Digital Marketing Singapore – Advertise with TSL, The Leading New Media Publisher

Published on

Advertise on TheSmartLocal


For enquiries, email our dedicated team at sales@thesmartlocal.com or through WhatsApp and they’ll recommend the most effective marketing strategy for your campaign.

You’re currently viewing our editorial site, but TSL is far more than just a website. Our clients love us because of our large following of 3 million we have across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram. This holistic reach cuts across all the major platforms and demographic groups and it’s unique to us in Singapore.

Another big reason brands love us is for our data-driven approach, which results in consistently viral content for our clients, that we’ll share more about in the case studies below. Here are five key ways we help brands reach readers in 2024.

TSL Demographics

TheSmartLocal readers are made up of Singaporeans looking for ideas on what to do in and out of Singapore. We cover the best activities, travel ideas, hotels, restaurants and so on and promote good finds and promotions to Singaporeans. Our strength is our holistic reach and our usage of indirect content to help brands from MNCs to financial services to government clients, market challenging messages to the younger generation. 85% of our traffic is from Singapore and 80% of our readers are between 18-45.

TheSmartLocal is the flagship brand of TSL Media Group, where we have a total of 10 distinct brands that reach out to different communities from food to home & living to high-net-worth individuals. You can get our full media kit and find out more about all our brands by sending an email to our team at sales@thesmartlocal.com.

More Demographics


How TheSmartLocal Reaches Audiences

Why Advertise With TSL?

It’s 2024 and increasingly difficult to reach audiences through advertising. Singaporeans are savvier than ever, they sniff out ads in milliseconds and nope out of there before any messaging hits. This low retention results in ads being pushed even ad further down algorithms. More sophisticated readers (especially the youth) are the reason paid media gets more expensive every year and why their effectiveness continues to dwindle. People don’t like ads, precisely because they look like ads. Irritating, irrelevant, and not something they want to see disrupting their feeds.

But what if brands were able to turn their messages into content readers loved? The art of engineering creative content to help our clients stand out is what we’ve been proudly doing over the last decade. It’s 2024 and it’s tougher than ever to get visibility, and we are still able to get amazing results. (Our case studies below have been updated to recent examples). Why are we able to? Since our early beginnings, we have been driven by this fundamental belief:

“People don’t hate ads, they just hate bad ads.”

When you create ads the right way, your followers will appreciate it and will even thank you for showing them an ad. Imagine that!

Good content is why some people even enjoy seeking out funny Thai ads to watch. You have to respect your readers and believe ads don’t have to be a painful experience, they can be enjoyable. Readers respect the effort put in to create a good ad. This is how we get clients results that they can’t get with other publishers.

TSL’s Data-Driven Advertising Approach

TSL started as a media publication and today, our media group of 10 brands gets over 200 million pageviews and an additional 200 million video views each year. We produce over 15,000 pieces of content across our titles annually and have an immense amount of data on what content works. We rely on our unique insights to plan campaigns and provide advice to our clients, creating award-winning campaigns that exceed all KPIs. In 2023 we acquired a tech company to strengthen our insights and data team and in 2024, we acquired an influencer agency to increase our distribution network. We have developed on our social media listening and data tools. We take data very seriously and it drives all our decision making.

TSL’s end-to-end service:

TSL works with all the major media agencies, government boards and MNCs, breaking records as we surpass KPIs and help our partners win awards and recognition. Here are some examples: Mumbrella Canon Story | Marketing Interactive Singtel Story | Marketing Interactive Amazon Story | Marketing Interactive Scoot Story | CampaignAsia “The Future of lifestyle publishing”Top YouTube Ads | SMA Award Winner | Top YouTube Ads | Mumbrella Media Brand Of The Year.

One of our biggest achievements was being recognised by Mumbrella Asia Awards as the top Media Brand of the Year in Asia, when we were up against heavyweights like CNBC, South China Morning Post and VICE Asia. We were extremely honoured to have won the title for Singapore.

A group shot of our company and staff. This was during the opening ceremony of our new office, officiated by Minister Desmond Lee.

Holistic Marketing Strategy

A big differentiator of TSL is getting our clients coverage across every major platform in Singapore. Too often, digital advertising is done on just one channel as most publishers are strong on just a single platform. But the Internet is more than just Facebook or Instagram. It’s our Telegram network with 500,000 subscribers. It’s highly targeted communities on Lemon8, XiaoHongShu or even our more well-heeled communities (e.g Colto.sg). Our success across every major channel in Singapore allows advertisers to reach out to different communities and target audiences.

Multiple usages of assets

Given the amount of platforms in the world today, we believe content should also be allowed to be repurposed accordingly. As a value-add, you can share the content we create on your channels through the collab function, so you benefit from our reach. Our content created for social can also be repurposed as assets in outdoor display marketing for a small loading fee, like in the GIF below.

On TV and Netflix

Clients looking for large-scale campaigns can also consider long-form formats like network programs. Apart from the digital push on our YouTube channel, our 10-part series The $100 Nomad was shown on prime time TV at 8pm on Channel 5. The TV show was also been shown regionally in 4 different markets across Asia, bringing tremendous visibility for our partners featured. We can create commissioned network programming for clients and have it attract regional interest.

Our reality show “One Week Love” aired on Netflix in Feb 2024, giving major brand uplift to our client partners like Grab. It’s been a dream for many of our clients to be featured on Netflix, and we’re glad we’ve been able to help some of our partners achieve that.

Clean reports instantly

At the end of the campaign, all of our clients will also get a beautifully presented real-time report, that is automatically refreshed every time it is loaded.

Example of a report we provide after our campaign. It can also be saved as a PDF.

Real-Life Results

Some of our reviews have been highly influential – a positive review went viral and caused so much hype for the restaurant that all the local newspapers covered the queues it was getting.

b2ap3_thumbnail_TSL-Newspaper.jpg

Our advertising translates into real-world results which are sometimes so huge they block the entrances of their competitors.

Summary of TSL advertising options

For smaller companies and new advertisers, we recommend trying out our editorial posts or shorts, our two best-performing formats.

  1. Shorts: TikTok Videos, IG Posts, IG/FB Reels, FB Videos, Lemon8, XiaoHongShu
  2. Editorial: Guides, Listicles, Event coverage, Product coverage
  3. Long-form: YouTube videos, YouTube Live, Short Films, Documentaries, TVCs, TV shows, Netflix Shows
  4. Direct Instant Messaging: Telegram/Whatsapp broadcast channels
  5. Influencer Marketing: KOLs, thought leaders
  6. Misc: Loading fees, printouts, outdoor display/marketing collaterals, live stream, event handling

We also provide market research and intelligence reports thorugh our sister company answers.sg.

Past Clients & Collabs

We have had the privilege of working with many MNC companies, large businesses, agencies and home-grown local companies.

We also have a long collection of testimonials that can be seen upon request. Should you wish to receive our latest media kit, have a look at previous case studies or have any further questions, send an email to our team at sales@thesmartlocal.com.

DIY Campaign Builder

For enquiries, email our dedicated team at sales@thesmartlocal.com or through WhatsApp and they’ll recommend the best marketing strategy for your campaign.

If you want to read up on more digital marketing insights in Singapore, check out my digital marketing blog.

– Written by Bryan Choo, founder of TSL.

Drop us your email so you won't miss the latest news.