According to local reports, the Search Engine Marketing Standard and Regulation is being circulated to drive out disreputable companies who tarnish the reputation of SEM in China and help to steer the healthy advancement of SEM.

Among the goals of the organisations involved include a wider education of the benefits of SEM for businesses looking to become involved with the medium, including an appropriate way to engage in it.

The regulations come one year after Baidu found itself embroiled in several SEM controversies, including accusations of blocking searches containing words associated with the melamine milk scandal as well as being found to have accepted money from fraudulent medical companies to include their websites in Baidu’s top search positions.

In response to the latter, Baidu launched an ad platform that separates its list of paid links from its general search listings.

Disgruntled companies unhappy with their dealings with Baidu further pledged to launch a mass lawsuit against the search engine in December. Each of these hurdles contributed to Baidu’s revenue drop that same month.

According to Barney Loehnis, head of Isobar Asia-Pacific, which is engaged in a search engine optimisation partnership with Baidu, the SEM landscape in China has become increasingly more focused on transparency following the incidents Baidu faced in 2008 as well as pressure from music and video providers looking to preserve copyright entitlements.

In the market, rival Google has worked to make its operations transparent, and Loehnis points out that the regulations are an attempt by Baidu to prove that it is also taking the matter seriously.

“Baidu has traditionally not been as transparent as others in showing what’s a paid result and what’s not, and in that case some consumers wouldn’t be aware of the paid or not paid and the result is that Baidu has fallen at one end of the spectrum where it’s not always known where they’re making money and not making money,” Loehnis said. “Any group operating in transparency has got to be good from a client’s point of view and I would interpret Baidu’s action as a step in the right direction.

“However, some Chinese companies do claim the moral high ground for more political reasons, so I think so it’s up to Baidu which way it falls and follow through to maintain these guidelines,” he continued.

Separately, Baidu announced the launch of a marketing promotion that will see it give Rmb 100 million (US$14.6 million) of display search ads to companies. The offer aims to promote its Baidu Search Marketing Services platform and gives participating companies a 60-day image display ad worth up to Rmb 10,000 ($1,464).

According to reports, the promotion was launched to help broaden Baidu’s image as an ad-sales provider.

Source: http://www.media.asia/newsarticle/2009_09/Baidu-helps-to-launch-SEM-regulatory-guide/37292

Businesses and brands are no longer the ones that spread out the message. Consumers do the brand building for the brand. Brand managers have to adopt and change their communication strategy: from shouting to listening, from persuading to convincing, from being bold to being subtle, from purely delivering a message to the consumer to also delivering a consumer feedback to internal departments, from throwing products to the market that nobody needs to products that deliver real customer value.

Why need to change? Because…

• Consumers talk to consumers about a brand but not to the brand
• Consumers trust the opinions of other consumers, even though they don’t know them
• Consumer experiences influence purchase decisions
• People like to express themselves
• The tools to easily do that exist and are available to basically anybody

From consumer voices to consumer insights

It is one thing to be aware of the strength of consumer opinions but the real challenge and value is to learn from it and to transport the consumer’s feedback back into your company to improve processes, service and products. It won’t transform your company from a product-driven company to a customer-centric business if nothing else changes. But it’s a great beginning to let various departments in your company get totally new insights and different perspectives and make key people feel the power of consumer opinions.

Businesses that understand this concept and implement it into the corporate culture can truly benefit in the long term because they satisfy the client, deliver true value for the money and are talked about positively.

3digitalminds is experienced in implementing consumer-focused online concepts

This is not only theory, but based on experiences which we made with clients. We implemented these concepts in companies and as a result, clients increased their awareness in the target group, they are now neck-to-neck to competitors which they never believed they could be within one year and they use the consumer voice to improve their products and influence the corporate culture. This is truly a new experience for managers because they get to know details and opinions they have never heard or seen before about their own company and products.

You need to know more on this? Contact us, please.

And it’s based on the pure need of human beings for communication, affirmation, support and connections.

• Consumers ask for help during their decision making process
• They like to share experiences and look for confirmation in their peer group
• They look for advice
• Consumers participate in blogs, forums, product review sites, social networks and connect

Experiences backed by statistics

And to make these claims more objective, here is a recent research from Nielsen about the power of consumer opinions and their influence.

Chart:  Have some degree of trust* in the following forms of advertising in April 2009

Source: Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey April 2009 / Base: All Respondents; *E.g. 90 percent of respondents trusted “completely” or “somewhat” recommendations from people they know

http://www.my-life-in-china.com/online-marketing/the-power-of-online-consumer-voices/

Speaking to Media at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, Schmidt confirmed google.cn was back online. “Officially, what I can say is: we will continue to meet with the Government to address their concerns, and we wish to communicate directly with them in regard to our services and progress in addressing this problem.”

China’s crackdown on Google is the latest move in its recent efforts to crackdown on pornography. Earlier in June, the government issued a directive requiring the installation of Green Dam Youth Escort software on Chinese computers as of 1 July.

The software aims to protect youth from pornography and other inappropriate materials.

However, the Chinese Government has come under intense criticism both inside and outside China. Critics argue that the software will enable the government to increase its censorship of content accessible to the more than 300 million Chinese people who currently use the internet.

Schmidt said that it was at their “peril” that governments attempted to impose blackouts on media such as TV, internet, radio and mobile phones.

He added that the search giant, which owns video-sharing website YouTube, consistently tried to explain to regimes that restrict communication that, ultimately, attempts to isolate a population fail.

“We have lots of lawyers, lawyers in every one of these countries,” Schmidt said. “We explain if they do this [block freedom of speech and communication] what will happen. Sometimes they moderate their behaviour and sometimes not. If they don’t listen to us it is at their peril.”

Schmidt expanded on this point: “By ‘peril’ I mean it is what the citizens will do, citizens can no longer be restricted by the kind of strategies evil dictatorships [use]… you can’t keep people in the dark.”

Schmidt said he hoped that the many clips of violent protest scenes in Iran, for example, posted on YouTube – in many cases the only footage available following reporting bans for international media – had helped to “moderate an over-reaction by the government”.

“The internet is the strongest force for individual self-expression ever invented,” Schmidt said.

“Governments around the world, even democratically elected, have difficulty with [the flow of] information online. Dictatorships and closed communities one after the other will try and shut down communication from inside. Strategies governments use trying to shut down people’s speech are terrible strategies and will not succeed,” he added.

Source: http://www.brandrepublic.asia

According to China sources, Twitter became inaccessible in the country at 5pm on Tuesday, widely noticed to be blocked after access of popular external programmes Tweet Deck and Twhirl also became patchy or non-existent.

“We started to notice an even more random and broader approach to website filtering in Beijing over the long weekend just passed. Those of us in the China marketing community are accustomed to heavy-handed filtering of blameless as well as politically sensitive websites, but this week, with the 20th anniversary on Thursday, has largely rendered the web unusable for us,” said Simon Cousins, chief executive of PR agency Illuminant Partners, describing the internet’s performance as “off kilter” all week.

“This latest block of Twitter and Flickr really hurts us, and our ability to service our clients in the mainland. They’re both important business tools.”

Cousins added that access to Tweetie, an iPhone application, via China Mobile was also blocked.

A Beijing-based agency source added that the 2 June blockage was “particularly bad” because his company’s external server based in San Francisco was also unable to process requests for Twitter and Flickr URLs.

The block is a setback for Bing, which only debuted its Chinese-language site this week.

The event followed reports that users on social networking sites also experienced difficulty as pages either stalled or had delayed loading times.

A representative from Yahoo, owner of Flickr, could not be reached in time for press.

Source: http://www.brandrepublic.asia/Media/newsarticle/2009_06/China-blocks-social-media-ahead-of-Tiananmen-anniversary/35783

Internet Marketing is Performance Marketing

No matter if your business follows a sales- and conversion driven marketing approach, or for example as global brands often do, a brand marketing approach. The Internet offers possibilities to smartly communicate to your target group in a sophisticated and interactive way, far away from pure advertising language, and trustable and true for the recipient.

Online performance marketing offers the possibility to closely track all online marketing activities on a daily basis and have a clear overview where the budget is invested and how the response is.

A research (April 2009) from the European Interactive Advertising Association comes up with very similar conclusions. Advertisers say that they will shift marketing budget from offline to online channels.

Asked about which offline channel the budget for online marketing comes from, advertisers state that budget increase for Internet marketing is coming from TV, print and magazine budgets whereas less from DM and radio. This points to a possible focus shift towards media that attributes itself to performance-led targeting as advertisers look to maximise their ROI, reach and cost efficiencies.

iProspect, a search-engine marketing agency under Isobar, studied the behaviour of visitors to ad-supported sites. It found that nearly as many netizens who click on banner ads will conduct searches for brands associated with the ad, and nearly half of all audiences on an ad-supported site will eventually perform a search that is relevant to the ad they saw.

According to the agency, the study aims to highlight the connection between display ads and search engine marketing, based on a pool of 1,575 American internet users.

“This new iProspect study goes beyond previous studies about the importance of integrating the offline and online marketing mix,” said Antony Yiu, search director, wwwins Consulting Hong Kong and iProspect Hong Kong. “Marketers should shed the old dotcom era mentality of using only display ads for their online campaigns and instead utilise a more synergistic approach of integrating both search and display ads to earn exponential returns on their advertising investment.”

The survey further found that 31 per cent of netizens respond to display ads by clicking on them, compared to the 27 per cent who respond by conducting a search for the brand, product or company.

Twenty-one per cent instead choose to type the company’s URL into their browser and nine per cent find relevant information from social media sites.

According to iProspect, a total of 52 per cent of internet users actively respond to display ads.

Additionally, the survey found that 33 per cent of respondents to an online display ad go on to purchase from a company with which they are familiar, compared to the 14 per cent who learn about a company for the first time from a digital display ad.

In short the relaunch, started on April 20th, now offers advanced account setup possibilities getting closer to Google’s account management standard:

• Renamed from Baidu Bidding (百度竞价) to Baidu Marketing (百度推广)
• Account structure: Account – Campaign – Ad Group – Keyword and Ad
• Daily budget setup
• Keyword matching
• Negative keyword settings
• Text ad rotation
• Geo targeting
• Day parting
• Keyword suggestion tool and bid estimator
• Bulk import and export
• IP exclusion
• Ad preview

Useful links:

http://e.baidu.com/keyword/

Among the findings of the report, which looked into the habits of over-60s in Shanghai and Beijing, showed that telecommunications ranks fourth after food, daily needs and payment for utilities in terms of expenditure. What’s more, 85 per cent of respondents keep in touch with their friends through email.

China’s senior citizens number 143 million. The study from Ogilvy & Mather Greater China is designed to help brands understand the spending power of a demographic with a combined annual income of up to Rmb 400 billion (US$58 billion).

The elderly in Shanghai and Beijing, shop at supermarkets (84 per cent) and hypermarkets (96 per cent). Seniors also invest in taking care of their health and taking preventive measures. Seventy-six per cent do some form of regular exercise and 39 per cent take dietary supplements and/or vitamins.

The agency says the findings have strategic business implications for brands in obvious sectors such as healthcare, but also for travel and leisure, financial services, technology, food and beverage and retail brands. Per capita spending power of Chinese senior citizens is expected to rise from US$1,620 in 2005 to US$4,112 in 2015.

Kunal Sinha, executive director, discovery at Ogilvy & Mather Greater China, said: “We want to appeal to marketers who are obsessed with marketing to youth and haven’t woken up to senior citizens in the China market. Brand managers and marketing directors usually think there are no new opportunities with the ‘aging’ profile.”

He added: “The lesson for us is evident: old people in China have changed faster than our previous beliefs about them. Brands, corporations and government agencies can either choose to treat aging as a problem, or they can view the optimism and adaptation capacity of this generation as an opportunity.”

Combining ethnographic and quantitative methods, Ogilvy Discovery launched the study in March 2008 in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Chengdu and Foshan, a small town in Guangdong province.

Responses were collected in equal proportions from 1,100 men and women between the ages of 60-75, and 12 seniors in Beijing, Chengdu and Foshan were filmed over two days each. The 55-minute TV documentary will be uploaded to YouTube.

Source: brandrepublic

Wow, that’s a number. Let’s take this statement to try to calculate what this means in terms of search engine marketing budgets in Asia:

1. To start with we need to set a few numbers. As we don’t exactly know we have to assume:

• Average click-through-rate (CTR): 1.5%
• Average cost-per-click (CPC): 0.20 USD

2. Amount of Internet users:

I did a small table because I wanted to break the total amount of Internet users in Asia down to single markets. For this I used the statistics of the World Factbook.

As you can see, the amount of Internet users I came up with differs from the amount in the initial statement. So, in order to keep relations, we also have to adjust the amount of total searches.

450 million Internet users = 20 billion searches
525 million Internet users = 23 billion searches

3. Calculation:

• 23 billion searches x CTR of 1,5% x 0.20 USD CPC x 12 months =
  828 million USD per year click budget in Asia spent

Is that so? Let’s make a test backwards to put these 828 millions into relation:

• Baidu alone had a revenue of 227 million USD in 2007 (source: wikipedia), which mainly comes from online advertising. For 2008: expected growth of 20% = 272 Mio. USD
• Baidu has a market share of appr. 63% in China, i.e. the Chinese market for keyword advertising is 431 million USD (227 million / 63% x 100%).
• And, as the above table shows, China’s Internet users make up for about 48% of Asian Internet users.
• So: 431 million USD / 48% x 100% = 898 million USD

Well, that’s not the same but rather close. We assumed a few figures such as

• CTR and CPC
• CTR could be actually much higher, due to Baidu’s advertising display strategy
• Baidu’s revenue would probably not totally come from keyword advertising

Anyway, there are good reasons to say that the market size for keyword advertising in Asia is currently somewhere between 800 and 900 million USD.

4. Finally, we can again break the Asian market size for search engine marketing down to single Asian markets:

5. Here is what other resources say:

• In Q3/2008, market size of keyword advertising increased by 19.3 per cent quarterly to 1.464 billion yuan, accounting for 43.8 per cent of the Internet advertising market. (lexisnexis)
• Search engine advertising accounted for 27.3 percent of the market in terms of value, up 4.3 percentage points over the previous year, and it was predicted to hit 30 percent this year, the report said. (highbeam)