Paid search keeps its market share while image ads declined

Image ad, which accounted for 45.3% of Chinese online advertising market is the main online ad form in Q3 2007, while paid search ranks the second, keeping its share. Image ads and paid search occupy 72.5% of the market, while text link ads, rich media ads, classified ads, email ads and video ads remains relatively low market share. According to iResearch, market share of image ads will decline and paid search¡¯s market share will increase next year. The gap between the two leading ad forms will be narrowed and their leadership will not be threatened in short term.

Since Q1 2006, market share of image ads, text link ads and classified ads trends to be decline while market share of paid search and rich media ads trends to be increase. In Q3 2007, YOY growth rate for Baidu and Google, the two main search engine in China, are both over 100%, becoming a bright spot in China online advertising market. YOY growth rate for three brand advertising based portals, Tencent, Sina and Sohu, were stable at 80%, 30% and 20%.

Online advertising business contributes most to the growth of total revenues. Income from online advertising reached 114.6 million RMB, an increase of 54.7% sequentially, up 82% year over year. One of the main reasons for the rapid growth is price hike, while the increasing of single advertiser¡¯s investment amount also has great influence on total revenue.

According to the latest data from iAdTracker, in the second quarter of 2007, the number of QQ.com’s advertisers has a marked increase over the first quarter. In June, the number of advertisers reached 181, an increase of 12.4% over May.

According to the latest data from iUserTracker, during Q2 2007, monthly visits of QQ.com grows rapidly, reached 5.11 billion in July.

Online advertising’s proportion of total revenues continuously increased

Since Q2 2005, Sina online advertising’s proportion of total revenues continuously increased. In Q2 2005, the proportion is 44.3% and in Q2 2007, the number increased to 68.9%. In Q2 2007, revenue from online advertising increased 40% year over year, 30% sequentially to US$ 41.2 million. Meanwhile, influenced by China’s wireless value-added market and the reduction of marketing for Interactive Voice Response services (IVR), the downward trend of Sina’s wireless value-added business will not change. Other business revenues decreased 11.1% year over year but increased 23.1% sequentially. The increase mainly came from its search engine business.

According to data from iAdTracker and iUserTracker, there’re two main reasons for the rapid growth of Sina’s online advertising revenue:

The number of advertisers increased 21.8% sequentially

iAdTracker data shows that the number of Sina’s advertisers increase substantially. In Q2 2007, the number of advertisers reached 884, up 38.3% sequentially. The advertisers are mainly from real estate, automobile and IT industries. The increase of advertiser amounts promotes Sina’s online advertising revenue directly.

Continuous increase of traffic and user stickiness

According to iResearch, the increase of Sina’s advertisers is mainly due to two reasons. First, Internet-based economic develops and led to a growing number of advertisers’ marketing strategy leaning to online marketing. Second, Sina has a large amount of sticky users. Data from iUserTracker shows that monthly duration of Sina’s main channels, especially blog, community and financial news, all increased. iResearch believe that the increase of monthly duration reflects the increase of user stickiness. The increase of traffic and user stickiness is a sold foundation for the growth of online advertising business.