The APAC playbook: Connecting insights, experimentation, and personalisation in 2026

This article is sponsored by Mastercard.

The commerce landscape across Asia Pacific is evolving fast. Intensifying competition, shifting consumer behaviours, and the rapid adoption of AI, are raising the bar for what marketing teams are expected to deliver across the full customer journey.

The fundamentals of marketing have not changed, but the pace has. Simply put, what worked even a few years ago is no longer enough. Fragmented data, isolated tactics, limited experimentation, and basic personalisation are struggling to keep pace with consumers who expect relevance, consistency, and value at every single touchpoint.

Increasingly, teams are being asked to do more than optimise individual campaigns. They are expected to connect acquisition, engagement, loyalty, and measurement in ways that drive measurable business outcomes.

These pressures are clearly reflected in Mastercard’s latest “State of Personalisation Maturity in E-commerce” report, which surveyed senior eCommerce, marketing and digital leaders globally.

The good news? While disruption is accelerating across the digital ecosystem and redefining what maturity looks like, the findings also point to opportunity. Across Asia Pacific, many brands have the foundations in place to lead the next phase of growth.

Ultimately, despite execution gaps, APAC organisations show a strong cultural commitment to data-led marketing, an increasing use of insights to guide decisions, and continued investment in technical capability. The challenge? Turning that intent into repeatable and scalable impact.

APAC is building the foundations

Across APAC, personalisation is increasingly prioritised, but not as a standalone tactic. Marketing teams recognise that relevance, growth, and loyalty depend on a broader set of connected capabilities across data, experimentation, activation, and measurement.

The research shows clear momentum:

• 71% of APAC brands say personalisation is a top priority.
• 71% report having in-house technical expertise to support advanced marketing initiatives.
• 43% have a dedicated business owner accountable for outcomes.

These signals point to a region that understands the need to operate across the full customer life-cycle, not just optimise individual touchpoints. Teams are investing in skills, tools, and platforms, and increasingly using insights to guide decisions rather than instinct alone.

However, the data also shows that personalisation only delivers value when these capabilities are connected and applied consistently.

Where are the gaps?

Unfortunately, despite strong intent and investment, several execution gaps continue to hold brands back across the region.

1) Audience alignment is the most consistent friction point

Many organisations still lack a shared view of their most valuable audiences. Audience definitions vary by team; segmentation is applied unevenly across the web, app, and the media; and loyalty and execution remains siloed across channels and markets.

At the same time, while around 43% of APAC brands ingest multiple data sources, an equal proportion have identified relevant data but have yet to actually integrate or activate it. This limits how consistently audiences are understood and reached.

The impact is commercial, not theoretical. When audiences are poorly defined and inconsistently activated:

• Customer acquisition costs rise, eroding ROI.
• Conversion rates soften as relevance drops.
• Funnel progression weakens across acquisition and retention.
• Re-marketing underperforms due to fragmented signals and messaging.

Instead of compounding performance over time, teams end up re-learning the same lessons in parallel, limiting scale and slowing growth.

2) Measurement limits the ability to show value

Most APAC brands are measuring activity, but far fewer are measuring impact.

• 57% rely primarily on campaign-level KPIs.
• Only 14% consistently link activity to business outcomes such as retention or lifetime value.

When performance is measured in isolation, it becomes difficult to show how marketing contributes to growth. Indeed, even a strong execution struggles to demonstrate impact beyond short-term metrics. Without clear links to outcomes such as customer acquisition cost, conversion or lifetime value, marketing risks being viewed as executional rather than strategic.

Ultimately, outcome-based measurement is what allows teams to prove value, secure investment and scale what actually works.

3) Experimentation is constrained

Compared with other regions, APAC teams report less freedom to test and learn. In fact, 57% report testing is restricted.

Common constraints include:

• Key areas of websites or digital experiences being off-limits.
• Seasonal or event-driven restrictions.
• Executive mandates overriding planned road maps.

These constraints slow learning and increase reliance on assumptions rather than actual evidence. As a result, campaigns go live with greater risks and deliver weaker commercial impact once scaled.

Experimentation is what makes personalisation effective, allowing teams to validate relevance before investment is fully committed.

The impact on loyalty and lifetime value

These gaps also show up clearly in loyalty outcomes. When audience strategy, data activation and testing discipline are weak, experiences struggle to feel truly differentiated. Returning customers are less likely to feel recognised, and brands find it harder to anticipate needs or personalise interactions in ways that feel timely and relevant. Over time, this erodes loyalty, leading to lower retention, fewer repeat purchases, and ultimately, reduced customer lifetime value.

Turning gaps into growth opportunities

Fortunately, for APAC brands, closing the personalisation gap does not require a full-blown transformation. But it does require a series of deliberate, connected moves, that turn existing assets into impact across the entire customer life cycle.

1) From data collection to data activation

Many organisations already sit on valuable customer data. The opportunity lies in activating those inputs together. When data is connected and accessible, teams can move beyond static segmentation and make timely decisions across marketing, experience, and loyalty initiatives.

2) Aligning around the audience

Standardising audience definitions helps teams focus effort where it matters most.

• Shared segments across markets and channels.
• Clearly mapped next-best actions.
• A common language for planning, activation, and measurement.

This alignment improves relevance while reducing fragmentation.

3) Learning through experimentation

The brands making the most progress are learning by doing – building experimentation into the day-to-day marketing rather than treating it as a side project.

They design tests around specific audiences, run experiments across the web, app, media, loyalty, and geography, and carry learnings forward rather than resetting each campaign. Over time, this replaces assumptions with evidence and turns segmentation into measurable commercial value ... without over personalising.

4) Using AI as an accelerator, not a shortcut

AI is increasingly helping teams surface patterns in behaviour, anticipate churn or conversion, and prioritising personalisation efforts at scale. The most effective organisations use AI to support decision-making, not replace it. Human oversight remains essential to apply context, creativity and regional nuances, particularly in a market as diverse as APAC.

The road ahead for APAC

The fact is that basic personalisation is no longer enough; consumers recognise it and expect more.

Today, personalisation is an advanced operating capability. When executed well, it helps brands stand out in crowded markets, attract new customers and retain them by demonstrating a genuine understanding and anticipation of needs. This is where growth and loyalty intersect.

For APAC brands, the opportunity is clear. The cultural commitment and technical capability are already in place. What matters now is the execution. Personalisation must be grounded in connected data, informed by experimentation and applied consistently across the channels where customers actually engage and transact.

When these building blocks align, personalisation becomes the natural final layer across the customer journey rather than a standalone tactic.

What is the priority?

For marketing leaders, the priority now is focus.

• Activate existing data, rather than collecting more.
• Standardise audience definitions to reduce fragmentation.
• Make experimentation habitual, not occasional.
• Use AI to accelerate learning and iteration.

With these foundations in place, teams can move beyond isolated touchpoints to run integrated, multichannel programmes. Clear frameworks and consistent measurement enable marketers to attribute impact with confidence and demonstrate which tactics truly drive growth.

Turning intent into impact

For brands looking to accelerate this transition, Mastercard’s portfolio of consumer acquisition and engagement solutions are designed to support these end-to-end capabilities in practice. From connected data and experimentation to loyalty, marketing, measurement and governance, the portfolio helps teams move from intent to impact.

AI is embedded across these capabilities to help marketers recognise patterns faster, prioritise what matters, and optimise decisions across the entire customer journey, without removing human judgement or strategic control.

By testing with confidence, learning quickly, and scaling what works across APAC’s diverse markets, brands can turn maturity into momentum and drive sustainable growth.

Explore how Mastercard’s consumer acquisition and engagement solutions can help deliver measurable impact across the entire customer journey.