Monetize your Chinese Website with these contextual partner programs

Posted on February 18, 2008
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You got a website in Chinese language and want to monetize it? Here are some content ads provider and contextual partner programs in China which can be used to monetize a Chinese website:

Google Adsense China: Type: partner program for text, banner or video ads. Simplified and traditional Chinese available, works the same as in any Western language. Large advertiser database. Although the ads displayed on websites are often not targeted enough, it is pretty popular.

Alimama.com: Very popular among Chinese webmasters and bloggers, it is an ad exchange portal where one can upload his website/blog and advertisers can book it. I reported earlier about alimama’s user base. Application procedure is Chinese only. Large advertiser database. Simplified Chinese only.

Sohu/Sogou: Textlink ad solutions provided by Sohu, a minor but fast growing local Chinese search engine. Simplified Chinese only. Registration here.

YSM: Yahoo’s paid search program, also offers contextual text link integration for webmasters in simplified and traditional Chinese language.

Explanation: Simplified Chinese used in mainland China only, traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan and Hongkong.

Experiences with Chinese SEO and SEM

Posted on February 1, 2008
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During several Chinese SEO pitches and SEO projects here in China I often came across the same imaginations about SEO again and again, no matter if giving a SEO presentation at Chinese or international companies.
Here are a few of my Chinese SEO experiences . Feel free to comment on that, I am interested in any kind of opinion:

A lot of education is necessary, as experiences and understanding of search engine marketing is pretty low. Many Chinese customers don’t understand the difference between SEO and SEM yet. The value of qualified traffic is not appreciated yet, a conversion rate either unknown or often unimportant. Quantity (i.e. website visitors) counts, not matter if relevant or not.
Chinese SEO agencies promise things that can’t be kept, customers believe it. Often heard potential clients say: “your competitor promised me to be among the top 5 in Google. If you don’t, you’re out…”
Quality SEO has its price, also from Chinese SEO agencies. For quality SEO in China, experts are required. They are not cheap, but hard to find. Labor costs in this area are far above average.
SEO is cheap because it is just about adding some things here and there. In fact, good SEO is a strategic approach and has to be planned and implemented thoroughly.
Long-tail SEO (reverse search) is hardly understood. Customers want to be on position no. 1 with their most competitive keyword. Convincing them that long-tail SEO can deliver much quicker and more converting results is not understood or not wanted.

Importance of BBS for Chinese Internet Users

Posted on January 21, 2008
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Read this great post about BBS in China. It is really surprising how heavily bulletin-board-systems (BBS) are used in China. Here are some excerpts of Gang Lu’s post:

80% of Chinese sites are running their own BBS and the total daily page view is over 1600 million and 10 million posts are published every day.
In China around 36.3% users spend 1-3 hours on BBS, about 44.7% users spend 3-8 hours and even 15.1% users are on BBS for more than 8 hours a day. Over 60% of users will login at least 3 BBS more than 3 times each every week.
More than 80% users are using BBS to search for the information of the product they plan to buy and 61.7% users are keen to ask other BBS users for opinion before make the purchase. 47.3% users have bought products directly from the BBS, which implies the BBS are also becoming an important form of e-business.
The BBS users are more mature [than blog users], they are mainly at the age of 20 to 40, well-educated and with various professional background, and their contribution to all sorts of forums make BBS a valuable information source.

China Internet Advertising Trends 2008

Posted on January 15, 2008
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My personal view on trends I see for the Chinese Internet advertising in 2008:

Internet Advertising Trend No. 1:
Using the power of individual expression

It is no secret that users get tired about pure banner advertising more and more. But still banners are an important means to reach a mass of consumers. However, banners are just superficial touchpoints, the deep effect lacks. But there is a way out of this dilemma: Combined with web 2.0 approaches a brand can develop real brand embassadors who deeply engage with a brand and spread it on the Internet.

brand interaction with web 2.0 models

But how to create these brand promoters? Make use of the power of the human pool of creativity (crowdsourcing), integrate the consumers into your brand by letting them contribute with their ideas and individuality. Interact with the consumers, challenge and reward them. Use these sticky consumers in a clever way, don’t exploit them.

Why should it work? Many people want to express themselves in an individual way, especially true for a society where self-expression has rather been restricted than fostered. This need could be expressed in a personal dressing style, for example, but the easiest and most anonymous way is the Internet.

Which tools and concepts can be used? blogs (especially in China a powerful instrument of opinion building), video contests, creative idea collection (e.g. write songs, texts, design motives or products, etc.), always combined with a poll so that the users themselves can elect the best input and not to forget the reward which needs to be special itself and a real motivation. Special-interest community models where users can design and define their personal page, get answers and exchange with like-minded people.

Internet Advertising Trend No.2:
Measurement and conversion tracking

The return-on-investment (ROI) of marketing spendings will become increasingly important for advertisers. Marketing budgets won’t be spent without fulfilling predefined goals, e.g. increase in brand awareness, lead generation or online sales. Click rates are definitely no conversion, the ROI must be defined as a real value for the advertiser.

Closely related to optimizing the return on investment is the target group matching, which means to buy relevant traffic and not mere reach any more. Quality, not quantity brings your brand conversion and awareness. The target group of the advertiser has to fit to the target group of the media, the product or service advertised needs to fit to the advertising channel.

Internet advertising and website development will be seen as integrated disciplines. Reporting and tracking results will be analyzed and flow back into the optimization of the marketing campaigns and the website funnel.

With the increase of e-commerce and the availability of conversion points on websites (lead form, online sales process), performance marketing will play an increasing role, giving search (SEO and keyword advertising) and affiliate marketing more demand. Banner campaigns and eDM advertising will be based on conversion calculation as well.

Internet Advertising Trend No.3:
Integration of online and offline activities into the marketing and sales strategy

Online advertising is part of the overall marketing strategy. Any marketing activity will pay into the brand value or marketing goal, no matter if online or offline. Using a single online marketing channel is not a comprehensive strategy. Instead, offline sales channels like offices, point-of-sales (POS) are integrated into Internet advertising campaigns in a way that e.g. traffic can be drawn from the customers in the local shops to boost a website. On the other hand, a website can generate leads which will be converted by local sales offices into sales.

Chinese rely heavier on user-generated content than Americans

Posted on January 2, 2008
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marketingcharts.com reports that Chinese consumers have dramatically surpassed Americans in adopting Web 2.0 behavior, relying heavily on social media for guidance in purchase decisions, according to data from Netpop.

The Chinese-consumer behavior data have broad implications for American companies intent on selling consumer goods in China, Netpop said.

Among the key findings of the report, “Netpop | Nations: China and the US Web 2.0 Behavior”:

User-generated content (consumer reviews/rating sites, forum/discussion boards, blogs, etc.) influences 58% of all purchase decisions in China, compared with 19% in the US.
47% of Chinese broadband users post comments to a blog, chat room, listserv or forum, compared with just 28% of American broadband users.
Search engines are the most influential source for making purchase decisions in both countries: 46% of Chinese broadband users use a search engine to make purchase decisions vs. 25% of American broadband users.

So, why do Chinese users rely so heavily on user-generated content?

In my opinion there are two things: first, expressing your free opinion and posting it in blogs and forums is much easier in the Internet than in traditional media. Due to the facilitated access, of course. Second, advertisement in China in traditional media is often heavily misleading consumers. So, consumers often have developed a natural cautiousness to magazine, TV and outdoor ads. On the contrary, mouth-to-mouth recommendation is trusted much more. As user-generated content is nothing else than that, it is very successful.

Alimama: Chinese Ad Exchange

Posted on December 29, 2007
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Under the name of Alimama, Alibaba started the first ad exchange platform in China.

“No longer will 80% of China’s website traffic go unmonetized”, said Jin Jianhang, an Alibaba Group spokesperson. “The launch of Alimama makes web publishing commercially viable for China’s more than one million small- and medium-sized web sites. At the same time, advertisers now have an affordable way to reach targeted audience groups on the growing number of specialized websites and blogs in China.”

Publishers and webmaster who want to display ads on their websites have to register for an account at Alimama.com. Registration includes a description of the advertising inventory for sale and the respective pricing model for the offered inventory. Pricing models can be page view, CPC or action based.

Advertisers can now review, select and book the available webspaces.

The exchange itself will take an eight percent commission from ad sales. It has reportedly signed 150,000 web publishers and 135,000 personal blogs since its beta release in August.

Some more numbers:

more than one million registered users
more than a billion page views a day
inventory of more than 380,000 websites
4,000 new websites an 10,000 new blogs every day

Baidu Brand Advertising Program

Posted on December 19, 2007
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A new service from Baidu targets large corporations for increased brand awareness. The Brand Advertising Program will provide a prominent listing for advertisers, with multiple links and even graphic ads.

baidu-advertising-program

The banner on the right side (no.2) has a size of 175×300px and is animated gif. The whole ad covers almost 2/3 of my laptop screen. Under the ad I can just see one and a half other search results.

So what’s the purpose of this ad? I mean, in search engines, when you search for a brand, you will finally definitely land on the brand’s homepage. Ok, brand building for the advertiser is certainly one goal but do you really need to do it for your brand keywords? In terms of generating new revenue it can’t have thus big an effect, as the searches for brands are comparatively low in comparison to the total amount of search inquiries. Another reason could be –due to the large size- to press competitors who are also listed for the brand keyword out of the screen…hmm. What do you think?

So far, there are only two advertiser who take part in the brand advertising program: Gome (国美), the largest consumer electronics store and China Construction Bank (中国建设银行), one of the top 4 banks in China. We called Baidu and asked for prices, purpose and how it works, but the sales agents in Shanghai didn’t even know this advertising program…

Baidu’s recent new search services

Posted on December 19, 2007
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Statistical data search

The statistical data search that is offered by Baidu, will enable an user to search whatever statistics available on the Web that are indexed by Baidu. I did some randomn searches like cell phone, loan, internet users, etc. in Chinese language but the data that were provided were all pretty old. I didn’t get a result newer than 2001. Entering a year additionally didn’t provide any information.

Additionally Baidu’s statistical search seems to be backed by soshoo.com as you can see its logo is in the right top corner of the statistical search results.

Soshoo is a vertical data search website which was setup on August 16, 2006 in Beijing. On the strength of its 12 years’ data acquisition and management experience in China’s information industry, Soshoo set foot in the search engine market, with hundreds of millions of authoritative data.

Patent search

Baidu will release what could be an interesting search service in next year, i.e. January 1, 2008, called the Baidu Patent Search. It’s a product that jointly cooperated with the SIPO, State Intellectual Property Office of the P.R.C. However, the details of which domain Baidu would used and how many patent documents that Baidu going to index to its search engine were not disclosed at this moment.

Yahoo’s banner attack on Baidu

Posted on December 14, 2007
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Not long ago, Yahoo China released a new search advertising banner implying that baidu’s search results are not very accurate and just one-sided. Yahoo on the contrary claims to have a 360 degree full-search with very precise and comprehensive search results.

yahoo baidu banner

On the banner the fat man with the telescope is supposed to be baidu and can only scan the horizon in a 100 degree angle (literally translated, baidu 百度 means “100 degrees” in Chinese). The tagline means that Yahoo also sees things that baidu doesn’t see which are the small mermaids on the banner.

Webmasters who put Yahoo banner ads on their website already reported to get penalized by baidu with their website being blocked in the baidu search results.

Chinese search engines: Comparing Baidu and Google

Posted on November 15, 2007
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As in many other countries as well there are a lot of search engines in China but only a few have a relevant market share. These are especially Google and Baidu, and Yahoo to a minor part. Unlike to most other countries in the world, Google is not the market leader in China, in fact it is Baidu.com, a pure Chinese search engine company.

1. Comparing market share and popularity of Google and Baidu in China

Throughout China, the market share of Google and Baidu has been more or less constant in the last few years apart from some minor shiftings in percentage from year to year. The market shares of 2007 don’t really offer rocking news as well, as you can see in the following graph.

google-baidu-yahoo-market-share-china

But as more and more information about the Chinese search engine market become available, these numbers can be analyzed more in detail. Especially if broken down to certain areas or provinces of China the market shares of the two search engines vary heavily.

CNNIC reports that they compared market shares in different regions: North, Northeast, East, South, Central, Northwest and Southwest China, involving 3 first-class cities, 7 second-class cities, and 14 third-class cities.

The statistics indicated that Baidu.com has a rising trend as the city level falls, while google.com goes the opposite. The priority ratio for Baidu.com in cities of first, second and third class respectively: 67.33%, 73.35%, 83.82% while that for google.com: 22.11%, 14.78%, 4.99%.

The report also mentions that baidu.com and google.com drew in the priority market competition for high end users characterized by “non-student users aged 25 and above, receiving Bachelor’s Degree and above, having a monthly income of over 3,000 yuan”, 47.72% of whom selected baidu.com as first choice while 42.32% chose google.com.

2. Comparing quality of search results from Baidu and Google

Intelliconsulting, a Chinese research company, conducted a survey among search engine users and compared the search results of Google and Baidu. The overall result is that the search result satisfaction among Google users (48.2%) is higher than among Baidu users (39.8%).

baidu-google-search-results

If you take a closer look at the graph you can clearly find out the following facts:

The better educated users are, the more they rely on Google.
The older they are (and the more disposable income they have), the more they use Google.
There is no difference among female and male test users.

More findings were:

The more a user users search engines, the more he likes Google.
Negative points for Google are the instability of Google’s website, having no page-caching and no free MP3 and other media search functionality.
Negative points for Baidu are that search results are mixed with paid search results and that no content from Chinese pages abroad is included. That search results are filtered according to governmental requirements is a negative factor as well, according to the study.

Well, what do you think? Two independent researches (CNNIC and Intelliconsulting) come to almost the same conclusion. That’s impressing, as a little unusual for China.

3. Baidu Keyword Advertising (PPC)

How Adwords, Google’s paid search program, works is pretty much known I suppose, so I don’t want to go into detail too much here.

The screenshot below is from google.cn and the keyword is 汽车(car). You can see that there are several ads, one in the highlighted area above the organic search results.

google-adwords-china

Here is a screenshot from baidu’s search results for the keyword 信用卡(creditcard).

baidu-search-results

So let me explain the differences to Google:

The paid search and the organic results are not clearly divided. You will only notice the difference by the small gray underlined term next to the displayed URL. 推广 means it is paid search, 百度快照 means organic search result.
All paid search results will be placed before the organic search results. That means, if 20 customers buy the same keyword, the first organic search result will be found on page three. The price is based on a bidding process. Not only the CPC but quality factors like landing page evaluation will influence the position as well.
The ads in the right column are no CPC-based ads. They are fix-priced for one whole year. Position no. 1 to no.3 have the same price and rotate among each other. Position no. 4 to no.10 are cheaper than no.1 to no.3 and rotate as well. If the position is already booked, you have to reserve and wait respectively until it will become free. There is no possibility to get out of the contract before this one year ends.
Once a while you might notice one or two ads with a blue banner on position one and/or two. It looks similar to Google’s blue banner, but in fact it has a totally different meaning: if you search for a keyword and there are no paid results for that keyword because no advertiser has booked it, Baidu will display ads that are similar to the keyword you entered. Example: you enter ‘keyword advertising’ but there are no paid results, so baidu will show two ads for the keyword ‘advertising’ with a blue background.

Last but not least, some examples prices for the right column (as of 2007/11/15):

手机 (cell phone) 1.056.700 RMB/year
广告 (marketing) 13.000 RMB/year
汽车 (car) 117.600 RMB/year
美容 (cosmetics) 193.600 RMB/year
电脑 (computer) 16.400RMB/year

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