Last month I was in Beijing to speak for an ad network event. It was co-hosted by AdChina who recently just closed a funding led by News Corp.  In the event, there were quite a few presentations about the network practice such as advanced targeting, CPM model, cross-platform ad delivering, etc, etc. All these are not new to the market and they have been talked for long in China. But in the last 6 months, AdChina seems to have drawn quite a bit attention.

AdChina is not the only network in China. We have a number of local networks who can deliver advanced ad serving techniques based on different behavioral parameters such as IP, broadband connection, even the ISP-based and DNS-based behavioral targeting. Some advanced targeting techniques are considerably invasive, for example, track http referer page, drop cookies through http-request, etc, they all have been using in China with less considerate manner. I have met a company in China who can put a snippet in the audience’s computer that takes control the browser for a popup ad.  For advanced advertising technology, China has everything on the menu.

But there is also a huge knowledge gap in the user side (agency) who can’t actually manage to deploy all the advanced techniques for a tactical approach. Still many agencies in China are copying or passing on the media spot plan to the clients directly, vertical network does not exist, and the know-how of the users group are very fragmented. All these have made up an immature China advertising market, which you may see all of them as the opportunities, but how you can take on the market without the supply of local talents can be a tricky question.

China is probably the place where we see an impressive growth in advertising revenue even during the down time. But how many advertisers in this country are actually benefiting from their online advertising spend if the service operators are not thinking strategic? I remain feeling skeptical towards a good lasting market prosperity.

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Subscribe my feed