China’s leading Search Engine, Baidu, yesterday launched an Olympic channel (2008.baidu.com) that combines everything about Olympics in one space (chats, videos, news, etc…). Having seen Sina.com and Sohu release their Olympic brand channels long ago, this is clearly a strategy to win the big buck from huge advertising sponsors.

Sohu’s CEO Zhang Chaoyang

Association with Olympics games is currently a big brand game in China, with many companies using Beijing 2008 logos illegally. Sina’s CEO, Cao Guowei, repeatedly made claims arguing against Sohu’s exclusive rights (as a web company) to 2008 brand association. Yet, Sohu still remains it priveleges and is currently the provider for the official olympic site: BOCOG.

Similar to Google’s recent development, Baidu is increasingly stepping out of its pure search engine presence into the world of portals. Makes one wonder whether perhaps the traditional advertising bucks just feel more comfortable been poured into flashing images on portals (as opposed to text ads under the search bar).

Filed under: China Market | »

Notable Facts:

• Baidu and Google have grown their market share at the expense of the smaller players like Yahoo! and Sogou
• Sina (with 49% share) dominates traffic to web sites for non-search purposes with Sohu & Netease following the lead
• Google Vs Baidu demographics show close correlation in age, gender and education level
• The Survey only covered Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou - all very different from general market (and future growth)
• Google’s market shares have increased in all the three cities over the last six months, with the strongest recovery in Shanghai

For more information: download a China Search Engine Report(pdf) or contact Peter Bowang Lu at iaskchina.cn

Filed under: Reports - China, Internet Development, Globalization | 2 Comments »

Sina.com just announced (english here) that it will launch a revenue sharing program for its top 3,000 blogs, splitting everything in 50/50. There, of course, remains a danger in running an ad system in China, as it is susceptible even to greater number of attacks and manipulations than anything currently seen in the west markets. Thus it is probably a wise move to include only a limited, easily trackable, blogs into the program.

Sina is currently the host to some of the top blogs in China, as well as in the world, featuring famous actresses

behind every famous blog in china there is a naked woman

and business leaders. Some of the top blogs include: Han Han, Xu Jingle (actress-turned-director), Hong Huang (ex-wife of Chen Kaige, writer and media owner of CIMG) and Zhou Zhengyi (more on his arrest here).

The question remains though whether some of these top bloggers are even interested in the deal. Many of them make big bucks in their first profession and use blogs to further increase own popularity and brand. Besides, current cost-per-click rates in China are still about 8-times less that of in U.S. - so if it was all about the ads, I doubt many of them would be registering as Chinese.

Filed under: China Market | »