ByteDance properties Douyin and TikTok have been making waves inside and outside China for several years. Their combined spectacular growth will result in ad revenues of more than $30 billion for their parent company in 2022, leaving ByteDance in fifth place among ad publishers worldwide.

China’s total media ad spending and digital ad spending will both grow at their lowest rates since we began tracking them in 2012, but the ad industry is nonetheless set for an eventful year in the world’s second-largest market.

Nearly every country in the world will see slower growth in total ad spending and digital ad spending than it did last year, but the comparison is an unfair one because 2021 was abnormal. The outlook is mostly bright.

The metaverse is expected to be a major disruptor across industries, but it's still early days for the emerging realm. In this report, we look at how different markets are embarking on their own metaverse business models.

China’s digital ad market will expand in the coming years, but growth pace to slow: Government restrictions on data transfers and collection of personal info to weigh on Big Tech.

Retail media advertising sits at the intersection of two major digital disruptions unfolding in Latin America: the meteoric rise of ecommerce and reallocation of ad dollars toward digital formats. While still nascent, retail media will play a larger part of brands’ marketing strategies in 2022.

Farfetch and Neiman Marcus join forces to update luxury retail for the ecommerce age: The fashion platform will invest up to $200 million in the retailer, with the latter using Farfetch’s ecommerce tools to power digital channels.

In 2022, 40.7% of China’s digital ad spending will go toward the ecommerce channel, for ads offered by retailers like Alibaba and JD.com. This eclipses the share in the US, where 14.5% of digital ad spending will flow to ecommerce channel ads sold by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.

TikTok’s ecommerce priorities are clear with expansion into Southeast Asia: Parent company ByteDance hopes to turn social media users into social commerce adopters.

Alibaba’s stranglehold on ecommerce in China is loosening: The company’s earnings disappointed amid weakening consumer demand, robust performances from rivals, and more scrutiny from Beijing.

After missing out on a big rebound in 2021, Southeast Asia’s total retail and ecommerce sales are both set to boom this year. Indonesia—set for a standout year—will shape the region’s metrics and account for nearly 65% of Southeast Asia’s ecommerce sales.

Chinese companies can learn much about metaverse from US counterparts: Heavy tech regulations in the country have slowed tech firm’s ventures into the virtual world.

In Southeast Asia, total media ad spending snapped back to pre-pandemic levels in 2021 and will continue rising strongly this year. The growth in digital ad spending, though tamer in 2022, will again outpace that of the overall ad market.

China deems personalized recommendations discriminatory and harmful to user well-being: The new law could discourage users from spending time—and money—on retail and social media platforms.

The vision of augmented reality (AR) headsets replacing smartphones could become a reality sooner than expected in China. Advances in hardware and new AR commerce use cases are paving the way.

In 2022, China’s tech sector will continue dealing with a new regulatory climate, resulting in some new winners and a few familiar losers. Short-form video will make gains with commerce, and the metaverse will rear its head.

Every national market in the world will finish this year with more ad spending than in 2020. In most categories, worldwide growth records will be shattered. But 2021 was a very unusual year, following a very unusual 2020.

Mobile payments are near universal across use cases in China, thanks to high mobile penetration and the rise of a wallet duopoly that’s made them accessible, affordable, and convenient.

Singles’ Day, the online shopping festival invented by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and held on November 11, is widely known in the West. Now, a series of similar “double-digit” shopping festivals from digital powerhouses Lazada and Shopee are driving ecommerce growth in Southeast Asia.