Indonesia’s Fast-Growing Markets May Be Missing From Your Media Plan

National media plans in Indonesia often prioritize the same familiar markets.

Jakarta usually leads, followed by other major cities with established demand and media scale. They deserve their place in the plan. The problem begins when the places with the most demand today become the only places considered capable of driving growth tomorrow.

Recent commerce data points to a different pattern: some of the sharpest transaction growth is appearing beyond the markets that usually receive the most attention. If the growth map changes, the media map may need to follow.

Also Read: Memory: The New Currency of Media Planning

Growth Is Appearing Outside the Usual Media Map

During Tokopedia and TikTok Shop’s 10.10 campaign in 2025, the provinces recording the highest transaction growth were not the usual names.

On Tokopedia, the strongest increases came from West Papua , Gorontalo, and South Kalimantan. On TikTok Shop, they came from North Sulawesi, Maluku, and Jambi.

Because the data comes from a promotional period, it is a directional signal rather than a long-term forecast. These provinces were not necessarily the largest by transaction value, but their momentum appeared beyond the markets that typically dominate national plans.

Volume Shows Where Demand Is. Velocity Shows Where It Is Moving.

Media plans typically prioritize population, current sales, historical performance, and total category demand.

Those signals show where the business already has scale. Growth rate shows where behavior is changing quickly, a category is gaining traction, or an audience is becoming more commercially active.

A large market can still contribute the most transactions while a smaller one grows faster. Both can be true at the same time. When planning focuses almost entirely on absolute volume, emerging growth can remain too small to stand out in a national report.

A stronger plan reads size and growth together, along with the brand’s ability to capture the opportunity.

Jakarta Is a Market, Not a Proxy for Indonesia

National planning often treats Indonesia as one audience, with Jakarta functioning as its clearest representation.

That makes planning more efficient, but it can flatten differences that affect media performance. The platforms people use, the competitors they consider, the offers that move them, and the barriers between interest and purchase can change from one market to another.

The role of media can differ too. In one city, the task may be protecting preference for an established brand. In another, it may be turning high awareness into first-time use. Somewhere else, the category itself may still need to be built.

Regional growth data should therefore change more than the list of locations in a media plan. It should change how brands decide which markets matter and what media needs to achieve within each one.

GoPay MURAAAH: Turning Local Market Gaps Into Growth

GoPay MURAAAH shows what this thinking can look like in practice. Built by ORCA, the campaign started from a gap the national numbers were hiding.

GoPay was already widely recognized in Indonesia, particularly in major cities. In smaller cities, its position was less established, and awareness did not always translate into everyday use.

Instead of running another broad national push, we used GoPay’s own usage data to identify cities where interest was high but regular usage remained low. This surfaced Pekanbaru, Palembang, Makassar, and Banjarmasin as markets with meaningful room for adoption.

The campaign maintained a lighter national presence while focusing more of its media on the cities where it could influence new usage. Across those markets, awareness increased by 32% and intent to use rose by 6%.

Plan Indonesia as a Portfolio of Markets

Reading Indonesia as a portfolio of markets creates a more useful planning model.

Some markets are core contributors that already hold meaningful scale. Others are growth markets where category momentum overlaps with room for the brand to expand. Early signals may also reveal test markets that need more validation before receiving larger investment.

Market and audience strategy makes those distinctions clearer by considering growth, category relevance, brand penetration, audience behavior, media efficiency, and business readiness.

Brands can start with one or two markets where external momentum overlaps with a clear business opportunity. A focused test can show whether the audience, message, channel mix, and timing need to differ from the national plan.

The goal is to understand where local differences are significant enough to require a different decision.

Also Read: The 2026 Momentum Shift: Growth Still Belongs to the Bold

The Next Growth Market May Not Be the Biggest

Jakarta and Indonesia’s other major cities will remain essential. Their scale still matters.

But Indonesia is a portfolio of markets moving at different speeds. Some already drive the business. Others are beginning to show where new demand could come from.

The right balance will be different for every brand. Your next growth market may already be visible in the data. The question is whether your media plan is built to notice it.