An Overview of the Chinese Online Advertising Market

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Grace Benson
8 years ago
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1 An Overview of the Chinese Online Advertising Market By Zhaohui Tang July 2013 According to China s Online Advertising Market Observance, online advertising has demonstrated tremendous growth in Advertisers have increased their online ad spending at a rate of 29%, which contributed to 20% of the total online marketing spending in China. In 2013, online advertising market is expected to maintain a growth rate of 26%, in the tune of $13.7 billion (86.4 billion RMB). The rapid development of the online advertising market in 2012 owe to the growing revenue of a large number of corporate advertising, especially in the realm of search engine and online business platform like Baidu and Taobao. The top three forms of advertising are graphical, key words search and vertical search advertising, which accounted for 30.2%, 28.5% and 21.3% in the market of online advertising, but the market share of graphical ads has fallen greatly. Video ads accounted for 5.7%, which is one of the driving forces for online advertising s rapid growth. Data are collected from iresearch Annual Report of China Online Advertising Industry Year of 2012.

In 2013, online advertising market is expected to maintain a growth rate of 26%, in the tune of $13.7 billion (86.4 billion RMB).

2 The Continued Dominance of Search Engine Advertising Insiders remain optimistic about the future of China s SEM market. According to a recent report by adsage s Research Center, search advertising attracts 30% of total online advertising spending, with advertisers budgets expected to move up by 43% in As the biggest search engine in China- Baidu reported revenues of $962.9 million (5.97 billion RMB) in the first quarter of 2013, an improvement of 40.1% from Q1 of Despite Baidu s domination of the search engine market, the newcomer Qihoo 360 s rapid rise cannot be ignored. Baidu and Qihoo 360 are the major players, and less influential search engines like Sougou, Soso, Bing, and Yahoo, compete for the remaining market share. As the online market becomes more segmented and more complex, search engine marketing will continue to be at the core of online advertising. Search engines reach 95% of internet users, therefore the future of businesses depend heavily on their ability to properly utilize SEM. The need for SEM also depends on the size of the companies. For instance, large corporations often have complex needs, therefore they require a larger budget, tons of keywords, making managing their own campaigns difficult and costly. As a result they tend to seek help from large professional SEM companies. Medium to smaller firms have relatively fewer needs.

As the biggest search engine in China- Baidu reported revenues of $962.9 million (5.97 billion RMB) in the first quarter of 2013, an improvement of 40.1% from Q1 of 2012.

3 They tend to partner with smaller SEM companies, or purchase software so they can manage their ad campaigns by themselves. Because of these factors, in the recent years, the market for SEM services has also become more complex. The importance of SEO can t be ignored. Compared to SEM, SEO is more cost effective. Well managed firms should utilize a combination of SEM and SEO in order to improve overall advertising performance. Firms can be selective for the highest priced/popular keywords. As for keywords that have less competition or are less costly, SEO can be employed to improve overall ad performance. The Growth Potential of Mobile Advertising As smartphones have become increasingly more popular, the value of mobile advertising is becoming more evident. Mobile ads are known for their accuracy, handiness, responsiveness, and their ability to reach a vast amount of users very quickly. Compared to traditional media outlets, mobile advertising has a superior edge in delivering extremely accurate results. It has overcame the limitations imposed by traditional media outlets, whereby they try to deliver results via covering an enormous number of people; mobile advertising instead focuses on delivering accurate results based on individual behaviors. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that it takes a great deal of technical expertise to make mobile advertising and SEM successful. Forecasted by IDC, Chinese smartphone user base will reach 300 million at the end of 2013, an increase of 44% from the previous year. Total number of smartphone users is expected to reach 500 million by the end of The mobile advertising market was at $ million (1.06 billion RMB) in 2012, it is expected to increase to $ (billion RMB) in The mobile marketing participants can be roughly divided into three major camps: The first camp consists of firms that command enormous amount of traffic, possess huge online platforms, serve a large clientele, and have the expertise and the experience to service their customers. The second camp includes firms that have mature mobile platforms, a certain level of technical expertise, but lacking in traffic, have trouble finding brand name advertisers and frankly lack the experience and the expertise to properly service them. The third camp is made from firms that are brand name focused marketing agencies. They do not have their own advertising platforms, but they are excellent at planning and customer service.

Well managed firms should utilize a combination of SEM and SEO in order to improve overall advertising performance. Firms can be selective for the highest priced/popular keywords.

4 mobisage is China s leading advertising platform, providing advertisers with the most accurate mobile marketing coverage, as well as giving App developers a platform with optimum level of traffic. mobisage currently includes more than 75,000 different mobile apps, with 34 million daily users. mobisage serves more than 500 advertisers including well-known companies like Pizza Hut, Amazon, Baidu, and Changba. Some of the more popular mobile advertising revenue models include: Banner ads, Partial Screen ads (pop up ads that show up when paused or when exiting an application), Full Screen ads (full screen ads that appear during the use of an application), and Wall of Credits ads (users accumulate credits by completing certain tasks). The Growth of Social Media Social media is growing rapidly in China. Researchers at Netpop s recently reported that 92% (224million) of Chinese internet users use some forms of social media, compared to only 72% (105 million) for United States. Assistant Professor Michael Netzley from Singapore Management University s Lee Kong Chian School of Business has commented that not only does China possess world s largest internet user base, it also has the world s most active netizens

mobisage serves more than 500 advertisers including well-known companies like Pizza Hut, Amazon, Baidu, and Changba.

5 who are most likely to create content and spend money online. Popular social media sites in China include Weibo, Weixin, and BBS. Today, more and more companies are focusing their attention on social media as their primary means of advertising. For example, pop-up video ads on social networking sites, viral ads on Weibo, public platform ads on Weixin. Social media marketing is cost-effective, it reaches more potential customers, and usually lasts longer than traditional ads. Not only does Social Media Marketing need continuous innovation and content creation, but it also requires advanced statistical tools in order to analyze marketing performance. To make sure that companies achieve better results in social media marketing, adsage developed adsage.social and adsage.weibo. These are tools advertisers can use if they are interested in advertising on Weibo. These tools allow advertisers to evaluate their advertising performance. The future of online marketing will be dominated by a combination of traditional internet search, mobile, Weibo/Weixin, and social media. As China s leading online advertising service company, adsage will leverage our cutting-edge technical expertise in data mining and data analytics as well our proprietary SEM software to provide convenient, fast, and professional SEM products and services. In the realm of mobile advertising, with our own unique mobile and public platforms, adsage will provide advertisers with the most accurate, interactive, and concentrated ad deployment; we will also provide App developers with an outlet for acquiring quality traffic. In social media advertising, adsage will manage technology focused social marketing campaigns, helping advertisers to better market their products and services using Weibo and other online platforms.

For example, pop-up video ads on social networking sites, viral ads on Weibo, public platform ads on Weixin.

WHO WE ARE. MOST INFLUENTIAL MOBILE AD NETWORK adsage has the most influential mobile ad network and group of publishers in China.

WHO WE ARE. MOST INFLUENTIAL MOBILE AD NETWORK adsage has the most influential mobile ad network and group of publishers in China. WHO WE ARE FOUNDED IN 2007 adsage is a leading technologies and services company in online advertising with over 500 professionals across multiple locations in the U.S. and China. Among them over 200 software