Vietnam's advertising market reached an estimated USD 3.5 billion in 2025, according to IMARC Group, and the trajectory points toward USD 5.2 billion by 2034 on a compound annual growth rate above 4 percent. Ho Chi Minh City concentrates roughly 40 percent of national digital advertising expenditure, a share that has held as regional capital continues to rotate into the city. Registered foreign direct investment in Ho Chi Minh City reached USD 8.37 billion in 2025, up 24.2 percent year on year, with Singapore the single largest source, per official figures reported by VietnamPlus. For international brands evaluating a TVC production company in Ho Chi Minh City, the question has shifted. The capability threshold has been cleared. The question is now how to read the market and choose correctly.
A Market That Has Moved Past the Development Narrative
Southeast Asia's digital economy surpassed USD 300 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, growing at roughly 15 percent year on year according to the e-Conomy SEA 2025 report from Google, Temasek and Bain. Online media advertising across the region expanded 16 percent in the same period. Vietnam's share of that momentum is structurally significant: the country's digital economy reached USD 39 billion in GMV in 2025, up from USD 34 billion the year before, with e-commerce alone expanding 17 percent to USD 25 billion. That volume of commercial activity generates a continuous and growing demand for broadcast-quality and digital-first video content, and Ho Chi Minh City sits at the centre of that commissioning flow.
Television and video advertising remains the largest single segment of the Vietnam advertising market, with a projected volume approaching USD 1.24 billion per Statista estimates. The simultaneity of TVC demand for traditional broadcast channels and short-form demand for TikTok, YouTube and social commerce is what makes the city an unusually dense production environment. Studios active within Saigon's commercial video ecosystem face buyers who are increasingly specific about what they expect, in craft as much as in process.
The Selection Framework International Buyers Apply
The criteria that international marketing teams bring to Vietnam have converged around a small set of hard tests. The first is the production-to-post question. A studio that can direct, produce and finish under one creative roof eliminates the coordination layer that typically adds delay and cost when production and post-production sit with separate vendors. Global content spend reached USD 95 billion in 2025 according to Ampere Analysis, with streamers accounting for the largest share for the first time. The appetite for clean, finished delivery at scale has shaped buying habits internationally, and those habits travel. A brand evaluating a production house in Ho Chi Minh City now applies the same single-vendor logic it would use in London or Singapore.
The second test is the client record. The portfolio matters less as a reel and more as a catalogue of named brands and verifiable projects. Which categories have been served, at what scale, for which markets? Studios like Hoang Films in Ho Chi Minh City, with citable projects spanning FMCG, fashion, food and beverage, and event coverage for both domestic and international clients, pass this catalogue test in a way that a more recent entrant cannot replicate with production quality alone.
Pricing and the USD Framing
International buyers benchmark on price as systematically as they do on portfolio. Vietnam's positioning in the regional cost stack is a matter of documented record rather than assertion. A two-minute corporate video in Singapore typically costs SGD 6,300 to 12,200 for production alone, with crew day rates of SGD 1,200 to 3,500, according to Shootsta's production cost guide for 2025 to 2026. Thailand's film incentive programme raised its cash rebate to up to 30 percent effective January 2025, making Bangkok increasingly competitive for larger-scale international shoots. Ho Chi Minh City operates in a cost range that sits meaningfully below Singapore and within reach of Bangkok for mid-budget TVC and brand film work, without requiring the incentive navigation that the Thai system demands.
Vietnam's national strategy, formalized in Decision No. 2486/QD-TTg in November 2025, targets cultural industries at approximately 7 percent of GDP by 2030, with film and advertising named as priority sectors. That policy signal, combined with the commercial density of Ho Chi Minh City and the city's accelerating digital economy, points toward a production market that will sustain its quality tier over the coming years.
Social Commerce and the Speed Imperative
Vietnam's social media advertising expenditure reached USD 398 million in 2025, up 12 percent year on year, according to the Digital 2025 Vietnam report by We Are Social and Meltwater. TikTok reached 76.1 million users aged 18 and over in Vietnam by late 2025, per DataReportal, placing the country among the platform's largest global markets. The resulting demand for continuous short-form commercial content sits alongside the more traditional TVC commissioning cycle, and the two are no longer sequential.
Brands entering or scaling in the Vietnamese market routinely need broadcast cuts and social edits from the same production window. A TVC production company in Ho Chi Minh City that can deliver both stages without outsourcing either carries a structural efficiency advantage. The studios that have built this capacity from the ground up, with directed production feeding directly into an in-house finishing pipeline, represent a different class of proposition than those that coordinate external collaborators per project.
What the Evaluation Actually Comes Down To
Across the criteria that experienced international buyers apply, three factors tend to separate the shortlisted studios from the wider market. First, the ability to show a catalogue of projects that mirror the buyer's category, not a generic reel. Second, the capacity to handle production and finishing as a continuous process rather than two separate vendor relationships. Third, pricing transparency in USD, with an honest account of what is included and what falls outside standard scope.
The Ho Chi Minh City market now has enough active studios at a credible standard that the selection decision is genuinely competitive. The buyers who arrive with clear evaluation criteria, rather than relying on reputation alone, consistently reach better outcomes. The market has matured enough to reward that rigour.
