By: Sofwan Mahmood

For decades, Malaysia’s advertising industry was built around a relatively simple hierarchy.

Television commanded mass audiences. Newspapers delivered influence and credibility. Radio provided frequency and reach. Advertising agencies controlled the relationship between brands and media owners, while celebrities were brought in when a campaign needed star power.

Then came the internet.

Websites, search engines, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram gradually disrupted the traditional media model. Today, another transformation is taking place — and this time the disruptors are not necessarily media companies.

They are individuals.

Social media influencers and content creators are increasingly becoming media platforms in their own right, attracting audiences, commanding advertising budgets and, increasingly, directly selling products.

The implications for Malaysia’s advertising and media industries are profound.

The advertising ringgit is moving

The direction of Malaysia’s advertising market is unmistakable.

Kenanga Research, citing MAGNA Global, reported that digital advertising accounted for approximately 77% of Malaysia’s total advertising expenditure in 2024, with social media alone representing 41%, followed by search at 24%. MAGNA expects digital’s share to reach 85% by 2029, while television’s share could fall to just 5%.

More recent data from the Malaysian Digital Association provides an even clearer picture of the social-media shift. Malaysia’s reported digital advertising expenditure reached RM1.78 billion in 2025, with social accounting for 46.3% of digital adex, its highest share on record. The association attributes the rise partly to creator-led influence and the integration of commerce into social platforms.

This does not mean television, radio and newspapers are disappearing. It means something more important is happening:

Advertisers are increasingly paying for outcomes rather than simply paying for audiences.

And influencers are exceptionally well positioned to deliver those outcomes.

From advertising to recommendation

The greatest advantage of an influencer is not necessarily the number of followers. It is trust.

A 30-second television commercial tells consumers what a company wants them to know. An influencer can demonstrate the product, explain how it works, show themselves using it, answer questions and provide a link or discount code — all within the same ecosystem.

The psychological relationship is different.

A television presenter is an employee or representative of a media organisation.

An influencer is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as someone the audience has chosen to follow. That distinction is enormously valuable.

Research cited by Marketing-Interactive found that 71% of Malaysian consumers make purchases because of a celebrity or influencer recommendation. The same report identified Malaysian personalities such as Khairul Aming, Siti Nurhaliza and Neelofa among influential figures, while highlighting the country’s large pool of micro-influencers.

This is why brands increasingly want creators to become part of campaigns from the beginning rather than simply appearing at the end as an endorsement.

Khairul Aming: perhaps Malaysia’s clearest case study

Few Malaysian personalities demonstrate this transformation better than Khairul Aming.

He started primarily as a food content creator. But his influence eventually became much larger than content.

His Sambal Nyet Berapi brand transformed his personal credibility into a consumer business. More recently, his restaurant Rembayung demonstrated how an influencer can generate enormous commercial attention without depending primarily on conventional advertising.

When Rembayung was announced, Dataxet analysis found approximately 2.8 million engagements around the initial announcement, followed by another 1.2 million engagements as the opening approached. TikTok alone generated more than 5.56 million engagements around the restaurant conversation.

That is not merely influencer marketing.

That is media ownership through personal influence. And the commercial potential is even more striking.

In February, Khairul Aming reportedly generated RM2.3 million in sales during a 12-hour TikTok Live, moving more than 51,000 products and attracting 5.42 million views.

Imagine the traditional media equivalent.

A television network would need programming, production, transmission infrastructure, advertising inventory, sales teams and multiple commercial clients.

Khairul Aming needed something different: 

an audience that trusted him. The rise of the micro-influencer

Perhaps the biggest mistake advertisers can make is assuming that influence belongs only to people with millions of followers.

It does not.

Malaysia is experiencing the rapid growth of micro- and niche influencers — creators with smaller but highly engaged communities.

A food creator may have 30,000 followers, but if 5,000 of them regularly engage with restaurant recommendations, that audience may be more commercially valuable to a restaurant than a celebrity with two million followers whose audience is much broader.

Marketing-Interactive recently reported that Malaysian brands are increasingly gravitating towards micro-influencers because of their authenticity, niche communities and comparatively lower cost. Their recommendations can feel more like peer-to-peer conversations than conventional advertising.

This represents a fundamental change in media economics. Traditional media has historically sold reach.

Influencers increasingly sell relevance.

When the influencer becomes the salesperson

The real disruption becomes visible when advertising and commerce merge. TikTok is a particularly powerful example.

Its 2025 Malaysia socioeconomic study, conducted with Kearney, estimated that TikTok’s wider ecosystem contributed approximately RM20 billion in gross value added to Malaysia’s economy and supported 147,000 jobs. The study found that nearly 35% of surveyed creators identified as full-time creators, while 45% reported income above Malaysia’s minimum wage.

The platform also reported 1.8 million local businesses on TikTok Shop and more than 100,000 MSMEs trained through its programmes.

This creates something traditional media never fully possessed: 

a closed loop from attention to transaction.

A creator attracts the audience. The content creates desire.

The livestream answers objections. The affiliate link captures the sale. The platform records the transaction.

The advertiser can then measure the result.

That is an extraordinarily attractive proposition for marketers.

Brands are already following the audience

The shift can be seen in Malaysian campaigns.

McDonald’s Malaysia, for example, has used influencer-led work such as “Boss Mekdi”, which was recognised in the 2025 MSA Awards. Maxis also received recognition for “Maxis eKelas: Making Learning Viral, One TikTok at a Time.”

GrabFood has similarly placed Malaysian creators at the centre of campaigns, working with personalities including Safwan Nazri, Harris Annuar, Farhan Mazlan and Abe Wee rather than relying exclusively on conventional advertising formats.

Even public-interest and corporate storytelling is moving in this direction.

Maybank’s campaign featuring Halim Zaid, better known as Cikgu Ben, used the TikTok creator’s real-life story of travelling difficult terrain to reach students in Kelantan to communicate a corporate message about education and opportunity.

Meanwhile, ERL reportedly worked with local creator collective TekaTrivia on a Malaysia Day campaign with only RM4,000 allocated to video production — demonstrating how creators can sometimes deliver meaningful cultural engagement without the production budgets traditionally associated with major advertising campaigns.

The lesson is clear.

Brands are no longer asking only:

“Which media reaches the most Malaysians?”

They are increasingly asking: 

“Who can make Malaysians care?” What happens to traditional media?

This is where the debate becomes more complicated. Traditional media still has enormous strengths.

Television can deliver mass national reach. Established newspapers and broadcasters possess editorial infrastructure, professional journalists, production facilities and institutional credibility. Radio remains powerful for frequency and local engagement.

But traditional media faces a structural problem.

Its advertising model was built around selling inventory.

Influencer marketing is increasingly built around selling influence and outcomes. A television station might sell a 30-second commercial spot.

A creator can sell a story, a demonstration, a recommendation, a livestream, an affiliate link and a measurable conversion.

The creator is simultaneously the media channel, presenter, production unit, distribution network and sales force.

That is difficult for conventional media organisations to compete with.

And new media is not safe either

Ironically, influencers are not only taking advertising from traditional media. They are also challenging new-media publishers.

Digital news organisations compete with creators for the same scarce commodity: attention.

A news website may employ journalists, editors, videographers, social-media teams and commercial staff. A creator can produce a short video from a smartphone and potentially reach millions.

This is particularly challenging because algorithms reward engagement rather than institutional status.

The audience does not necessarily care whether the content came from a newsroom, television studio or bedroom.

It cares whether the content is interesting, useful, entertaining or emotionally relevant. That is the new battlefield.

The next evolution: creator-led media

The future should therefore not be viewed simply as traditional media versus influencers. The real competition is between different models of influence.

Traditional media owns infrastructure. New media owns digital distribution. Influencers increasingly own relationships.

The smartest media organisations will recognise this and stop treating creators merely as competitors. They will collaborate with them.

News organisations can provide credibility, verification and professional journalism. Creators can provide reach, personality and community engagement. Broadcasters can transform creator content into television and streaming formats. Brands can integrate all three.

The winning model may therefore be a hybrid one. The advertising industry has changed permanently. Malaysia’s advertising market is not shrinking.

It is being redistributed.

Money is moving away from some traditional formats and towards digital, social, creator-led and performance-based advertising. Malaysia’s digital advertising market grew strongly in 2025, while traditional media continued to face structural pressure.

The influencer is at the centre of this transformation because the influencer does something conventional media has struggled to do: 

turn attention into action.

That action may be a click, a follow, a visit, a purchase, a subscription or simply a conversation.

And that is why the most important question for Malaysian media executives and advertisers is no longer whether influencers are taking advertising money.

They clearly are.

The more important question is:

How much of the advertising market will belong to people who own the audience rather than companies that own the media platform?

For traditional media, the answer could determine its future. For new media, it could determine whether it survives.

And for influencers, it may signal the beginning of something much bigger. They are no longer merely appearing in the media.

They are becoming the media.

And that, I think, is the heart of the story.

Sofwan Mahmood is a senior media and management professional with over 30 years of experience in Malaysia’s media industry. He has held senior leadership positions at Media Prima Berhad, including Group General Manager for Corporate Affairs, News & Current Affairs and News Operations. His expertise covers strategic planning, corporate affairs, news operations, digital transformation, crisis management, stakeholder engagement and organizational development. He holds an MBA from the University of Bern, Switzerland, a BA in English & Mass Communications from Universiti Sains Malaysia, and completed the Senior Management Program at Harvard Business School.