"As companies cut marketing budgets, every advertisement placed needed to translate into measurable results and feedback."
Shanghai. December 29. INTERFAX-CHINA - China's advertising market is shifting from traditional to digital, and from a focus on branding to performance advertising, Dr. Matt McDougall, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of SinoTech Group, told Interfax. "It is obvious that advertising is going digital, but what most people don't know is that there is a shift occurring within digital advertising itself," said McDougall, who has witnessed the evolution of the Chinese advertising market firsthand over the seven years he has spent in China. "As recently as three years ago, people had virtually no knowledge of digital marketing - buying a banner on Sina was considered digital marketing," he said. McDougall founded the SinoTech Group at the end of 2007 as a digital marketing services provider. The company is already among China's leading digital advertising firms, and unlike the majority of its competitors, SinoTech not only endured, but thrived during the economic downturn. "As companies cut marketing budgets, every advertisement placed needed to translate into measurable results and feedback," McDougall said. According to McDougall, since the onset of the financial crisis, digital marketing in China has split into two distinct categories - media buying and performance advertising. McDougall went on to say that performance-based advertising will dominate the market, while the market for media buying will ebb away over the next two years. McDougall predicted that search marketing and social media advertising will have bright futures. "Search engines and social media have a growing influence on Chinese consumer behavior. Marketing and advertising on search engines and SNS sites are not only used as branding exercises, but also to engage consumers." McDougall says that SinoTech has already partnered with major search engines like Baidu and Google, as well as SNS sites like Kaixin001.com to provide search marketing and SNS advertising services. "Revenues generated from search marketing contributes between 35 to 40 percent of SinoTech's total annual revenues. Social media, affiliate marketing and electronic direct marketing (EDM) collectively generate the remaining 60 to 65 percent," McDougall said. McDougall predicted that China's digital advertising market will grow by 15 percent in 2010, with performance marketing dominating the industry. Travel-related e-commerce will be the driving force of China's digital advertising market in the lead-up the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. The recovering economy will also boost digital marketing expenditures next year, according to McDougall.
China's second largest online game exporter, Suzhou Snail Electronic Co. Ltd. (Snail Game), is expanding overseas into the world's most developed gaming markets with confidence in its ability to compete on both technology and innovation.
