Overview The internet penetration in Indonesia is 22% which is very low compared to most of the Asian countries.

This low internet penetration is present because of lack of infrastructure for broadband and difficulty in creating infrastructure because of the geographical terrain of Indonesia which is very fragmented.

Internet Penetration in Indonesia, 2012

Online Populaiton 22%

Offline Population 78%

The broadband penetration was even lower at 2.2% in August, 2011. However, the Indonesian government is looking to change that by investing USD 4.3 billion in public private funding allocation. This plan aims to connect the more rural and isolated areas of Indonesia and increase the broadband connectivity to 30% by 2014. In spite of such low penetration, Indonesia has a large internet population. In fact it is among the top 5 countries in Asia in terms of internet population as can be seen through the figure below.

Top 5 Asian Countries in Terms of Internet Population

China India Japan Indonesia Korea, South 137,000,000 101,228,736 55,000,000 40,329,660 538,000,000

Unlike China, Japan and South Korea, Indonesia therefore has a lot of room to grow and like India represents massive untapped potential. According to study the internet speed in Indonesia is very low. In fact it ranked 146th out of 176 countries tested for internet speed in 2010 by NetIndex. Even when the internet penetration is low in Indonesia, the number of internet users has grown very rapidly. As per eMarketer estimates, number of internet users grew by 40% to reach 43 million in 2011, and then by 38.6% in 2012. This is huge growth especially when considering Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, the actual number of users represented by these percentages is a lot.

Growth of Internet Population in Indonesia

43 59.6

72.7

83.6

93.4

102.8 Online Population

202.7

188.7

178.0

169.7

162.5

Offline Population
155.5

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

However, the growth that Indonesia has shown so far, may not stay steady again as per eMarketer estimates. It has been observed that the growth percentage in itself is declining. By 2016, the growth rate will come down to 10.10% as we can see in the following figure.

Growth of internet penetration and rate of growth in Indonesia

40.40% 38.60% 33.00% 29.00% 24.00% 17.50% 14.90% 11.70% 10.10% 22.10% 39.80% 36.50%

Penetration Rate of Growth

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

This slowdown of growth rate can be explained by the geographical distribution of current internet infrastructure. Maximum internet users are in big cities and the initial infrastructure was comparatively

easy to set up. However, now that Indonesian government is aiming to bring broadband to rural places (where broadband is at 2.2% and rural internet users account for only 14% of internet users in Indonesia), the setup will take time. This is mainly due to the fragmented geography of Indonesia. In terms of internet access, internet cafes were the most popular choice in 2009. Few people had access to internet at home, and the second best place to access internet was through mobile phones. The figure given below, exhibits how the situation has changed over the years.

Change in Place of Internet Access

Office Home Internet Cafes Mobile Phones

2009

2010

2011

2012

As we can see access through mobile phone has taken over internet cafes. 83% of the population once accessed internet through internet cafes, and at the same time internet access through mobile phones was only 22%. The story however flipped with time as mobile phones are the new major source of internet access. 62% of the Indonesian internet users now access internet through mobile phones while the use of internet cafes has gone down to less than 50%. Access at home has also increased by 25%. Because of this increase in internet access via mobile phones, it is important to understand what activities dominate internet use through mobile. Accessing social networking sites (76%) is the biggest activity on mobile phones, followed by instant messaging (45%) and information search (42%). The least common activities on phone are playing/streaming music, downloading photos, ringtones, and sharing photos with friends and family. This could possibly be due to a price sensitive population avoiding the heavy downloading charges which are associated with rich media content. The figure below summarizes the mobile internet activities.

Major activities on internet in Mobile

Access social Networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn Instant Messaging Look up content or search for information Access e-mail Download free applications Send photos taken via camera phone to family/friends Download ringtones Download/view personal photos Play/stream online music 25% 22% 22% 21% 30% 37% 45% 42% 76%

Social Media Social media comes naturally to the social population of Indonesia. Young generation in Indonesia is the most active on social media. While this is the case in most countries, what increases the importance of this fact in this case is that Indonesia has a large young population. The median age in Indonesia is 28 years, with 35% of the population under 24 years of age. Every social networking site, starting from Friendster to Facebook has experienced good response in Indonesia. A snapshot of social media in Indonesia is illustrated by the following figure. The growth of social media penetration is given in the following figure and also the rate of growth in terms of number of social media users is represented through the other line.

Growth of Social Media and rate of growth in Indonesia

92.30% 87.50% 80.00% 94.80%

51.40%

51.60%

Social Media Users Penetration among internet users

28.80% 18.00%

Rate of Growth

2011

2012

2013

2014

A report by Ipsos, Interconnected World: Communication & Social Networking released in 2012 describes Indonesian social media population as one of the most active population on social media. The figure below compares Indonesia with other countries in Asia Pacific. The factor taken into account is how many people have visited social networking site at least once in 3 months

Social Media Users in Select Countries in Asia Pacific

83% 75% 60% 60% 60% 51% 35%

Indonesia Russia China India Australia South Korea Japan

% of internet users

Indonesia leads many countries in Asia pacific which boasts of either higher internet penetration or a higher internet population than Indonesia. This is partly contributed by the fact that internet penetration is majorly in the cities of Indonesia, thereby attracting a larger section of educated people, who are looking to connect. Secondly social media was introduced to Indonesians almost at the same time as social networking. So as internet penetration grows, social media is growing with it.

The figure below gives us social networking demographics of Indonesian users. As is common in most countries, the young generation leads social media in Indonesia. However, the figure does point out two irregularities.

Social Media Users Demographic Profile

55+ 45-54 35-44 25-34 15-24 84.5%

89.8% 86.5% 89.7% 91.7% 92.4% 92.1% 98.4% 98.1%

Female Male

88.4%

Contrary to most countries, social media picks up in the men in the age category 55+. Generally we see the female population more involved even in the older age categories, while this is quite the opposite in Indonesia in case of 55+ age category. Second difference is the drop in social media participation in the users above age 24. While a gradual decrease is seen in most countrys social media demographic profile, here the gap is big enough to be termed a fall rather than a gradual decline. The age demographics given above are supported when the time spent on social networking is taken into account. The figure below displays the rise and fall of time spent on social networking sites by users in different age categories.

Time spent on social networking sites

6.9 5.6 4.5 4.2

3.8

Time (in Hours)

15-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55+

As we can see here the youngest generation spends the most time followed by the oldest generation. Social media is comparatively less popular among the working population. Even the rise in terms of time spent by the 55+ age category is almost 50% when compared with 45-54 age category.

Facebook Facebook has had its ups and downs in Indonesia. While it still has maximum number of users when compared with other social networking sites in Indonesia, a 198% penetration tells us that there is more than one profile per person. This also indicates a heavy number of fake profiles, and while Facebook did some cleanup in 2012, the number of facebook users will be skeptic until a realistic penetration is found. Statistics from social bakers give us the following information about Facebooks current position in Indonesia. It has more than 47 million users and the penetration rate is 198% in online population. The penetration in terms of population is 19.41% which is very close to the total internet penetration (22%).

Facebook Age demographics in Indonesia

45-54 2% 35-44 7% 55+ 2% 13-17 24%

25-34 22%

18-24 43%

Young generation takes the lead accounting for almost half of the Facebook population (43%). The other two age categories with a healthy share of users are 13-17 (24%) and 25-34 (22%). One should note that the number of facebook users drops dramatically after 44 years of age. Gender demographics of Facebook in Indonesia differ from many other countries. As can be seen from the figure below there are more men on facebook than there are females.
Facebook Age demographics in Indonesia

Female 41% Male 59%

Recent reports have shown that a Facebook fatigue developed among Indonesians, and now facebook acts more like an e-mail where people check their accounts once a day to see any new events. The

gradual decline of Facebook can be seen through the graph below which shows the growth rate of facebook users from October 2012 to March 2013.

Facebooks growth/decline from September 2012 to March 2013

Facebook peaked with 51 million users in January 2013 and the number of users has been falling since. While the number stayed steady in February, further decline is possible. Twitter Indonesia may ranks fifth in the world in terms of number of twitter accounts. Its capital city Jakarta was the top tweeting city in the world in 2012 according to Semiocast. Following figure shows the top 20 countries in terms of number of twitter users followed by another figure which displays top 20 cities in terms of number of tweets.

Jakarta is not the only city in the list from Indonesia. It is also accompanied by Bandung at number 6. Not only is twitter itself very popular, other similar micro blogging sites such as Migg3 from China are also growing in Indonesia. Other Social Networking sites Other social networking sites gaining in popularity in Indonesia are the smartphone based applications such as whatsapp, line and WeChat. While whatsapp was probably the first one in the Indonesian market in the instant messenger niche, the real battle is between Line and WeChat. On 3rd march when Line announced itself as the most popular app in google playstore, it was replaced by WeChat from the number 1 spot on 11th march. This change in such short period of time was caused by a 3000% surge in downloads since a TV campaign run by WeChat. Considering mobile internet penetration is much higher than broadband or any other internet option, it is natural that smartphone based applications are much more popular in Indonesia. People are moving from one social networking site to other very quickly, and trying everything that the market has to offer. Social Media monitoring tools Some of the social media monitoring tools in Indonesia are given as follows Company name ThoughtBuzz Katapedia Platform ThoughtBuzz Katapedia Media type All All Website http://www.thoughtbuzz.net http://www.katapedia.com

Media Monitors

Brandtology

All

http://www.brandtology.com

Apart from these there are few other tools which can be very useful in Indonesia. Mediawave provides a platform to monitor social media conversations in Indonesia. All the interactions that happen on social media between consumers & brand and among consumers about the brand can be monitored by language or by location through Mediawaves social media monitoring platform. Katapedia is another social media monitoring tool. It provides sentiment analysis by monitoring social media. It performs various analysis such as Mention Share Analysis, Media share analysis, Core analysis, Mention trend analysis, Sentiment analysis, content analysis, top location and top person analysis and similar other options. It specifically works for Indonesia region. Salingsilang also provides a social media monitoring tool called the SXindeks. SXindeks monitors social media conversations in Indonesia. Some of the services provided by it are Sentiment checking, Digital Campaign, Consumer insights and monitoring & listening tools. By maintaining a large database and using algorithms to provide meaning insights, it provides visual results which are easy to understand. Trackur is another social media monitoring tool which tracks and analyzes social media in Indonesia.

Apart from the abovementioned tools, global social media monitoring tool providers have also recognized the growth potential of Indonesia. One such player is Polands Brand24. It is represented by Joy multimedia (another Polish company) in Indonesia and provides social media monitoring in Bahasa Indonesia language. Tips for Social Marketers Worlds fourth biggest populations, Facebooks 4th largest market, a very active twitter population, all of these make Indonesia a very attractive market for social marketers. Considering that internet access as of 2012 was as low as 22%, with the growth in internet, this market will become more attractive as time passes. In order to make use of this alluring market, social marketers will have to consider certain factors in mind. While the broadband internet penetration is low, mobile internet penetration is very high. As a result making use of smartphone based social networking sites will be crucial.

One will need to keep an eye out for social networking sites such as whatsapp, Japans Line and similar other platforms which are growing rapidly in Indonesia. Facebook is clearly the leader as of 2012. However, Indonesian users can switch quickly from one social networking site to another as they did with Friendster and Facebook is already losing its appeal to Indonesian social media users. So diversifying your social media budget in different social media platforms and keeping a reserve for new ones will be the smart thing to do. Presence of a lot of social media monitoring tools makes it easy to track Indonesian social media users, and one must utilize the best possible combination of tools from the ones available to tune into Indonesian social media consumer mindset. It has been observed that while Indonesians do follow a brand and like to engage in conversations, the conversion from social media to actual sales has been low as of 2012. Fresh strategies should focus on how to get these Indonesian social media users to buy the products and services on offer. Indonesians seems keener on instant messaging and microblogging platform. So Twitter and local microblogging platforms such as Mig33 should be high on the priority list of social marketers.

References Polish social media monitoring service Brand24 eyes Indonesia expansion, http://didrop.blogspot.in/2013/03/polish-social-media-monitoring-service.html All You Need to Know About Trackur, http://www.trackur.com/about-trackur SXindeks, Tracking Indonesian conversations, http://www.slideshare.net/salingsilang/sx-indeksindonesia-social-media-tracking-monitoring media monitoring KATAPEDIA, Indonesian Social media monitoring tools http://www.slideshare.net/deddyrahman/katapedia-indonesian-social-media-monitoring-tools-new A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions, http://wiki.kenburbary.com/ First Indonesia Social Media Monitoring & Measurement, Mediawave, http://mediawave.biz/ Indonesia likes social media, http://internationalbusinessblog.conversisglobal.com/2012/09/06/indonesia-likes-social-media/ In Indonesia's Cities, Mobile Boosts Internet to No. 2 Media Spot, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Indonesias-Cities-Mobile-Boosts-Internet-No-2-MediaSpot/1009637

Indonesia aims for 30 per cent broadband penetration by 2014, http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/2011/aug/14/indonesia-aims-30-cent-broadband-penetration-2014/ Social Media Inspires Art, Internet Adoption in Indonesia, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/SocialMedia-Inspires-Art-Internet-Adoption-Indonesia/1009016 Indonesian Internet Speed Ranked 146th Worldwide, http://www.indoboom.com/2012/stories/internet-speed-in-indonesia-ranked-146th-worldwidereactions.html Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where Its Headed, http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations_and_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_1 0_need-to-knows_about_social_networking New media Trend Watch, European Travel Commission, http://www.newmediatrendwatch.com/markets-by-country/11-long-haul/56-mexico Internet World Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm Media Use in Indonesia 2012, http://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2012/10/gallup-indonesiabrief.pdf Facebook Growing In Indonesia, But Is It Authentic?, http://allfacebook.com/socialbakersindonesia_b101154 Page Like Totals Drop As Facebook Begins Purge Of Fake Accounts, Likes, http://allfacebook.com/liketotals-drop-purge-fake-accounts-likes_b100717 Twitter reaches half a billion accounts More than 140 millions in the U.S. http://semiocast.com/publications/2012_07_30_Twitter_reaches_half_a_billion_accounts_140m_in_th e_US Indonesian WeChat Download Numbers Up 3000% Since TV Ad Premiere, http://en.dailysocial.net/post/indonesian-wechat-download-numbers-up-3000-since-tv-ad-premiere LINE Ungguli WhatsApp di Indonesia, Jadi Aplikasi Paling Banyak Diunduh di Google Play Store http://dailysocial.net/wire/line-ungguli-whatsapp-di-indonesia-jadi-aplikasi-paling-banyak-diunduh-digoogle-play-store