AnyMind report: influencers drive trust and ROI in APAC

SINGAPORE — AnyMind Group, a BPaaS company focused on marketing, e-commerce, and digital transformation, said its newly released “State of Influence in APAC 2026 Report” points to a major shift in how brands across Asia-Pacific are using influencer marketing.

In the report, AnyMind Group said influencer marketing across APAC evolved in 2025 from an upper-funnel driver into an outcome-driver, with influencers increasingly shown to affect trust, purchase intent, and measurable commerce outcomes rather than serving mainly as awareness vehicles.

AnyMind Group said the findings draw on first-party data from AnyTag, its influencer marketing platform, covering nearly 7,000 influencer marketing campaigns and more than 1.1 million influencers across 10 markets: Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The company said the analysis is based on the most recent full-year influencer marketing activity in 2025, alongside a longitudinal review of campaigns executed since 2023.

As brands face increasing scrutiny over marketing spend, AnyMind Group said marketers are deploying influencers as performance partners across the consumer decision journey, reflecting pressure to optimize ROI and justify investment with clearer attribution and measurable outcomes.

 

Performance-led influencer marketing becomes the norm

While awareness-focused campaigns continued to dominate overall activity, outcome-driven campaigns in Asia grew steadily over the past three years, with 2025 a year of clear acceleration, reaching 42.47% of total tracked influencer marketing activity, up from 30.67% in 2024 and 28.24% in 2023.

This shift underscores how brands are increasingly leveraging influencers to drive measurable engagement, consideration, and downstream conversion potential, signaling a considerable shift from influencer marketing as a visibility-only channel toward one integrated with commerce and performance objectives.

TikTok strengthens its role as a performance-driven creator platform, but strategies remain market-specific

Platform dynamics in 2025 further reinforced the shift toward performance-led influencer marketing. TikTok emerged as the dominant influencer platform across Southeast Asia, accounting for 66.0% of influencer campaigns in Thailand, 64.3% in the Philippines, and 62.9% in Vietnam, reflecting the platform’s strength in short-form discovery, entertainment-led engagement, and action-oriented outcomes.

At the same time, channel selection remained highly market-specific. In Malaysia, campaigns were more evenly distributed, with Instagram accounting for 47.7% of influencer activity and TikTok close behind at 44.4%. This trend of TikTok adoption is also becoming evident in markets like Japan, where the platform saw a 16.3% increase in campaign usage in 2025 – the year in which TikTok Shop launched in Japan.

Despite TikTok’s rapid rise, Instagram remains the undisputed primary platform for influencer marketing in several APAC markets. In Japan, Instagram still commands the majority of activity at 56.4%. This dominance is even more pronounced in Taiwan, where the platform accounts for 57.7% of campaigns, compared with 45.3% in Hong Kong, which possesses a more diversified overall platform mix.

As influencer marketing matures, brands are increasingly integrating creator campaigns with broader performance and commerce strategies. Engagement and click-based outcomes highlight how influencers drive measurable actions that shape consideration and purchase decisions, supporting more informed and efficient marketing strategies.

Download the full report here: https://bit.ly/ReportPHMedia2026APH