Research firm Analysys International has published a report that states that the online ad spending in China has been steadily accelerating every quarter, and have jumped by an astonishing 72% in Q2, 2008.
Although much of this increase could be attributed to the Beijing Olympics, 2008. But there are several signs that tell us that this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. Firstly, China has seen a tremendous increase in its Internet population, which now makes it the world’s largest Internet nation. Bundle this with rising Internet giants like Baidu and Alibaba and you have a complete circle of consumers and services that the consumers could use and spend money on, and online properties on which media companies could place their ads to lure these consumers to their products.
The online ad spending for the current quarter in China is $410 million. Although Analysys didn’t gave a full year projection, eMarketer estimates it to be $1.4 billion in 2008, which translates to a 52% increase year on year.
What’s interesting in this is that even with such a huge increase China’s online ad spending of $1.4 billion is only a fraction of the U.S. online ad market, which sits at $26 billion. However when you compare the Internet populations of the two countries, 253 million Internet users in China as against 223 million in U.S., you get a very low person to ad spending ratio. This extremely large population and a dismal ad spending by comparison is what makes China such a lucrative place for Media companies of the West.
[via Silicon Alley Insider]



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