top10 website in Myanmar, we based on Top Sites in Myanmar by Alexa.com and analyzed it to our top 10 website in Myanmar. We choose only the reliable website and recheck the popularity with the local Myanmar people and other website to make sure that those are popular websites in Myanmar. Then, we narrowed it down to our top 10 online media in Myanmar. The sites in the Alexa top sites lists are ordered by their 1 month Alexa traffic rank. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews over the past month.
Online media in Myanmar is growing rapidly and this is a big opportunity for many businesses that want to open their market in Myanmar. It is important to note that Myanmar is home to an array of ethnic groups. While the main language spoken is Burmese, there are other major ethic languages in use. To reach the mass audiences of Myanmar, we can still use Burmese language.
POPULAR MOBILE APPS IN MYANMAR
According to gs.statcounter.com, Myanmar mobile operating system market share 2019 stat shows that 88.53% of Myanmar people are using Android system smartphones and 11.35% are using iOS. Most of the Smartphone users, either android or iOS system users in Myanmar can now download their favourite apps easily by installing Google’s Play Store, APKPure.apk or iOS app store. So they can choose the apps depending on their interest.
According to Myanmar Times, there are some applications that are quite popular with most smartphone users, such as Facebook, Viber and WeChat which provide people to connect to social media and communication. Game apps that are popular among boys such as Mobile Legends and Clash of Clans. Besides that, photo editing apps are also very popular. For example, PicSay or Snapseed. The popular entertainment apps are TubeMate, YouTube or streaming apps such as Mahar Movies, Hulu and Cookies TV.
Here are Editors’ pick Top10 mobile app in Myanmar. We’ve queried and narrowed it down to our top 10 apps in Myanmar.
- Facebook: There are an average 23,080,000 Facebook users per month which accounted for 42% of its entire population. There aren’t anyone who has an internet connection and doesn’t have a Facebook account (some of the people have more than one account) in Myanmar.
- Messenger : Many Myanmar people use Messenger to communicate with each other no matter where they are.
- Google App : Google is a famous app for Myanmar. Most of all Myanmar tends to use Google App to search for news and confirm data.
- Viber: It attracts over 5 million users in Myanmar. Viber, a leading mobile communications platform offering free messaging and HD-quality phone calls. Most Myanmar people us Viber to make day to day calls.
- Youtube: According to socialbakers, most myanmar people use Youtube to consume news and watch some entertainment videos.
- Instagram: Instagram is the most popular among young adults. Young people use Instagram for their hide out place.
- Tiktok: An emerging social-media powerhouse that lets users create and share short videos, many no longer than 15 seconds.It’s on the rise in Myanmar and very popular among young age.
- Joox: JOOX music app is popular in Myanmar. The app provides users to listen to updated songs.
- VIU: Drama & Movie app that offers users to stream and download your favourite shows, movies, TV series and music in full HD. It’s very popular in Myanmar because all the movies and series in VIU are available with Myanmar subtitles.
- Netflix: The video-streaming service Netflix is now available in Myanmar and has become popular among teenagers. As Netflix allows users to watch thousands of movies on any of your favourite devices, save the movies and enjoy it offline.
Most of the Top 10 mobile app in Myanmar by Editors’ pick are social media and entertainment apps. As in the Digital 2020 Myanmar Report, Digitaldots said that there are 22 million internet users and 22 million social media users in January 2020. There are about 1 million internet users and 1.4 social media users increased during 2019-2020. From the report you can see that the number of internet users is the same number of social media users. Moreover, the Clash of the streaming giants trends in Myanmar is growing rapidly in Myanmar. Half of all mobile usage in Myanmar is spent on streaming, and locally relevant content is the big traffic driver.
INFLUENCERS
1. Top Celebrities according to socialbakers.com,
- Sai Sai Kham Leng the Hip Hop, Alternative Hip Hop, Hip Hop Rock , Pop singer and famous actor with 8,741,899 fans on Facebook Page
- Wutt Hmone Shwe Yi the actress who won Asia Model Festival: Asia Special Award 2019 with 5,331,104 fans on Facebook Page
- Lay Phyu Crazy the singer with 3,812,744 fans on Facebook Page
- Thandar Hlaing သန္တာလှိုင် Thandar Hlaing is the Mentor and Judge on the reality TV show The Model Academy, which bring out the next generation models in Myanmar. Rated No1. on Prime Time TV Shows on Free to air TV Channel 7 and Season 3 in 2019. She plays a major role in supporting & educating women and families on health, fitness and nutrition through her social media platforms and other campaigns through her clients. She has 1522152 fans on her Facebook.
- Myo Htut Naing actor, model and singer of ethnic Shan-Chinese descent.he has 181 209 followers in his facebook. He gained popularity after starring in the 2018 film Dimensions which brought him wider recognition.
2.Beauty influencers according to mmtimes.com top-10-bloggers,
- Nay Chi Oo She is one of the top-tier beauty bloggers in Myanmar, and became famous for makeup tutorials on her Beauty by Nachi blog. On 15 February 2019, she was appointed as ambassador for Vivo smartphone. That was her first time working as a brand ambassador. On 28 February 2019, she was appointed as ambassador for Air KBZ.
- Win Min Than Win Min Than’s Facebook page is called Yangon In My Heart, and contains everything a young woman needs to know about facial treatments, perfumes and lipsticks. Her beauty advice is mixed with information about relationships, making her a unique voice in the blogosphere. She has about over 450,000 followers in 2019.
- Kwan Kwann – The Artist He is a special kind of beauty blogger. He’s the Julian Clary of Myanmar, with his outlandish style and camp mannerisms, delivering makeup advice to those who want to push the boundaries of style. His website has over 100,000 followers.
3.Travel influencers according to mmtimes.com top-10-bloggers,
- May Zune Win under Facebook profile “mayzunewin3” Every time May Zun Win travels she updates her I Love Travelling Facebook blog, which has over 460,000 followers. Her blog won the Myanmar Travel Influencer Award 2018
- Travel Kueen is another famous travel blogger, who received Stella Seven Entertainment’s Myanmar Influencer Award for 2019. Her Facebook account is followed by over 378,000 fans.
- Thiha, the Traveler Thiha is a young adventurer, with an eye for photography and an interest in people. Go with me is the review sharing of the services which we think necessary for all of our friends.
4.Food influencers according to mmtimes.com top-10-bloggers,
- Cho Wut Yee She is one of the most famous food bloggers in Myanmar. Her Facebook page Wutyee Foodhouse with nearly 50,000 online followers.
- The Food Magazine is the first monthly magazine published by Better Day Media of its kind in Myanmar language and one of the best-selling magazines in Myanmar.
- Nandar’s Kitchen, A page administered by a passionate home cook who loves to share her homemade recipes, kitchen hacks and food reviews
5.Game streamers & influencers
- AKgoLive PUBG Mobile- Live streaming every day from 10pm – 2am with 912,995 Followers. Streamingbyshinelayz – Htet Shine Aun is doing the Dota, PUBG Mobile, Mobile legend Live streaming together with offering game items. He won the Myanmar Influencer award 2018 in Fans’ Favorite & Game winner.
- Myanmar 10K Gamer Live Streaming many games such as PUBG Mobile, PUBG PC,Yakuza Night, DAYS GONE, Destiny 2, Death Standing and many new games. He has more than 190 000 followers.
- InsaNe self-acclaimed to be a Professional Dota 2 player who is the Best Mid laner in Myanmar. Dota2 Mobile- Live streaming with about 66000 Followers.
E-commerce Trends
Over 85% of all internet traffic in Myanmar is from Facebook. For e-commerce, Facebook is one of the easiest platforms to set-up a page and start selling products. Therefore, many actual retail shops set up Facebook pages to reach out to buyers online, such as Endra Store, and Suu Baby & Mommy Store.
On Facebook, sellers increasingly use live videos on Facebook. (Example: Myanmar Snaker 42 posts a three-hour live video on the platform daily to sell second-hand shoes, with most of its videos attracting more than 10,000 viewers and 1000 comments.)
Many people in Myanmar shop on Facebook while online shopping websites and apps are growing. Shop.com.mm and RGO47 are one of the top marketplaces for online shopping. According to Colliers, Myanmar e-commerce is in the developing stage with US$6million in market value while Myanmar’s retail market is estimated to be worth $10 billion according to export.gov in Jan, 2020. It is still a good opportunity for e-commerce since around 30% of Myanmar’s population are living in cities and 70% of them are under 40 years old.
Since 2017, City Mart Holdings, the largest retail chain in Myanmar, also launched citymall.com.mm and provided end to end service starting from selecting items and next-day home delivery.
Alibaba entered the Myanmar market in 2018 with the acquisition of Daraz Group which operated Shop.com.mm. Their main strategy is to cut the commision percentage into zero and it attracts many retailers. In partnership with Yoma bank, it also offers retailers business loans of K100,000 to K10,000,000. In 2018, Shop.Com.mm began a local version of Alibaba’s global “11.11” , the online sale that offered discounts on 50,000 items in the largest online sales event in Myanmar and its shopping app was accessed by over 150,000 users. In the first hour of the promotion period, over 1500 orders were placed and most of the purchases were made by mobile phones, according to a representative of the company.
In 2019, with an interview Myanmar Times, Frans Maas, managing director of Shop.com.mm said “Throughout the last year, we’ve increased the online products from 50,000 unique products to now almost 500,000 products. The team set goals to grow 10 fold per year.”
Shop.com.mm has driven sales with promotion events and special offer periods such as 12.12 Sale , 11.11 Sale , Black Friday , Flash Sale , Thingyan Sale. According to Shop.com.mm, here are the trending brands for Myanmar on their website including Aukey, Asus, Apple, Bosch, Canon, Chigo, Dell, Erke, H&M, Hikvision, Huawei, JBL, Lenovo, LG, Midea, Oppo, Panasonic, Philips, Remax, Samsung, Skechers, Timberland, Vivo, Xiaomi and Yangoods.
“ Are your Brands already selling online?”
Although most online customers still prefer cash-on-delivery payment, the recent growth of KBZ Pay and Wave Money is encouraging for e-commerce start-ups. Wave Money has announced that it moved more than $1.3 billion in mobile remittances in 2018, and KBZ Pay said it had facilitated one million transactions through early April,2019.
Even though Myanmar has increased their consumption of online media in 2019, it still has a great combination of online and traditional media. Especially for E-commerce, new media has a big impact on how people do sales and advertising for reaching mass audiences due to its fast communication. For the shipping and payment, businesses might still need to use the agent and cash delivery system to fulfil the gap between online and offline to make customers feel the most convenient.
Payment
After Myanmar’s fast transition into the online media, many businesses are implementing online payment systems for customers to pay various bills through their applications which provide greater convenience. People in big cities like Yangon and Mandalay are starting to use online payment systems such as Wave Money, TrueMoney Myanmar, M-Pitesan (Ooredoo’s Mobile Money Service) and OK$.
Some Banks in Myanmar have provided services such as online payment and international credit, debit cards for a while. The Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC) teamed up with AYA Pay, KBZ Pay and CB Pay in 2019 to build a YCB payment system enabling people to pay various bills through their applications.They hope that these future payment system will make the entire process easier, and useful. Nevertheless, most areas in Myanmar are still running with cash and traditional banking systems.
Conclusion
We hope we have given you a brief overview of Myanmar media landscape. Understanding the Myanmar media landscape is key to start planning media for your brand effectively. We are happy to give you 5 simple tips on how to plan your media effectively in a fast changing world.
- Define your goals and targets clearly.
- Conduct necessary research if needed.
- Let your media planner work closely with your marketing team. Create a holistic marketing plan with the team, learn fast and move fast.
- Have a data strategy to create data as your asset.
- When you measure ROI of your media investment, have balance between sales and branding.
If you want to be successful in doing marketing in Myanmar you can check out this article. https://blog.happioteam.com/marketing-in-myanmar-insights-from-online-agency-happio/
Our Happio team specialise in “Creative Digital & Activation Marketing” for the Myanmar market. We hope this article is useful to you, if you face any problems about marketing in Myanmar, feel free to contact us for consultation, we are open for a friendly phone call or email!