Entertainment First: Why Brands Must Compete With Content, Not Just Advertising

Scroll through your TikTok feed right now. Count how many seconds before you stop at something a brand posted on purpose, not a creator, not a meme, not a trending sound, but a real brand advertisement. Chances are, it takes a while. And that's not an accident.

The Scroll Has Changed. Has Your Brand?

Social media was once a place where brands could advertise, and people would at least tolerate it. Those days are gone. Today, social media is fundamentally an entertainment platform and anyone who doesn't perform gets skipped.

According to Jakpat's Indonesia Mobile Entertainment & Social Media Trends (2nd Semester of 2025), 70% of Indonesians use social media primarily for entertainment. Not to shop. Not to look up brands. Entertainment is the #1 reason people open their apps today. And with 143 million active social media users in Indonesia (The largest base in all of Southeast Asia) this isn't a niche behavior. This is the mainstream.

Key Data Points:

70%

of Indonesians use social media primarily for entertainment

Jakpat, 2025

143

million active social media users in Indonesia — largest in SEA

Statista, 2025

45

hours per month average time Indonesian users spend on TikTok alone

DataReportal, 2025

3+

hours daily time Indonesians spend on social media via mobile

Statista / Ken Research, 2025

The Real Competition Isn't Who You Think

Most brands think their biggest competitor is another brand. But in today's entertainment-driven social media landscape, that's the wrong frame entirely.

When someone opens Instagram or TikTok, they are not thinking, "Which brand should I follow today?" They are thinking: "Show me something good." They are competing for the same limited, precious resource as Netflix, as their favorite creator, as the trending meme of the week — attention.

This is the core truth that changes everything: brands are no longer just competing with other brands. They are competing with creators, trends, and entertainment itself.

Jakpat's data shows that social media scrolling and YouTube are the most popular online activities overall in Indonesia. The feed your brand appears in is the same feed someone is watching a viral comedy sketch, a 60-second cooking hack, and a creator doing a raw and relatable life update. If your content doesn't feel like it belongs there, if it looks, feels, and sounds like an ad, it gets scrolled past.

"Brands are no longer just competing with other brands. They are competing with creators, trends, and entertainment itself."

The Algorithm Doesn't Care About Your Budget

Here's something that should make every marketing director uncomfortable: the TikTok algorithm doesn't give special treatment to brand accounts with big ad budgets. It gives reach to content that people actually watch, share, and engage with. Period.

This is a fundamental disruption of the old model. In traditional advertising, money bought reach. The more you spent, the more people saw your message. On entertainment-first platforms, money can still buy placement — but if the content itself doesn't earn attention, users will scroll past it in 1.5 seconds, and the algorithm will quietly bury it.

DataReportal's Digital 2025 report noted that even as social media usage grows in Indonesia, ad reach on platforms like TikTok is actually declining — not because fewer people are online, but because user behavior and platform algorithms are shifting away from tolerating interruptive content. The platforms themselves are telling brands: entertain first, or don't bother.

Why Creators Win and Most Brands Lose

Look at why a creator with 200,000 followers can outperform a brand with a million: authenticity and entertainment value. Creators speak directly to camera, share genuine opinions, build real storylines, and give their audience a reason to come back. They feel like a person, not a logo.

The creator economy is no longer a side note in digital marketing. TikTok now has 137.8 million monthly active users in Indonesia alone. The platform has made "average people with great content" into media channels bigger than most TV networks. And brands that are smart are learning from this, not fighting it.

In 2025, brands like Bilt (with their scripted Reels series "Roomies") and beauty brand Tower 28 ran their own social series — content so entertaining it was watched by choice, not obligation. This is the new playbook: brands becoming content studios. And at Cannes Lions 2025, the industry made it official — renaming the Social & Influencer Lions to Social & Creator Lions, signaling a permanent shift in how advertising intersects with entertainment.

The Entertainment-First Framework: How Brands Actually Win

1. Lead With Value, Not Message Stop asking "how do we get people to see our product?" Start asking "what would make someone stop scrolling right now?" The product reveal comes second. The hook — the entertainment value — comes first.

   
   

2. Think Like a Creator, Execute Like a Brand Creators are relatable, fast, and native to the platform. Brands bring credibility, production, and resources. The best content today merges both: raw and real in tone, but strategic and intentional in purpose.

   
   

3. Use Edutainment as a Competitive Advantage Sprout Social's 2025–2026 research confirms that brands embracing "edutainment", content that educates while entertaining are cutting through the noise in ways pure promotional content cannot. If you can make someone laugh and learn at the same time, they'll remember you.

   
   

4. Platform-Native Always Beats Polished A perfectly produced TikTok that looks like a TV commercial will be ignored. A slightly rough video shot vertically with trending audio that feels native to the platform will be watched. Know the language of each platform and speak it fluently.

   
   

5. Measure Attention, Not Just Reach Watch time, saves, shares, and repeat views are the new KPIs. If your content is being watched to completion and shared without being prompted, you're competing successfully with entertainment. If it's only generating impressions, you're just buying eyeballs that look away.

What This Means Specifically for the Indonesian Market

Indonesia's digital landscape makes this shift even more urgent. With mobile download speeds growing 18.5% year-over-year and 212 million internet users in 2025, the infrastructure for entertainment consumption is accelerating fast. Richer video, faster loading, better streaming — people are consuming more content, more easily, on their phones every day.

The boundary between entertainment and commerce is already blurring. Social commerce in Indonesia is valued at approximately USD 5 billion, with fashion, beauty, and electronics leading the way. But the brands winning in social commerce aren't winning because of better product shots — they're winning because their content is genuinely entertaining enough that people follow them, trust them, and eventually buy from them. The path to purchase now runs through the content feed, not just the product page.

Indonesian users also skew young, mobile-first, and platform-savvy. They grew up with YouTube and TikTok. They know the difference between content made for them and content made to sell to them. They are — in the most literal sense — a generation raised on entertainment. Meeting them where they are isn't optional anymore.

How Sunrise Approaches This

At Sunrise Digital Marketing Agency, we've built our entire approach around one simple belief: great performance marketing and great content are not separate things. They are the same thing, executed well.

We don't just run ads. We build content strategies that earn attention first — and then convert it. We help brands think like content studios: developing platform-native formats, building creator-partnership frameworks, and designing campaigns that people want to engage with rather than skip past.

Every campaign we run is measured against both the entertainment question ("Is this content people would choose to watch?") and the performance question ("Is this content driving real business outcomes?"). Because in 2026, if you can't answer yes to both, you're leaving results on the table.

The brands that will win the next five years are the ones who understand this shift now — and move accordingly. The question isn't whether your audience is on social media. They are. The question is whether your brand is worth watching when they get there.

The Bottom Line

70% of Indonesians are on social media for entertainment. Your brand didn't ask to compete with Netflix, with viral creators, with trending memes, but here you are, in the same feed.

The brands that accept this reality and build for it will grow. The brands that keep treating social media like a billboard will be scrolled past quietly, quickly, and at increasing cost.

Entertainment first. Performance always. That's how you win.

References

1. Jakpat. (2026). Indonesia Mobile Entertainment & Social Media Trends – 2nd Semester of 2025. insight.jakpat.net

2. DataReportal / Meltwater. (2025). Digital 2025: Indonesia. datareportal.com

3. Statista. (2025). Social Media in Indonesia – Statistics & Facts. statista.com

4. Sprout Social. (2025–2026). 7 Social Media Trends to Know in 2026. sproutsocial.com

5. Deloitte. (2025). Digital Media Trends: Social Platforms Are Becoming a Dominant Force. deloitte.com

6. Marketing Brew. (2025). The Social Marketing Trends That Took Over Our Feeds in 2025. marketingbrew.com

7. Campaign Indonesia / DataReportal. (2025). Digital Trends in Southeast Asia 2025. campaignindonesia.id

8. Ken Research. (2026). Indonesia Social Commerce Market 2025–2030. kenresearch.com

9. Hashmeta. (2025). Social Media Landscape Indonesia: Key Stats & Platforms. hashmeta.com