Southeast Asia Marketers Lose a Full Day a Week to Manual Ad Adjustments, DoubleVerify Report Finds

Marketers across Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, lose the equivalent of a full workday each week to manual ad adjustments, DoubleVerify found in its  2025 Global Insights report on AI and automation. As campaigns grow in scale and complexity, marketing teams spend nearly 12 hours per week on repetitive optimization tasks, limiting time for strategic planning and innovation.

“The marketer’s challenge isn’t access to data, but the ability to act on it efficiently,” said Tinee Cruz, Senior Business Director at DoubleVerify Philippines. “Automation isn’t about replacing human creativity; it’s about clearing room for it. By freeing up teams from repetitive work, marketers can concentrate on strategy, storytelling and innovation, three core elements that support brand growth.”

Speaking at DMAP DigiCon 2025, the Philippines’ leading digital marketing event, Cruz presented insights on how AI and automation transform campaign efficiency amid growing fragmentation across platforms and audiences. Cruz noted marketers in Asia-Pacific now spend around 27.5% of their time — equivalent to nearly ₱850,000 per team member annually — on manual campaign adjustments, reflecting an ongoing challenge to balance precision and productivity in digital marketing.

Cruz also highlighted how advertisers are now adopting AI-driven automation tools, such as DoubleVerify’s AI-based optimization technology, DV Scibids AI™, which automatically adjusts campaign performance levers in response to real-time signals to achieve this. By integrating automation with verification data, marketers can improve efficiency and create accountability without compromising media quality or transparency. 

“As marketing teams continue to evolve, automation is no longer a future concept; it’s a practical solution to reclaim time and focus,” Cruz added. “As the digital marketing landscape grows in complexity, automation has emerged not as a replacement for creativity but a foundation for it. For marketers, adopting smarter, data-led solutions will be key to maintaining both agility and authenticity, leaving them with more time to make decisions that power performance and deliver results.”