Wall’s Malaysia wins Best Use of Mobile for turning a RM3 ice cream into a reward

This post is sponsored by DT.

Every mid-morning and mid-afternoon, a familiar restlessness sets in. Malaysians reach for their phones. Some open a game. Some scroll. And somewhere in that window, a snack decision gets made – fast, emotional, and mostly unconscious.

Wall’s calls this “snackxiety”, and it turns out, up to 65% of Malaysians feel it daily. The brand’s answer was Wall’s TopTen Xtra, the country’s first six-layer ice cream at RM3, positioned not as a discount treat, but as something to be earned. The campaign that made that positioning stick, built on contextual in-app advertising and delivered with DT, won a MARKies Award for Best Use of Mobile.

Behind the campaign was a broader shift in how DT sells into markets such as Malaysia. Sea Yen Ong, regional VP of sales, APAC at DT, sat down to unpack what that shift actually looks like, why the platform’s structure matters more than its metrics, and where the region’s ad budgets are headed next.

1. How has your strategy evolved over the past few years to meet the new needs of the modern client?

Modern advertisers realise consumers don’t spend as much time on the open web anymore – they live inside apps. With the acquisitions DT has made, we have evolved our business towards curating high-attention in-app brand experiences.

We’ve consolidated our technology into DT Exchange, giving brands direct SDK-level access to where consumers spend up to five hours a day: mobile gaming, micro-dramas, live sports, and daily utility apps. We have moved beyond viewability to active attention, pairing immersive, user-opted rewarded video formats with third-party attention measurement (Lumen, Adelaide) to prove that in-app time spent drives actual brand lift.

2. Brands are getting more cautious about how dependent they are on a handful of walled-garden platforms for reach. What’s driving that caution, and what should brands actually be doing about it?

Brands are reconsidering their heavy investment within social platforms or walled-garden platforms because ad fatigue is at an all-time high. Moreover, based on recent GWI data, less than 40% of time spent by mobile audiences are on these platforms.

What brands should actually be doing is diversifying into lean-forward mobile in-app environments. When someone plays a casual mobile game, watches a micro-drama, checks live scores in a sports app or increases productivity with utility apps, audiences are focused and engaged. Placing your brand in these full-screen, uninterrupted environments, captures earned, non-distracted attention – delivering dramatically higher recall and lower cost-per-attention-second than a social feed scroll.

3. Most platforms in this space buy media on someone else's supply. DT sits on both the demand and the distribution side. Why does that structural difference actually matter for a brand's outcome, not just for your business model?

Most ad networks act as resellers, buying inventory through three layers of middlemen, which inflates costs via an “ad-tech tax” and increases ad fraud risks.

DT is structurally different because our SDK is integrated directly into over 80,000 mobile applications. For a brand, this direct relationship delivers three key benefits:

• Zero supply-chain mark-up: Maximum value goes into working media rather than middleman fees.
• 100% verified brand safety and viewability: Direct SDK integration enables native open measurement (OM SDK) support and eliminates domain spoofing.
• Engaged creative execution: High-definition, lag-free video and custom-rich media interactive formats render natively without buffering or dropped frames.

4. Short drama content has become one of the fastest growing attention categories in the region. How is that reshaping the inventory you can offer brands?

Short drama or micro-drama apps represent one of the fastest-growing attention categories in mobile video, growing more than 100% in YOY adoption. We’ve integrated these publishers directly into our network, reshaping our supply portfolio in two ways:

• Native vertical video placements: Full-screen 9:16 vertical video ads inserted seamlessly at episode transitions, matching the cinematic, full-attention feel of the content.
• Rewarded episode unlocks: Viewers voluntarily watch a 15 to 30-second brand video to unlock the next episode. This yields 90%-plus completion rates while building positive brand affinity through a value-exchange model.

5. CPMs in Southeast Asia are still running a fraction of what mature markets charge. How long does that window stay open for Malaysian brands before it closes?

The window of sub-dollar CPMs for premium in-app inventory in Southeast Asia is already a thing of the past, especially for full screen video formats.

SEA consumers spend more time per day in-app than almost anywhere else in the world, yet ad budgets are still primarily being invested in walled-gardens for the sake of achieving lower CPMs.

Global FMCG, tech, automotive, and finance brands are recognising this gap and moving heavy programmatic budgets into regional gaming and short drama supply. As demand scales, CPMs will surge. Malaysian brands must lock in direct private marketplace agreements or programmatic preferred deals now to secure premium inventory at current rates before pricing aligns with mature markets.

6. As more content – short drama, gaming – moves natively in-app, what kind of ad experience actually works there compared to formats built for the open web?

Open web ad formats fail in mobile apps because banners and auto-play pop-ups disrupt natural gesture navigation.

Native in-app environments require formats that complement the user experience:

• Rewarded video: Exchanging 15-30 seconds of user attention for game items, extra level or drama episodes. It’s 100% voluntary and drives high recall.
• Interactive rich media and playables: Swipeable, touchable, playable end cards that let consumers engage with key product or communication selling points directly inside the ad.
• Acceptable pause and break ads: Non-intrusive full-screen videos served during natural breaks – such as level completion in a puzzle game or to start the next short drama episode.

For brands still weighing whether to shift budgets out of walled gardens, Wall’s TopTen Xtra is a data point worth sitting with.

A RM3 product took a measurable share from premium-priced competitors by showing up inside the exact moment consumers were already primed to reward themselves, not through a bigger budget, but through a more precise read of context.

The CPM advantage in Southeast Asia’s in-app inventory will not hold indefinitely. The brands moving now, while that window is still open, are the ones setting the terms for the next few years of attention in this region. The ones waiting for certainty will be buying it later at a higher price.